Women have been through so many changes over the years. Gilman discusses the disparities of women years ago. She talks about how women were oversexed and were limited to certain privileges. During the times that Gilman talked about, women were expected to take care of the household. Her duties didn’t involve anything outside of maintaining the home. She was not allowed to make her own money and since she didn’t receive any wages for her labor inside of the house, her labor belonged to her husband. Women had no economic and political rights. They were expected to follow gender norms, according to their specific sex. On top of women having no type of independence, they were held accountable for their physical and social behavior. They were expected to dress a certain way without looking too trashy. They were also expected to behave classy, such as a woman should. Today, women have stepped outside of gender norms. It is completely common for a woman to have a job and make their own money. It is also common for a woman to take care of both the household and have a job. The idea of a woman’s dependence upon a man is something more common within the upper class. The men are the ones going out and making the money while the woman are staying at home, which is similar to Gilden’s story. Women have expanded positively throughout the years, giving them more rights and most importantly becoming more equal to men.
Goffman stands behind his theory of labeling. The labeling theory is a theory where public labeling has an effect on a person’s image, similar to stereotyping. For example, if a person is labeled deviant by society they may start acting as an deviant because society has already branded he/she deviant. Unfortunately, society categorizes people when trying to get to know them. Before we really get to know someone, we usually have an idea of them beforehand which can lead to a social stigma.
Stigma is the discrepancy between our idea of someone’s social identity and their actual idea, which can cause us to think less of that person. For example, after 9/11 some people started to believe that all Middle Eastern people were terrorists. No matter who they were, as long as they looked Middle Eastern they were labeled terrorists to others.
There are two types of stigmas that were discussed in class. A “known about” stigma is something that is obvious and can be seen, such as an obese person, which is named as discredited. An “unknown” stigma is something that cannot be seen, such a tattoo, depending on where the location is, which is named discreditable.
When discussing Simmel, he talks about a duality between individuals. He explains that society needs a mixture of both positivity and negativity in the world. The duality that Simmel talks about is between love and hate, one aspect cannot exist without the other. Simmel believes that the concept of society is an event that is constantly ongoing through interaction between different individuals throughout society. He uses the word sociation, instead of society because sociation puts an emphasis on the interaction between the relation and the process that it goes through. He also talks about how Sociology should focus on interaction and group characteristics.
Sociability and coquetry were two topics that were related to Simmel. Sociability refers to the play- form association within an interaction. Serious topics are not to be discussed during sociability, the interaction should be fun. Sociability is hard to maintain because some people may redirect the conversation make it too serious. Coquetry is described as a flirtation between people. Coquetry is like a natural interaction where one person alternates between denial or consent. It is something like a game of tease where one person leads on another person making them feel like there’s hope without the interaction becoming too serious.