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Sociology Post
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Sociology Post
Every society has set some social standards for individuals to follow and meet the requirements that society has from people. Individuals are not the same when it comes to following the rules. Most of them have their own rules and they care less about what society thinks of them. In response, society exerts an informal social control over them if they find some deviant behavior so that the discipline can be maintained.
Deviant behavior is the attitude in actions that violate the social rules and norms society has set for us. It means going against the standards set by everyone in society to perform an action that is socially unacceptable. There are two main extremes in the deviant behavior display. One extreme involves the height to which the person reaches while breaking the social rules of conduct e.g. rape, murder etc (Newman & Wolfgang, 2017). While another extreme is the one which does not necessarily harm anyone but only ruins the social expectations e.g. tattoos, dressing style, bisexuality, homosexual relationships etc. The deviant behavior I personally observed frequently in society is homosexuality (Dennis, 2015). This behavior is deviant in the societies that do not want to change their perspective about sexuality and only want to observe the man-woman relationships as the couple. This behavior is not dangerous but is treated as deviant behavior that is against the social norms.
To overcome this deviant behavior, individuals opt for conformity behavior. Conformity behavior is the change in attitude and the effect of social influence done in order to fit in with society and receive social acceptance. It may happen due to group pressures or the side-effects of informal social control e.g. bullying, exclusion, teasing, criticism etc. The homosexual individuals opt for hiding their real sexual identity to maintain social control. These sanctions become more harmful for homosexual individuals bearing them than the society. Many people are then forced to commit suicides which barely affects society.
The point of discussion here is that the positive sanction is should be preferred over negative sanctions in these type of cases. Social norms and rules can be molded to save the lives of the people and they should not be used to serve the social expectations all the time. The question here under consideration is that, until when we will have to serve social norms and rules and kill ourselves for that? How long it will take for the society to realize the damage it is giving in the form of negative sanctions? Why is every other attitude treated as deviant in modern society? When will society evolve?
References
Dennis, J. P. (2015). What is Homosexuality Doing in Deviance? The Handbook of Deviance, 172.
Newman, G. R., & Wolfgang, M. E. (2017). Comparative deviance: Perception and law in six cultures. Routledge.
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