I think about my social identity of being a Women the most in my life. I always wonder what would happen to me if I were to get stuck somewhere alone or if something else were to happen. I think about this aspect of my life a lot because growing up my Mom always told me scary stories about people she knew when they were driving somewhere alone or walking alone. It has always made me afraid of needing help and being all alone. In Bobbie Harro’s text, The Cycle of Socialization it says “Our socialization begins before we are born, with no choice on our part. No one brings us a survey, in the womb, inquiring into which gender, class, religion we might want to be born into.” I was socialized growing up to think that if I was alone something bad could happen to me because I am a women, but never if I was I was surrounded by lots of people.
This summer I also thought a lot about this aspect of my identity when I went to Lollapalooza. In the concerts it is so packed everyone is squeezed tightly in. I was sometimes heads shorter than everyone around me and I couldn’t get any fresh air. I was constantly thinking about if I’d be able to breathe in the spot I was in or if a bigger person was going to fall on me. On the second day of Lollapalooza me and my friend, Alexis, decided to wait for 3 hours so we could be front row at the rapper Lil Pump. It was the hottest day of the week but we were prepared with lots of water. I noticed we started to have less and less open space around us and the people filling in around us were all bigger than us. When the show finally started we could barely breathe and we were being jostled around in the crowd. . After the second song we couldn’t stay anymore and had to get pulled out of the crowd over the gate. So many other people were passing out and had to get pulled out of the crowd they shut down his show. Walking away with my friends we were so shocked that what just happened, happened. We saw so many people needing to find help to get out and the people around them didn’t care enough to help them. I had never seen people see another person needing some space or needing help and not trying to help or moving away.
After this experience I became very aware of how this identity affects my life. The following concerts I went to I stayed in the back so the same things wouldn’t happen again. I began to think more about how certain situations could hurt me or my easiest way out of something. In Margaret Wheatley’s Willing to be Disturbed it says “Noticing what surprises and disturbs me has been a very useful way to see invisible beliefs.” I realized after this situation that I had been soacilized all my life to think that I am vulnerable if I were to be alone because no one is there to help me. After this experience I’ve seen that scary things can happen to you while surrounded by people who don’t even notice. I’m grateful for the experience and I have no regrets about it because it’s opened my eyes to see the effects in my life from the agent group I am apart of.
Colby's Chat 