In what ways does choice play a role in the lives of those who are transgendered?

If we accept that gender is a cultural construct, in what ways has the construct changed over time since the 1960s when the gay/lesbian revolution took place?

See links to Transgender sites.

Check out the links under Sex Work for points and counterpoints.

What images in the media shape your own self-esteem and ideas of beauty?

Click the link Onslaught under “Media” to view.

What makes that person’s body beautiful?

What have you been told, what have you seen and heard about what makes a person’s body beautiful? 

Who or what do you look to for examples of what makes a person’s body beautiful?

What are the similarities and differences between your own ideas about beautiful bodies and those of your or others’ culture/ race/ ethnicity/ religion and gender/sexual identity?

Check out the online ‘Zine links under “Body Beautiful” for a variety of  beautiful bodies!

Many who do comedy use humor to address the tensions we have around race and sexuality.  Below are two links, the first from Letterman about same gender & heterosexual marriage and the second a commentary by African American commentator Yolando Young about what she calls a, ”growing trend of black comedians chiding the pathologies that plague segments of the African-American community.” 

Please read and view the links under “Humor” and tell us what purpose YOU think humor has in addressing the tensions we feel around race and sexuality.

A Virtual Deliberative Forum on Diversity

Sponsored by

New England Center for Civic Life and PMG Online

Franklin Pierce University

 Piercing Identity is a place to deliberate together about how we as a campus community and part of a larger national and global community handle differences, particularly differences in social identity (color, race, ethnicity, religion, gender/sexuality and ability/disability).  The blog will also include an accounting and review of everything from classes to clubs to events that intersect differences/diversity in some way as well as announcements of happenings near and far. 

 We will use the National Issues Forum’s (NIF) Guidelines for our online forum.

The moderators will be faculty, staff and students (Civic Scholars) trained in NIF’s deliberative dialogue strategies to assist the online community to:

• frame fraught diversity issues
• gather community concerns, values, and experiences about those issues
• deliberate on the possible approaches to the issues
• reflect on the tensions as well as the common ground achieved in deliberation and finally
• identify ethical decisions and actions we as community may take

Moderators will

• Remain neutral
• Offer information, values and experiences about the issue
• Guide participants to deliberate, not debate 
• Encourage all participants to listen and speak
• Discourage individuals from dominating the deliberation
• Focus on all proposed approaches to the issue
• Explore the pros, cons, and trade-offs of each proposed approach
• Lead participants to discuss and analyze all alternative approaches
• Reflect the common ground as well the tensions they see/hear back to the participants
• Identify next steps

Contributions to the blog should represent a respectful deliberation of ideas, values, and experiences about differences and how those differences affect individuals in our community as well as how the community’s values and norms affect us as individuals. 

 Our hope is that through exploring our individual differences and similarities we’ll together be able to make ethical decisions regarding diversity.

 We invite all interested clubs, classes, administrators, staff, students, and faculty to post on Piercing Identity.

 Zan Walker-Goncalves