We had many incredible guest speakers this semester that spoke a lot about culture and how the media portrays certain people and cultures. I truly enjoyed all of them, however a few definitely stuck out in my mind. There were a few main speakers that stood out the most for me, those being, Pat Sinatra, Master R and Mistress Couple, and Eddie Einbinder.
Pat Sinatra was fantastic, I enjoyed the fact that she has been in the tattoo business for 40 years and is still going strong. She is known as a veteran tattooist and one of the first handful of women that began tattooing in the 1970s. Pat opened her own tattoo studio in Woodstock, NY in 1990, which was a huge deal as a lot of women didn’t succeed or even try to succeed at being tattoo artist. She is a part of the Alliance of Professional Tattooists, Inc. as a founding member and original member of the Board of Directors, as well as a member of the National Tattoo Association. Pat travels to professional tattoo conventions world wide and is very well known in her culture. I really enjoyed the fact that even though it wasn’t socially exceptable for women to be tattoo artists back in the 1970s, Pat didn’t care and she didn’t let the negative words of others bring her down, as she is still tattooing today.
Master R and Mistress Couple were very different, I didn’t know anything about this life style/culture, except for what I had read in the 50 Shades of Gray book series. Needless to say I was a bit shocked when they came in and started talking about what they do for a living. Master R created La Domaine Esemar, which is now known as the world’s most respected BDSM training chateau. Master R has been deeply involved in the training of hundreds of Masters, Mistresses, and slaves. He wrote a book called “Master:The Unauthorized Autobiography of Master R.” Miss Couple has learned mostly everything she knows about the BDSM life style from Master R. She helps run the house and trains the slaves that they have living with them. She has a very strong role in the household and they both take their positions/roles very seriously. They are both very confident in what they do and they had no problem talking about it directly to the class and they answered any questions that anyone had for them.
I thought that Eddie Einbinder was fantastic, his main goal is harm reduction. People are going to use drugs and drink alcohol, there is no getting around that, however since they are going to do it why not teach them the safe ways to do so. I feel as though this is such a great thing, we think that we can show kids scary videos of what drugs can do to them and we automatically think that that method is working, when it isn’t. Eddie began his research on safer drug use while studying psychology and business at Lehigh University. He wrote his book How to Have Fun and Not Die, which won the grand prize at the 2008 New York Book Festival. He has presented about harm reduction at over 100 universities and high schools. I thought that our class had a fantastic discussion with him and he had a lot of useful things to say and teach. He had many safety tips for us, a few of them being, if you are going to try a drug never be alone while doing so, always have the buddy system while drinking out at a party, and if a friend has had too much to drink then do not let them lay on their backs in risk of chocking on their own vomit. I did some research on death rates due to overdoses globally and in the US, It is estimated that globally there were 183,000 (range: 95,000-226,000) drug-related deaths (mostly overdoses) in 2012, with opioid overdose the largest category. Drug overdose was responsible for 41,340 deaths in the US in 2011. US overdose deaths have increased for 12 successive years. In 2011, and for the fourth year in a row, the number of US citizens whose deaths were drug-related exceeded the number of fatalities in road traffic accidents (33,561). Almost five people per hour died of overdose in the US in 2011. Eddie had a lot of fantastic things to say and if we use some of these techniques then maybe these numbers will start to go down in size.
Referneces:
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2014 World Drug Report.
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