Biography
My name is Emily Quattrocchi, I live in a town called Stony Point, located in Rockland County, NY. The town is populated with over 15 thousand people and still rising. Stony Point is about 3o minutes from New York City and is also considered very historic as well. It actually played a key role in the Nation’s independence. The Stony Point Battlefield was where General Anthony “Mad” Wayne stayed and led over a thousand of his troops on a surprise attack on the British in Garrison, NY which was located across the Hudson River.
I am also a senior at Siena College, graduating next May with my Bachelor’s in English. I just switched my major from Psychology to English to pursue a career as a Middle School teacher. After graduating Siena next May, I plan on attending Saint Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkhill, NY for my Masters in Education. In the United States today, there are approximately 3.8 million public school teachers. The average U.S teacher is female, and caucasian.
The teachers I have had in the past are really the ones who inspired me to become one myself. I had multiple teachers through middle school and high school, who put everything they had into teaching us. Most teachers buy supplies with their own money in order to deviate a better teaching environment with better activities than just what is required for us to learn.
Subcultures in Stony Point
A subculture that I can think of that I have seen a lot of in my town is definitely sports. I know multiple girls I went to High School with, girls in High School now and even some kids my sister goes to school with in middle school who play “male” sports. My best friend from High School was the only girl on the Varsity hockey team. Her little sister also plays hockey and wants to continue into High School as well. There are even two girls on the wrestling team in High School now.
Becker says in the first page of his book “Outsiders”, “All social groups make rules and attempt, at some times and under some circumstances, to enforce them”(Becker 1). With the subculture of women playing male sports, my friend Katelyn is considered an “outsider”. She broke the rule of males playing male sports and females playing female sports. Non-comforming behavior is something to define this as. Comforming behavior according to Howard S. Becker is defined as “simply that which obeys the rule and which others perceive as obeying the rule”(Becker 19). No naturally, non-comforming behavior would be the exact opposite. Someone who doesn’t obey the rules. Katelyn was one of those non-conforming people, one who didn’t follow the social norms of our town. The conforming people of the town thought that Katelyn wouldn’t touch the ice because she was a female, meanwhile, she was on the ice more than anyone. She was praised as a senior as she announced on her senior night that she was going to West Point Military Academy after graduating that June.
Now, most students at West Point are male. Katelyn being one of the few females, she knew she had to go in there with a mindset ready for anything. When someone hears the word “army” they think of males being deployed and fighting for our independence. That isn’t the case anymore. I know many people I went to school with who serve this country as we speak and some of my family even serves as well. One being my cousin, Mikaela Bates. She is part of the United States Air Force. Mikaela is a Senior Airman and loves every bit of the Air Force. She has been too many different training processes but has not been deployed yet. However, she said it is definitely possible and when the day comes, she will be ready. Her boyfriend Anthony is also in the Air Force and has been deployed 4 times. My cousin Christopher Badenchini is also a United States Marine, stationed in Virginia right now. He just graduated bootcamp in October. Lindsey Danilack said to the New York Times in her early days at West Point, “I knew I was going to have to step it up in the physical realm, but I never knew it was going to be as hard as it turned out to be”(New York Times Magazine). Danilack graduated as a second rank Lieutenant in the United States Army.
Howard S. Becker defines deviance in the simplest way by saying “The simplest view of deviance is essentially statistical, defining deviance as anything that varies too widely from the average”(Becker 4). Females playing male sports definitely varies widely from the average, because for as long as sports have been a thing in society, females have stuck to their sport, and males have stuck to theirs. Females have been frowned upon for playing the sports of males, like hockey for instance.
The common stereotype is that females can’t do anything better than men in regards to sports. “You throw like a girl” is a huge one. In my High School, competition was ridiculous between sports whether it was football or field hockey. Everyone in my school always tried to one-up one another, who had the most goals, who had the most yards. So for females to be seen playing male sports was looked at as extremely deviant in my town, although it has been happening for years, some people still can’t seem to wrap their heads around it without making a snarky comment about it first.
We can work together to try and dominate this subculture, or we can keep bashing it. The choices we make determine our future.
References
“Our History.” Www.townofstonypoint.org, http://www.townofstonypoint.org/history-of-stony-point.
Loewus, Liana. “The Nation’s Teaching Force Is Still Mostly White and Female.” Education Week, 20 Feb. 2019, http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/08/15/the-nations-teaching-force-is-still-mostly.html.
Becker, Howard Saul. Outsiders Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. Free Press, 1997.
Cahillane, Kevin. “The Women of West Point.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 Sept. 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/04/magazine/women-of-west-point.html.
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