Abusing Self-Defense Crime Self-defense, a noun defined as the defense of one's person or interests, especially through the use of physical force, which is permitted in certain cases as an answer to a charge of violent crime. When you hear about self-defense some people would think of the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman case. While I would love to talk about that case I am here on a different mission, to bring awareness to the abuse of using the self-defense as a reason to kill someone and to analyze it from a sociologically point of view. In the United States of America, under federal law, murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought which will come with fatal consequences if you are found guilty of the killing. So in other words murdering someone is a taboo. Sometime the defendant would pled either not guilty, or guilty, on rare occasion they would pled insanity or self-defense. Self-defense stood out the most for me and it was the Jodi Arias and Travis Alexander case, Was it really self-defense or was it just pure jealousy? To start with, I was channel surfing when I stopped on CNN news channel. Nancy Grace was shouting at someone giving their opinion about something as she always do. I was about to change the channel when I saw a gruesome crime scene photo of a shower filled with blood. I wanted to know more about the bloody shower. Come to find out the shower and the blood in it belongs to Travis Alexander, a Mormon. Travis Alexander was murdered on June 4, 2008 by his ex-girlfriend Jodi Arias in his house. Alexander was stab nearly around 30 times and was shot in the head and his throat had been slit. Travis’s body was left in that shower for five days, decomposing and was later found by his friend. Jodi Arias was suspect for the killing of Travis’s death. Arias had three scenarios she told the cop when she was being investigated she originally told police that she had not been nowhere near Travis on the day of the murder and claimed that the last time she saw Travis Alexander was in April of 2008. Arias then switch her story again and told police that two intruders had broken into Alexander's home, murdering him and attacking her. Two years after her arrest, Arias told police that she killed Alexander in self-defense, claiming that she had been a victim of domestic violence. An overkill for self-defense, I would say. I chose this article to analyze because I had to wonder just what exactly was going on for her to think that the court would think she was defending herself after she stab him over thirty times. This seem interesting to me because you wonder why if it was really self-defense as Arias claim. If it was then why did she change her story up so many times and why didn’t she called the police after she killed, and left him to decompose in his shower. I really want to share my opinion and my sociologically point of view. I keep thinking about how as a woman there are gender cultural rules that we are expected to follow, it is embedded in our DNA. Indeed, in the past women primary goal was to find a husband. Even though now in the modern times women are trying to be more assertive and taken serious in their careers then they were in the past. Popular stories and movies enforce and mirrors social norm for women’s gender rules. For an example any Disney princess movie they all shows women dedicated to have a man in their life and without them they are weak and useless, being with a man is all they think about. Ariel for an example she was willing to give up her voice for legs in order to prove that the prince loved her for her, wrong Ariel didn’t have a voice to speak her mind. So she had to convince him with her body that he loved her, there is no mentally attraction it was only physical attraction. Ursula the bad octopus I believe even told Ariel that a woman’s voice is unless in getting the man you want. So we are teaching our children as little girls that you are nothing without a man, and you shouldn’t talk you should only use your body to please him. Movies like Disney princess movie reinforce our social norms and the gender rule. There are some women empowerment movie out there but the media really doesn’t put that in the spotlight, they put movie like Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. So following Mead role taking rule, as children we learn our social roles starting at childhood, watching Disney movie, as a kid when you use to play “house” the mom was the one stayed home she cooked and clean and the dad was the one who went to work. Therefore the cultural rules for us as women to find a significant other is still superior over all else. So where does Travis Alexander and Jodi Arias fit in this the gender rules, Jodi was an upcoming photographer while she was looking for significant other on her free time. One day at prepaid legal services conference Jodi Arias meet what she said was prince charming Travis Alexander, he was everything she could dream of. Everything was great in Jodi’s eyes until one day Travis broke up with her and wanted to see other people. Travis was Jodi’s dream guy so seeing him with another woman probably destroyed her. As the saying goes hell has no