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Character Vs. Self

One of the types of conflict most seen in the book is Character vs. Self, Sasha in the book struggles to have a normal life after the fire and all the surgeries to try to fix the burns. All the pain they went through to be able to get back to school and then struggling to find an easier way of life after it all. Struggling to be there mentally and be there for their friends communicate with the people around them go back to what life was like before and attempt to move on.

Character Vs. Character

Another type of conflict most seen is Character vs. Character where we see Richard struggle with finding forgiveness from Sasha and trying to find out how to make up for the terrible thing he had done by seeking God and trying to figure out his path in life while unknowing what will actually will happen to him in the end his sentencing still unknown.

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Character Vs. Self

One of the Main Characters Sasha has internal conflict while they are trying to find out how they identify and being there for their friends as they express their feelings and how their friend Andrew came out the them as transgender and they made them question their gender.

Sasha is a non-binary person who has a form of autism and is socially awkward and enjoys the structure of languages and how they work and the pronouns to go with them.

One conflict I've seen while reading the book is the Character vs. self, they seem to struggle with how they view themselves and start to question their own identity and then look into it never really knowing who they are till finding a few terms when finding those they need to be able to make choices for a person living in a world where there is only seen with two genders.

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It is gender identity and education, according to the article entitled “How Our Education System Undermines Gender Equity: And Why Culture Change—Not Policy—May Be the Solution” by  Joseph Cimpian. 

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The "Real World Issue" presented in  the book...

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The "Real World Issue" presented in  the book...

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1. Even though there are test scores that show that they're no different in intelligence and that girls can have the same test scores as boys and sometimes higher, guys are viewed more highly.

2. For a girl to be treated with the same respect as a man, they need to have mathematical and psychological abilities, to be seen the same as a man.

3. The biggest obstacle for women is the fact that society largely believes that men are more advanced and culture says so too, which instills in girls that they can't do as much and sets them up for failure.

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Character Vs. Character

In the book, you can see that there is character vs. character in the plot and how one of the characters, Richard one of the main characters, and the case worker at his school Miss Kaprice. You can see how she affects him as a person and helps him want to be better and how much he wants her to make a difference and help him. In the book, Richard thinks so highly of Miss Kaprice that he asks if she could be his mom and she says that she'll be his auntie since he has a good mom and just wants to be there for him.

Character vs. Society

While reading you can see a lot of character vs. society and how people value pronouns. Like Sasha's mom who after their set on fire referred to Sasha as he/him and would only be doing like anything to keep him or because he was. how later in the book they say on the news a male was set on fire and how in a time of a terrible accident they still won't correct the gender of someone because it's not their biological gender.

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The main conflict seen is Character Vs. Society is seen when Sasha has to fight to have people recognize them as Non-Binary, the struggle behind people trying to accept that in this world, and how it affects them.

Example 1:

In the chapter 'The Petition' Sasha talks about starting a petition for the White House to recognize non-binary people. They got 27,000 signatures but they still weren't able to get it going because of new laws. In the text it states "Legal documents in the United States only recognize "male" and "female" as genders, leaving anyone who does not identify as one of those two genders with no option" (Slater 50). It impacted Sasha since even though they didn't get all the signatures they needed they said it still felt nice that 27,000 people agreed with them and wanted the change to. Wanting to be seen and know that there are people like that out there and that they aren't alone.

Example 2:

In the chapter 'Homophobic' Richard was at his second court appearance. Where they talk about what he had said while he was in question and how he said that the reason why he had set Sasha's skirt on fire was because he was homophobic. Du Bois says his thoughts on the matter to help Richard's case. In the text it states " I've met the minor and I can tell you he's not homophobic, not even remotely' he said "First of all, he doesn't even know how to spell homophobic, much less be it" (Slater 193). Even though there are homophobic people out there, Richard isn't and he doesn't even know exactly what it meant to be homophobic. It hurt his case a lot since no one questioned if he knew what it meant and hurt Sasha by making them think that the reason behind it was because of a hate crime.

