SOCIAL VALUES AND GENDER
CORE VALUES IN AMERICAN SOCIETY:
| VALUE | BEHAVIOR |
| EQUALITY DEMOCRACY FREEDOM PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS INALIENABLE RIGHTS |
What do the values above mean to you?
Think about each one and how you will know that you have attained it? Does your vision include other people? Which other people and in what relationship to you? |
For example: Does your idea of happiness include someone waiting on you? Bringing you food? providing sex? Giving you things? In what capacity do you see them providing services for you? Does that mean that your vision of happiness is based on the fact that someone else must be in a subservient relationship to you? What of their happiness? Is there a way you could be happy without this?
Do your visions clash with each other? Can you have equality
for you and others and still have your version of happiness? Are all your
visions egocentric? Only seen from the point of what is made available
to you if that value is real?
Is equality defined only in polical terms or also economic?
What does it mean that every one is equal politically? Only the right to
vote? Or does it mean equally powerful in getting decisions made in their
favor and in getting their needs met? How would your vision change if equality
meant economic as well? Would that also impact the meaning of social equality?
How?
Now add gender. What is the gender of the people in your vision? Are the ones supporting your vision all members of the opposite gender? Do you think your vision of happiness or equality would change if you were of the opposite gender? If so, how?
REVIOUSLY EXCLUDED:
| GROUP | QUALITY |
| INDENTURED SERVANTS | POVERTY |
| SLAVES UNFREE (PROPERTY) | ETHNICITY |
| IMMIGRANTS | NATIONALITY |
| LANDLESS | OWNERSHIP |
| MINORS | AGE |
| ILLITERATE | EDUCATION |
| WOMEN | GENDER |
| HOMOSEXUALS | SEXUALITY |
The groups listed above were excluded from the original definitions of who benefited from the values espoused by those who set them out. Some of these groups have been included overtime , some have not. Although included not all feel they are included equally. Is it possible to include all these groups equally? Are their some who shouold be excluded?
Send me your responses: bmori@oboe.calpoly.edu