fury like a women scorned, Jodi was heartbroken and wanted to let her anger out. Women are known to being emotion and sensitive. So in Jodi’s mindset she probably felt used and unwanted, hurt by the guy she called prince charming. Travis was a Mormon which is a subculture, he looked at life differently Mormon have a community for themselves. They were total institution if you weren’t a Mormon you were not really accepted in their eyes Mormon cut themselves off from the rest of society unless you wanted to listen to the word and become a Mormon, this is adult socialization. When you become a Mormon you can’t drink tea or coffee because they see that as a drug because you were addicted to something toxic and they believe that their body was something precious and that you have to keep it healthy and strong so you were to suppressed your old self from wanting something so toxic into becoming a Mormon. When Travis met Jodi, she wasn’t a Mormon, she was not part of Travis’s primary group, he never brought her around friends, because she was an out group and was peer pressure by wanting to be in Travis’s primary group to become one of them so she wasn’t an outsider anymore she wanted to be in the in group. The peer pressure of fitting in with the crowd and being something you’re not in order to feel special and not alone is conformist. Jodi felt the pressure of not being a Mormon, she was losing the man of her dream so she did what a typical woman in love would do, she converted and go baptize and became a Mormon. Jodi’s is a prime example of symbolic interaction. Travis like blondes so Jodi dyed her hair blonde she did everything that would make him love her, Travis tells her he can never truly be with her because she is not a Mormon. She changed her hair color she became a Mormon for him. Jodi’s deviance improves group solidarity.
This case became newsworthy because Travis Alexander was a Mormon and every news channel used that as angle, they used hypodermic needle theory one news channel played the agenda setting theory they would praise Travis saying he was this innocent Mormon guy who hooked up with the wrong chick. Basically just telling us because he is a Mormon, he was the innocent one in this situation, that religion is a value to have in this world. Some news channel want to inform us and educate us on what it is like being a Mormon saying that Jodi didn’t fit into the Mormon lifestyle. However you could look at Travis as a sexual deviant who used and emotional abuse Jodi and is ruining how people view Mormons. While I think media just used Travis’s religion just for views and entertainment they don’t really care about him ruining the views of Mormons. As audience we don't notice what the media is actually doing to us, they are making us pick sides between the horrible Mormon and the sweet woman who has corrupted by abuse. That’s how the media plays it out or vice versa with Travis being the down to earth guy and Jodi being psycho. It is basically a minimal effect theory the two-step model the news channel tell us what we want to believe that Travis is the typical man who only use Jodi for sex and when he had enough of her, he tossed her to the side and moved on to the next one and he emotional abuse Jodi calling her out of her name. Travis was the pig who deserve what he got in some people’s eyes. On the other hand Jodi was the psycho girlfriend from hell who couldn’t get over Travis and slash his tires, hacked into his emails and deleted dinner dates from other woman just the typical heartbroken girl. The media plays with our emotion they did and said whatever just so, they could get more views making us pick sides. Yes, maybe Travis is a scrum bag or Jodi was a clingy ex-girlfriend who couldn’t move on. However does that give Jodi the right to play as god and killed Travis? Does it gives the media the right to drag a dead man name into the mud saying he was a monster and so forth?
In closing, the sociological issue at hand is we are too blinded by the gender rule, we are so use to women being weak and fragile that we can’t imagine them harming someone. We need to change our mindset of women, we need to stop thinking that women are these breakable things. Women are not only good for cooking and cleaning, we are capable of doing the same things men can do. Women are not incapable without a man, a woman needs a man as much as a man needs a woman. As women we need to become our own hero we shouldn’t need a man to protect us. However yes a man should protect their wife or girlfriend but they should know that, we are capable of defending ourselves. Jodi shouldn’t abuse the system and say that it was self-defense when she know she was capable of killing Travis Alexander. She thought that people would see her cry on the stand and think she is just emotional woman who was in an emotional abuse relationship and snapped, following the gender rule. However she didn’t have to be there she could have walked away, but she continue to go back Travis she continue to have a sexual relationship with him, 8888888888888`125p689-2zche didn’t want her prince charming with someone else so she killed him. She said it herself she is disgusted with herself and she should be.