Example 3:

In the chapter 'The 57 Bus" the author talks about Sasha and how they were on the bus and the bus's overall characteristics. They talk about their life in general making a tumbler post actual feelings and it can connect to any feeling they have it's their mindset we get to see. How they view things so if the literature paper was a challenge then we wonder how they felt during burn treatment and recovery. in the text, it states "Do u ever get rly tired when u have a lot of shit to do and u start crying for no reason" ( Slater 111). It shows that they have a lot of emotion and it makes the reader think about how they felt about the accident and how draining it must have been. Even though we see during the book that they say they are over the whole thing that doesn't mean they arent feeling down there with some trauma to add on.

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The 3 key points for the article:

No matter what type of group it is it can have a social impact making the person feel like they're not alone

when people are together they seem to lose their ideas or morals

Groups give people the thought to make bad decisions because it's "for the best".

This applies to my main character Richard, because in the book we learn that Richard couldn't think of a reason as to why he hurt Sasha, and why he even thought of setting someone on fire. Reading this article, we find out that when people are in groups such as how he was with Lloyd and his friend Jamal, who both had decided it would be a funny idea to light the skirt on fire. In the study, they talk about how it may not feel or seem like peer pressure but something from the people compelled the participants to harm that thing or person like when Richard thought it would be a funny idea and didn't see anything around it. And since they talked about how it would be like one of the goofy things they see on TV it can play into the best rule that they think it will be harmless which makes Richard think it will be too instilling this mindset in him.

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MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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When people get together in groups, unusual things can happen - both good and bad. Groups create important social institutions that an individual could not achieve alone, but there can be a darker side to such alliances: Belonging to a group makes people more likely to harm others outside the group.

"Although humans exhibit strong preferences for equity and moral prohibitions against harm in many contexts, people's priorities change when there is an 'us' and a 'them,'" says Rebecca Saxe, an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at MIT. "A group of people will often engage in actions that are contrary to the private moral standards of each individual in that group, sweeping otherwise decent individuals into 'mobs' that commit looting, vandalism, even physical brutality."

Several factors play into this transformation. When people are in a group, they feel more anonymous, and less likely to be caught doing something wrong. They may also feel a diminished sense of personal responsibility for collective actions.

Saxe and colleagues recently studied a third factor that cognitive scientists believe may be involved in this group dynamic: the hypothesis that when people are in groups, they "lose touch" with their own morals and beliefs, and become more likely to do things that they would normally believe are wrong.

In a study that recently went online in the journal NeuroImage, the researchers measured brain activity in a part of the brain involved in thinking about oneself. They found that in some people, this activity was reduced when the subjects participated in a competition as part of a group, compared with when they competed as individuals. Those people were more likely to harm their competitors than people who did not exhibit this decreased brain activity.

"This process alone does not account for intergroup conflict: Groups also promote anonymity, diminish personal responsibility, and encourage reframing harmful actions as 'necessary for the greater good.' Still, these results suggest that at least in some cases, explicitly reflecting on one's own personal moral standards may help to attenuate the influence of 'mob mentality,'" says Mina Cikara, a former MIT postdoc and lead author of the NeuroImage paper.
Group dynamics
Cikara, who is now an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, started this research project after experiencing the consequences of a "mob mentality": During a visit to Yankee Stadium, her husband was ceaselessly heckled by Yankees fans for wearing a Red Sox cap. "What I decided to do was take the hat from him, thinking I would be a lesser target by virtue of the fact that I was a woman," Cikara says. "I was so wrong. I have never been called names like that in my entire life."

The harassment, which continued throughout the trip back to Manhattan, provoked a strong reaction in Cikara, who isn't even a Red Sox fan.

"It was a really amazing experience because what I realized was I had gone from being an individual to being seen as a member of 'Red Sox Nation.' And the way that people responded to me, and the way I felt myself responding back, had changed, by virtue of this visual cue - the baseball hat," she says. "Once you start feeling attacked on behalf of your group, however arbitrary, it changes your psychology."

Cikara, then a third-year graduate student at Princeton University, started to investigate the neural mechanisms behind the group dynamics that produce bad behavior. In the new study, done at MIT, Cikara, Saxe (who is also an associate member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research), former Harvard University graduate student Anna Jenkins, and former MIT lab manager Nicholas Dufour focused on a part of the brain called the medial prefrontal cortex. When someone is reflecting on himself or herself, this part of the brain lights up in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans.

