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More handpicked essays just for you.
The role of religion in influencing morality in society
The role of religion in influencing morality in society
The role of religion in influencing morality in society
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Laud Humphreys’ book “Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places” was originally published in 1970. Humphreys earned his PhD from Washington University in St. Louis, although several faculty members tried to rescind it due to his research methods that were perceived to be “dishonest”. His book details the activities of homosexual men who regularly visit public restrooms (tearooms) to find quick anonymous sex. Since Laud Humphreys was a sociologist, he recognized the simplistic stereotypes that the society had on impersonal homoerotic activity. The sociologist thus noted that it would be of considerable social significance for the society to appreciate the motives and patterns of this deviant activity. His study findings unearthed underlying ideals, which challenged the oppressive nature of society. The study rejected the earlier myths that assumed that casual sexual encounters in public restrooms was practiced by criminals, pedophiles and transients who needed to be prosecuted and locked away from the society. Based on the book, most participants were consenting adult individuals of high moral standing in the society. This paper reviews this book in light of these fundamental sociological issues raised by Humphreys. Humphrey observed many sexual acts from 1966 to 1967 in 19 different men’s restrooms. Although the origin of the term tearooms, interchangeably used with restrooms is unknown, Laud Humphrey refers to them as the location where men frequently go to for sexual encounters. The restrooms were located in five different parks in one city comprising of a population of approximately two million people. In the study of male homosexual encounters in public restrooms, Humphreys posed as a voyeur and lookout, otherwise kn... ... middle of paper ... ... had a positive outcome. I believe that it makes the results more accurate when the people don’t know that they are being studied. People do act more comfortably and this is definitely a way to obtain the best results, as opposed to people who know they are being studied and tend to provide different answers. Humphrey also uses statistics to show the percentages of people who were involved in such behaviors to show us where they come from and what their social environments were like. Nowadays, it is unethical to do so and to collect data and study people without their consultation as it can invade privacy. This study raises fundamental questions on the moral fabric and the role of religious and political institutions in giving direction on covert deviant actions. The most “flawless” people we perceive in society are those who engage the most in such deviant behavior.
At the beginning of the 1900s, there was a “sexual revolution” in New York City. During this time, sexual acts and desires were not hidden, but instead they were openl...
The Asch and Milgram’s experiment were not unethical in their methods of not informing the participant of the details surrounding the experiment and the unwarranted stress; their experiment portrayed the circumstances of real life situation surrounding the issues of obedience to authority and social influence. In life, we are not given the courtesy of knowledge when we are being manipulated or influenced to act or think a certain way, let us be honest here because if we did know people were watching and judging us most of us would do exactly as society sees moral, while that may sound good in ensuring that we always do the right thing that would not be true to the ways of our reality. Therefore, by not telling the participants the detail of the experiment and inflicting unwarranted stress Asch and Milgram’s were
Upon analyzing his experiment, Stanley Milgram, a Yale psychologist, concludes that people will drive to great lengths to obey orders given by a higher authority. The experiment, which included ordinary people delivering “shocks” to an unknown subject, has raised many questions in the psychological world. Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the University of California and one of Milgram’s colleagues, attacks Milgram’s ethics after he completes his experiment in her review. She deems Milgram as being unethical towards the subjects he uses for testing and claims that his experiment is irrelevant to obedience. In contrast, Ian Parker, a writer for New Yorker and Human Sciences, asserts Milgram’s experiments hold validity in the psychological world. While Baumrind focuses on Milgram’s ethics, Parker concentrates more on the reactions, both immediate and long-term, to his experiments.
In his work about gay life in New York City, George Chauncey seeks to dispel the various myths about the gay lifestyle before the Civil Rights era of the 60’s. He distills the misconceptions into three major myths: “…isolation, invisibility, and internalization” (Chauncey 1994, 2). He believes a certain image has taken in the public mind where gays did not openly exist until the 60’s, and that professional historians have largely ignored this era of sexual history. He posits such ideas are simply counterfactual. Using the city of New York, a metropolitan landscape where many types of people confluence together, he details a thriving gay community. Certainly it is a community by Chauncey’s reckoning; he shows gay men had a large network of bar, clubs, and various other cultural venues where not only gay men intermingled the larger public did as well. This dispels the first two principle myths that gay men were isolated internally from other gay men or invisible to the populace. As to the internalization of gay men, they were not by any degree self-loathing. In fact, Chauncey shows examples of gay pride such a drag queen arrested and detained in police car in a photo with a big smile (Chauncey 1994, 330). Using a series of personal interviews, primary archival material from city repositories, articles, police reports, and private watchdog groups, Chauncey details with a preponderance of evidence the existence of a gay culture in New York City, while at the same time using secondary scholarship to give context to larger events like the Depression and thereby tie changes to the gay community to larger changes in the society.
A local newspaper ad reached out for volunteers to participate in a Psychological study, created by Philip G. Zimbardo and his research team, which sounded interesting for many individuals. Was it the best option to follow through with it? Volunteers were given a promise of being paid fifteen dollars a day of the study. Multiple members probably considered this a once in a life time event that could result in quick, easy money. Many may have heard about the Stanford Prison Experiment, but may not have been aware of the scars that it left upon the participants. Taking a deeper look into the study and the impacted outcomes on individuals will be elaborated on (Stanford Prison Experiment).
