12.8 Going Deeper
Elizabeth B. Pearce
Now that you know more about how representation and belonging can affect families, this page has some resources for you.
First, there are some resources and an activity that the authors used but could not fit into the chapter. If there was something that really piqued your interest and made you want to learn more, it may be listed in this table. This is also a resource for students who may have an assignment to research a particular topic or who need to identify a topic for a final project. Scan through “Want to Learn More?” and participate in an activity to go deeper.
Next, you will see a set of reflective questions. You may be assigned these questions as a chapter review, or perhaps you will be using them as discussion questions in class. These questions are designed to help you apply the chapter concepts, develop your sociological imagination, reflect, and use an equity lens. Look over the “Reflective Questions” if you’d like to explore your own thinking more thoroughly.
After that, you will see the same list of key terms that appeared at the start of the chapter. They may help you with your additional exploration or research.
Finally, some chapters include activities that the instructor may use in the classroom.
Want to Learn More?
- To read more about Andrew Douglas Campbell’s art and the outcomes of the college-wide discussions and to view additional photographs, read this article from The Commuter, LBCC’s student newspaper.
- Listen to the 46-minute podcast from the 1A Movie Club: Why ‘The Help’ Doesn’t Help here or on any podcast feed. They talk about the difference between movies that present racism from the perspective of Black artists and authors as compared to those that focus on a White perspective and/or contain White Saviour themes.
- To explore representation in video games, click on Leveling up Representation: Depictions of People of Color in Video from Independent Lens.
- Listen to the NPR story “The Number of Black Video Game Developers Is Small, but Strong.”
Activity: Representation and Humanization
Trans women characters are portrayed negatively in the media. Because most media is produced by cisgender heterosexual men, their assumptions and fears about trans women are often used as plot twists or objects of ridicule for comedic effect. For example, they are often represented as “actually men” who deceive men in order to “trap” them into having sex with them. These representations justify and normalize portrayals of disgust in response to trans women and violence against trans women, as shown in the video in figure 12.24. These kinds of depictions of trans women as “evil deceivers” and “pretenders” have been used in court cases to pardon perpetrators who have murdered trans women (Bettcher, 2007).
Discussion Questions
- What was new or surprising to you in this video?
- How will this video affect the way you view the inclusion of people who are transgender in the media?
- This video was m