Blog Post #3

3/21/18
Blog Post #3
Tori Bivens

                     

                  Within Berry and Adam's article, I found a sentence that digs deeper into the issue of bullying. "...bullying is a complex social process that often results in significant and life-shaping consequences." It is not just a simple action of a push or a shove. It is no minor problem that we should only teach about a week in school. Reading this article, I made inferences based on the sister bullying and the cousin. Through childhood, a girl named Victoria was repeatedly abused by Lily. Every day, Lily would push her buttons and find any way to make her angry or hurt her. As they got older and Victoria graduated high school, Lily subsided the bullying. They had a heart to heart conversation and verbally resolved what had been going on.Victoria was Christian and believed that she needed to love her sister despite her wrongdoings. However, she could never fully be the same. Lily's treatment of Victoria was so horrible and repetitive that no apology could fully fix what she had inflicted. This is, like Berry and Adams said, a "life-changing consequence." Another aspect that was interesting was how Victoria admitted faults in her behavior. She said that she was reflecting her behavior on Lily because she hated her. She avoided her at all costs and braced herself before seeing her. Victoria made the realization that her behavior made Lily feel isolated and unworthy at the same time, further provoking her bullying. This shows how complex of a social process bullying really is. It takes maturity to see what Victoria eventually noticed and self-push to fix a broken relationship like theirs.

                This brings me to where we left on in class yesterday. Christina asked if Danny (the cousin) was justified in bullying Tony (the guy who came out to be gay). Obviously, Tony was miserable while Danny forced him to wrestle. In fact, Tony's whole family tried to make him do masculine activities and to like girls. But he just didn't fit; and Danny's bullying didn't help. However, Danny's intentions were to make him a "stronger, more resilient man." The family did not intervene in the wrestling matches very often, showing that they probably wanted Tony to become this way. Based off this information, I believe Danny is not justified. So what the parents approved? They were wrong in their beliefs to let this type of behavior go on. In my opinion, the blame is more on the parents than Danny. He was also young; he didn't know any better than to try and change Tony. No bullying is ever truly justified, no matter how much sense it seems to make.

Blog #3

I proposed for you to reconsider what family is. Whether you come from a loving family that encouraged you or one that does not conceptualize the family that you need.  We are born into A family without choosing it. This lack of choice leaves us powerless until we choose to take back that power and create a family of our own. Maybe we can create that family by marriage and by giving birth but why be bound by that definition?

Learner’s dictionary (n.d.) defines family as, “a group of people who are related to each other. This sense of family can refer to a group that consists of parents and their children or it can refer to a bigger group of related people including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.” For those of us who don’t have that, it can be difficult to bind ourselves to those terms. This difficulty comes with the perception of what family is as defined by a dictionary.

Life is so short and I would like to propose a different definition of family that consists of a household filled with love among all the people in your home. It took a long time for me to say goodbye to the family I was born into, that did nothing but bully me and hurt me. It is a difficult choice to walk away from those who carry your DNA. Coupled with the freedom of choosing who you love and not expecting people to love you just because your family is a type of freedom for me. Those I love are my family now and this is a beautiful thing. 

Going against social norms that say the family is everything and the roles within a culture that say that it is horrible that you want nothing to do with your family. I have the freedom of choosing my mothers and they are beautiful people. I have a family that is odd because we are not all connected by DNA but by the bonds of love that hold us together and the ease of communication among us. 

My stepdaughter looks nothing like me but I am her mother and I love her. She too has experienced a mother that doesn’t know how to love but to bully and manipulate, causing hurt and pain. People who deliberately hurt you and cause you pain should not be given the sacred role of being a family member. My stepdaughter had a mother that left her as she cried and cried out for her to stay when she was that age of three. She abandoned her and she still suffers from feeling that people who care about her will leave her. Somehow we have found each other so that I can share my experience and tell her that I was better off without my mother and it is good and not shameful. I’m sure that sounds cruel but trust me when I say that a mother that tells a child as she grows up that she found her in the garbage and never shows her any love even when she needs it, is better off without her. It was a long journey to come to this horrifying conclusion and discovering this truth happened after I gave birth to my own child, my son. At that time, I realized there is no way my mother loved me because the love that I feel for him is truly unconditional. The freedom of choosing to create your own family or accepting the bullying experience of repeated negative words and actions of the one that gave me birth to me was a long painful process but a great one. I know it is horrible to type these words because I do appreciate the gift of life she gave me and now I can tell my stepdaughter and she can thank your mother for giving her life but there is no other obligation to her. We can also thank our mothers for enticing our minds to question social norms that are harmful to people and this is the greatest gift our mothers gave us.

