October 2019: Reclaiming Our Space: Deconstructing Preassigned Narratives
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Reclaiming our Space: Deconstruct Preassigned Narratives
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What are some of the ways our identities have shaped by the environment surrounding us?
How do you imagine yourself without the social pressures of conformity and coercion?
Our environments can pressure us to act a certain way and change our identity.
Peer praise and peer pressure can cause us to become things/people that we want to be… or don’t want to be.
☆ Will a flower ever bloom without the sun?
How can a child grow when they’re told what to say and what to do? When an entire country tells them to deny their roots?
Lack of representation and motivation can cause people to settle. Living in a world that welcomes hatred more than their immigrants makes it hard to pursue our dreams.
Our environment can fool us to believe we’re something we’re not. I want to shed light on Palestinians now living in the current State of Israel, land that was taken in 1948. Many of them will now only call themselves Arabe or even Israeli, but never Palestinian BECAUSE Israeli education and society has worked so hard to erase their identify.
That is life there is what the environment try to make us and there is what we want. It does not have to be rejected one and accepting another but find what can work in both with both.
My environment has made me into a compassionate revolutionary. My life and death is for the revolution.
Myself adapts to my environment and I have had many good and bad experiences because of it.
Our identities set standards and expectations. It’s a circle that you’ll be shunned from if you choose to take a step out. At the same time, not all standards are negative. I am loud. I am proud. But societal pressures sometimes shun you.
My identity has strengthened me… alhamdulillah, Always…. ~K
My identity is shaped by the choices I’ve made and the people who’ve encouraged me <3
My identity is shaped by my dreams and goals, and is continuously developing.
My identity is shaped around my goals and aspirations. My choices I made throughout my life shaped me I am today.
My identity is shaped by resistance.
If there were no social pressure, I would act how I want to act, dress how I want to dress without worrying of “scaring” people away or having to meet the “standard of normal”.
Sometimes I wish I could get rid of my past and just start new, to get rid of that trauma, where my peers and family forced me into a corner & shaped me into a palatable person. I refuse to be that. The boy who was told to be cultured but not too much. Don’t be a gender non conformer. But how does that hurt anyone? Is that wrong? Took me 21 years to find the answer. Without those battles, I probably would be better off, but I don’t want that. I own my past, all the bumps and pain. Now I’m unapologetically me. And I own my power.
My identity has always been based off my ethnicity and without it, I think I would naturally feel naive. When I think of her I tried to conform to my community of mainly white people, I remember straightening my hair, chemically straightening it, trying to pull it out basically, so I could feel like I belonged, and so I wouldn’t be made fun of.
Our identities are a response of what our communities need from us and what we need from ourselves.
Our identity can be deeply influenced by in-group bias and group think in which we form our decisions and presentation on how family, friends, colleagues and other influential people think of us and sometimes “put on a show” of our “identity” as a result. If I weren’t so pressured by outside coercion by primarily family. I would’ve had a way better spiritual connection with God and confident about my gender identity and sexual orientation as well as cultural identity and wouldn't have had to go through such a long awful journey to do all of this.