A couple of weeks before the study participants came in for the experiment, the researchers surveyed each of them about their social-media habits, as well as their moral beliefs and behavior. This allowed the researchers to create individualized statements for each subject that were true for that person - for example, "I have stolen food from shared refrigerators" or "I always apologize after bumping into someone."

When the subjects arrived at the lab, their brains were scanned as they played a game once on their own and once as part of a team. The purpose of the game was to press a button if they saw a statement related to social media, such as "I have more than 600 Facebook friends."

The subjects also saw their personalized moral statements mixed in with sentences about social media. Brain scans revealed that when subjects were playing for themselves, the medial prefrontal cortex lit up much more when they read moral statements about themselves than statements about others, consistent with previous findings. However, during the team competition, some people showed a much smaller difference in medial prefrontal cortex activation when they saw the moral statements about themselves compared to those about other people.

Those people also turned out to be much more likely to harm members of the competing group during a task performed after the game. Each subject was asked to select photos that would appear with the published study, from a set of four photos apiece of two teammates and two members of the opposing team. The subjects with suppressed medial prefrontal cortex activity chose the least flattering photos of the opposing team members, but not of their own teammates.

"This is a nice way of using neuroimaging to try to get insight into something that behaviorally has been really hard to explore," says David Rand, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale University who was not involved in the research. "It's been hard to get a direct handle on the extent to which people within a group are tapping into their own understanding of things versus the group's understanding."
Getting lost
The researchers also found that after the game, people with reduced medial prefrontal cortex activity had more difficulty remembering the moral statements they had heard during the game.

"If you need to encode something with regard to the self and that ability is somehow undermined when you're competing with a group, then you should have poor memory associated with that reduction in medial prefrontal cortex signal, and that's exactly what we see," Cikara says.

Cikara hopes to follow up on these findings to investigate what makes some people more likely to become "lost" in a group than others. She is also interested in studying whether people are slower to recognize themselves or pick themselves out of a photo lineup after being absorbed in a group activity.

The research was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Packard Foundation.

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Being in a group makes some people lose touch with their personal moral beliefs, researchers find.

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Two people don't always have to know each for something bad to happen

Identity can be a big cause of violence

Differences

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She's an award-winning journalist who writes in the The New York Times Magazine

She's written eleven books, fiction, and non-fiction for children and adults

Lives in North California

She had grown up in Cambridge, Massachusetts but, had most of her life in Oakland, California

Helping to reveal the lives of teenagers in this day and age and show how gender identity plays a role in society

A very big storyteller and writer who create fun and different stories for kids and adults

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Two people don't always have to know each other for something bad to happen

Identity can be a big cause of violence

Differences

To respect other's opinions

Parents don't always understand

Research Nuggets:

1. Can a good person who has done something bad still be considered good?

2. how can parents' opinions change how their children view themselves?

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The four main things I learned from this article:

1. While reading I've realized that there is more than one type of peer pressure and that it can come in all forms and shapes it wouldn't always be bad but it also doesn't mean it's any good.

2. While reading I've read that the longer time you spend with people the more peer pressure comes along with it and some are veritably like rude commentary, but it can also be prospectively like trying to fit in.

3. There are some examples of peer pressure like trying to find clothes that are in style, feeling like you need to have mental disorders because of other people, trying drugs or alcohol, or doing something because you were dared to or called rude names if not.

4. There is a thing called peer support which is the positive version of peer pressure where they give you advice to help you in the future steer you in the right direction and help change the pressure It is best for support for peers.

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A Teens Guide to Peer Pressure | Regis College Online

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Growing up isn't easy. It seems like there are all sorts of changes happening, and it can be tough to find your place. Adolescents and teens begin to see a change in their relationships with others: Friends take on a more prominent role, making way for peer pressure to have a positive or a negative effect on your life.

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Key Information About How the Character is Handing the Conflict

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Key Information About How the Character is Handing the Conflict

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In the book, Sasha has been tending to grow more shy and less willing to do day-to-day things, we know this since in the book they talk about how they feel overwhelmed and unwilling to do school it feels like another thing they have to do. How trying to get ready is now a part of their everyday life making it even more struggling for them.