Berry and Adams (2016) describe the bullying within a family resulting in health issues like depression or self-harm and in my case, being suicidal at a young age. Hoping and wondering if one day my mom could love me was painful. I am sure that if we conduct an autoethnography to critically study my family communication then research would agree that it was best to run and run as fast as I can because it really takes at least two people to work on a relationship. I rarely share with people that I am perfectly happy never speaking to my mother because people hold onto the social norms and judge me. You can see the look of horror on their faces. That said, I just say my mom is a wonderful person but she never wanted to be a mother. I don’t tell them that I was starved, beaten, and abused because that secret doesn’t define me anymore. Autoethnography research would agree my family secrecy is painful and best kept in private. 

The bullying started with my mother and that behavior was modeled and shown to the children. I am fortunate to be free and I feel bad for my siblings who don’t agree with me wanting to be free of hatred towards everyone and fleeing from it. Instead, I choose to love and have laughter, not conforming and being controlled to such ugliness is a really good thing because now I have the ability to love those around me.   

The family I chose does not bully but loves at all times and are truthful with each other, not having to hold family secrets that are painful and damaging. In my case forgiveness is not being hurt by the damage anymore but understanding that I rejected the norm, the obligation, and that blood is thicker than water because I would have drowned in that dysfunction. 

References

Learner’s Dictionary. (n.d.). Definition of Family. Retrieved from http://www.learnersdictionary.com/definition/family

Berry, K & Adams T.E. (2016). Family Bullies. Journal of Family Communication, Volume 16, No. 1, pp. 51-63

Blog Post #3

Blog post #3

Jayde Christopher

I will be talking about interpersonal communication. I feel it is only right since we discussed it in class today. I thought it was so interesting that there are frames and stages when dealing with interpersonal communication. For backstage, you have a select audience, choice of who you want to see. Front stage is your audience and for frames is Goffman. Hopefully all of this makes sense as I am explaining.

I loved how we watched Wife Swap this class. It was so cool to get an idea of what happens in different families, their cultures, and how they communicate in general. Giving an example of what it is like and actually being able to learn how it all works was great. Miss Ivey taught this really well because I wouldn’t have known the different stages and frames, relationship dialectics, etc.

In wife swap, it was hilarious how the Curtis and his family went about things. He ran the entire house. If he didn’t get what he wanted, all hell broke loose. Everything revolves around the little chicken nugget lover, which was so sad. But one thing they had on the other family is how close-knit they were. Their bond was everything. The Browns were always so busy. The kids didn’t really get to see their dad because of all of the boot camps that were ran. But they were a very discipline family. The way they communicate with each other was totally different than Curtis’. If the Browns needed something done, it will be done and done correctly.

March Blog Post

I really enjoyed the idea in chapter 12 of Advocacy through Dialogue. The very basis for advocacy is to publicly support the ideas of others or yourself to an opposing audience. In order for anything to be achieved, we have to be in a situation in which a healthy steady dialogue can be reached. We can, of course, express our opinions and those of our side. However, in order to be productive we have to be willing to open ourselves to the criticism of not just those who agree with us but also those who oppose us and we, in turn, must be willing to give honest feedback of the other side. This type of open honest dialogue is what we need to come together and improve.

The problem with this concept is that it requires that both sides open themselves to criticism and in turn by being honest with each other we help to make the argument for the other side stronger. We can’t accept that even as the other side deals with the same reservations we are trapped in a theoretical stalemate where neither side is willing to move to help itself for fear of also helping their opponent.

Without trying to get political, this is the main concern with politics both sides are so concerned with protecting their ideas from the other side that they refuse to open up and discuss the flaws in their plans. When ideas are brought forward “dialogue” if you want to call it that has degraded to attacks that have no constructive backing. This doesn’t help the process, it only causes people to revert back to their original plan of not saying anything or attacking right back. Politics is perhaps the worst place for this to happen. We need an open healthy dialogue to stimulate new ideas and concepts rather than attacking them. (sorry political rant over)

Circling back to advocacy, the hope to effect change is based on the concept of open willingness to listen and critique the ideas of others. Not to shoot them down but to expand and solve their ideas. We often think of advocacy as a one-way street but it’s two way and it requires feedback to succeed.

Blog 3

In society there will always be people the people who judge others.  According to the week 14 reading these things  are called social hierarchies. These social hierarchies  are people who believe they are at a higher place in society  because of their stratus, race or anything that they think essentially  makes them better than others. I can agree with the article Cross Cultural Diversity, We see social hierarchy everyday and sometimes don’t even notice it because we are so blind to it now.  The article basically says that members of  a higher class have better attitudes  towards inequality. That really hit home with me because if you think about inequality for  the lower class really works in the favor of the higher class.  For example, minimum wage and unfair pay just helps the boss man stay rich.

Its sad but as a society I feel we too often judge others off where they are from. Everyone does whether you say so or not.