In this study Zimbardo chose 21 participants from a pool of 75, all male college students, screened prior for mental illness, and paid $15 per day. He then gave roles. One being a prisoner and the other being a prison guard, there were 3 guards per 8 hour shift, and 9 total prisoners. Shortly after the prisoners were arrested from their homes they were taken to the local police station, booked, processed, given proper prison attire and issued numbers for identification. Before the study, Zimbardo concocted a prison setting in the basement of a Stanford building. It was as authentic as possible to the barred doors and plain white walls. The guards were also given proper guard attire minus guns. Shortly after starting the experiment the guards and prisoners starting naturally assuming their roles, Zimbardo had intended on the experiment lasting a fortnight. Within 36 hours one prisoner had to be released due to erratic behavior. This may have stemmed from the sadistic nature the guards had adopted rather quickly, dehumanizing the prisoners through verbal, physical, and mental abuse. The prisoners also assumed their own roles rather efficiently as well. They started to rat on the other prisoners, told stories to each other about the guards, and placated the orders from the guards. After deindividuaiton occurred from the prisoners it was not long the experiment completely broke down ethically. Zimbardo, who watched through cameras in an observation type room (warden), had to put an end to the experiment long before then he intended
An extremely interesting, but ever-contradictory sociological study of sexual relationsis presented in the Kathy Peiss book Cheap Amusements . The reason I say that it is ever-contradictory is that the arguments are presented for both the benefit of cheap amusements for a woman s place in society and for the reinforcement of her place. In one breath, Peiss says that mixed-sex fun could be a source of autonomy and pleasure as well as a cause of [a woman s] continuing oppression. The following arguments will show that, based on the events and circumstances described in Cheap Amusements , the changes in the
In the past decades, the struggle for gay rights in the Unites States has taken many forms. Previously, homosexuality was viewed as immoral. Many people also viewed it as pathologic because the American Psychiatric Association classified it as a psychiatric disorder. As a result, many people remained in ‘the closet’ because they were afraid of losing their jobs or being discriminated against in the society. According to David Allyn, though most gays could pass in the heterosexual world, they tended to live in fear and lies because they could not look towards their families for support. At the same time, openly gay establishments were often shut down to keep openly gay people under close scrutiny (Allyn 146). But since the 1960s, people have dedicated themselves in fighting for
Jonathan Katz talks about the initial creation of the term “heterosexuality” and how it was used to classify certain groups of people’s way of practicing sex. Along with the negative ideology the term reflected upon society. The author talks about the early definition of the term “heterosexuality”. Katz closely examines the different cultures and what sex meant to them prior to the term and over all labeling of “heterosexual” and what become of them after the fact. Katz illustrates the many faces of the term “heterosexual” starting with the early definition of the word, which was at the
In the article “An Anthropological Look at Human Sexuality” the authors, Patrick Gray and Linda Wolfe speak about how societies look at human sexuality. The core concept of anthology is the idea of culture, the systems of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors people acquire as a member of society. The authors give an in depth analysis on how human sexuality is looked at in all different situations.
New venues for leisure where men and women could meet and engage in unrestricted social interaction, brought a shift in the average American’s experience of courting and sexuali...
The committee makes several recommendations in regards to changing the laws and legislations surrounding the incrimination of homosexuals for what had previously been considered sodomy. The basic premise being that “homosexual behaviour betwe...
The film Private Dicks (Powers & Spadola, 1999) is a documentary of men discussing their penises while they are naked. They discuss their masturbation history, their penis size, loss of their virginity, and much more. The age range of the men goes from seventeen to seventy, and there is also a large diversity of races. A lot of the men are performers and entertainers, but others are lawyers, attorneys, students, and much more everyday occupations. Not only does occupation vary across the men, but so does sexual orientation. Some of the men identify as heterosexual while the others identify as homosexual or transsexual. This documentary (Powers & Spadola, 1999) takes what is considered a private matter and turns into a public
The general goal of the experiment was to see how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict another person just because he or she was ordered to do so by an experimental scientist. In his article, "The Perils of Obedeince", Milgram concluded his analysis of the experiment by saying "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority," (Milgram, 1974, p76). Milgram summarized that obedience is a basic behavior element in social life that is deeply ingrained that it override people from acting according to the ethics, sympathy, and moral conduct (Milgram, 1973, p62). The way obedience is set in the modern society leads to the loss of personal responsibility from ordinary citizens. In the society, people are taught to behave legally and morally. However, Milgram argued that learning ethics does not necessarily determine what people will actually do in their real-life situations (Milgram, 1973, p76). To check the experiment 's accuracy, similar experiments were held in different countries such as South Africa,
... decades ago. This book is one that will allow the reader to view many aspects of sexuality from a social standpoint, and apply it to certain social attitudes in our society today, these attitudes can range from the acceptance of lesbian and gays, and the common sight of sex before marriage and women equality. The new era of sexuality has taken a definite "transformation" as Giddens puts it, and as a society we are living in the world of change in which we must adapt, by accepting our society as a changing society, and not be naive and think all the rules of sexuality from our parents time our still in existence now.