In the book, Richard has been getting more involved in school, God, and his guilt, while he's in Juvenile Hall. He talked about bible quotes he gets connected to and how he just wants Sasha to forgive him for what he did but also becomes increasingly more interested in schooling wanting to be better.

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One main character Sasha seems to have very flat emotions, I know this because they say they are very socially awkward and they have autism, when they respond to things it looks like a very generically plain answer, or just have a ton of emotions and being very shy while they can also be seen with very passionate emotions.

Another main character Richard has a very hyper personality and this can be shown just by the way his friend Cherie describes him, she says he's a very hyphy, happy, jokester, who loves to give people attention, and can be seen by his tone of voice when he's talking.

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Takes place in 2013, in Oakland, California

When there was an incident with 2 people one had tried to set fire to an agender person's skirt and the lives both of them had led at the time

This took place around when many LGBTQ+ laws had been set in place in California for more expression in school and the environment

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One of the characters Miss Kaprice has a very motherly and caring personality taking in people who need it just to help them. I know this because, in the book she has pictures and grades of all the kids, she takes care of and looks after some signed "Love you, Mom". It can be seen that she is like a mom or an auntie to these kids

Another character in the book is Debbie, Sasha's mom who has a non-concerned trait when it comes to personal things that she doesn't think are important to her even if it's important to her kid. Like pronouns, clothing, and interests. I know this because in the book after driving over to the scene of the crime she goes on to call Sasha him and he also blames what happened on their appearance.

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Without Sasha being who they are; being Non-Binary. The fire wouldn't have happened, there would be more look into the topic of gender and how it affects youth in their day-to-day lives. People don't understand the meaning behind that and can't seem to respect others and how they live their lives. They also wouldn't have had to go through burn treatment perminatly scaring them.

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"I've also been hurt a lot for no reason, not like I hurt you but I've been hurt physically and mentally so I know how it feels, the pain and confusion of why me I've felt it before plenty of times so I know how it feels" ( Slatter 188-189)

This was a part of one of the letters that Richard had written to Sasha that was given 2 months after the trial and how he poured his feelings into it trying to seek forgiveness from them and hoping that it would help a bit with the explanation of why and his personal feelings and life. Making sure he talked about who he was as a person deep down while reading this I felt different emotions, empathy, confusion, and wondering, why would he write this, what compelled him to write this, and how it was sweet of him to try to ask for forgiveness and to take full responsibility for his actions

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"Transgender people are the victims of an astonishing amount of violence. One out of every four trans people has experienced a bias driven assault, and the numbers are higher for trans women, trans people of color, and nonbinary people," (45 Slater).

This quote gives us a background of how people in LGBTQIA+ people were affected what is the biggest impact on people, and how the character Sasha would be having a harder time since there are trans women.

When I read this quote I was shocked to find out how many people are affected by this daily and how much harm people have to go through to feel comfortable in their skin.

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"Do u ever get rly tired when u have a lot of shit to do and u start crying for no reason" ( Slater 111).

Reading this gives us an idea of what Sasha thinks and her personality in the book, bringing us closer to the characters getting to know them better, and understanding how they act in the real world.

When reading that quote my first thought that I annotated in there was "relatable". And that is how I felt when reading that it felt like something very relatable to see the mind set of a teenager trying to figure themselves out and struggling with the world around them.

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My questions from last week were;

Research Question 1: Can a good person who has done something bad still be considered good?

Research Question 2: How can parents' opinions change how their children view themselves?

More specific for this week;

Research Question 3: Why do bad things happen to good people?

Research Question 4: Can parents hurt their children's ideas?

I will use Research Question 3 as the starting point for my Google Search.

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1. How does the pressure to think society will hurt or judge you get in the way of LGBTQIA+ people coming out?

2. How does seeing Richards's life before the event help us to understand him and the event more?

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1. Why was Richard's first reaction to the prank idea as something funny?

2. When Skeet died how much did that mess up Richard and his mental stability? Did it affect why that fire happened?

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My Initial Research Question from last week:

Research question 3: Why do bad things happen to good people?

After reading the Article I would like to know more about..

Final Research Question: Is peer pressure always seen?