Mady Brand

Sara Price
Humanities
October 1, 2015
Blinded from the Truth
Perhaps you have never considered the fact that there is a difference between a human and a
person. A human is a primate animal who is closely related to an ape. A person is a human that is
a member of a civilized society. There are humans who are considered people and there are
humans who are not, most often these humans are feral. A feral child is only a human and is not a
person because they have not been socialized, so they are unable to fit into a civilized society.
They do not develop the same way as a person might because they do not have the influences of
the agents of socialization. These agents include family, media, peers, religion, and sport. They
sway the development of a person from a human. Socialization is the process in which a human
is taught to become a member of society, society is a civilized group of humans who have
developed a culture, and culture is the set of norms, or expectations, that a society has
determined. The Cycle of Socialization is the process in which humans are socialized to become
people. Society has taken its toll on my identity in that I must accept that my life and future is
limited by how much money I have, my age determines what opportunities I have, and that I will
always be expected to fit the norms of the gender I identify with.
Our society has told me what I can and cant do and where I can go with my life by the
amount of money dumb luck has distributed to me. When a person belongs to an economic
class, they are not only expected to actually fit into that class by the amount of wealth they have,
but they are also expected to act and think like the rest of the people in that economic class. The
movie "Precious Knowledge" is a documentary about Latino kids in Arizona who tried to save
their ethnicity studies class, which shows Priscilla, a girl who found herself in the lowereconomic class and had to take care of her siblings everyday; not only could she not afford
activities and luxuries, but she did not have the time because due to her financial position, she
was required to watch over her sisters. This applies to our everyday lives in that the economic
class that we have been placed in by society tells us how to live our lives; if we are wealthy, we
are worthy of the things that go beyond just the necessities to survive or if we are unworthy
and must give a little extra work and suffering just to make it in life. People who have come to be
in upper economic classes are given more opportunities than people who fall below them on the
scale. I, as a member of the middle class, am not as financially able to do everything I would like
to or at the highest quality. In order to achieve success in my life by getting where I want to go, I
may not be able to get private tutors or go to a fancy school due to the money that I have been
provided with, so I am going to need to get to where I want to be without the privileges that I
might be provided with if I had more money. However, being a member of the middle class has
allowed me to know what hard-work is and what it means to persevere for what I want. The
economic class that we are in is doled out to us at birth and society has created this air tight
system that makes it extremely difficult to change your placement within the system and requires
either luck to be on your side or much hard work and dedication.
My age, especially in relation to the current time in history, determines what
opportunities I am given and when, and what privileges society says that I get at what point in

my life. Often times, adults feel like they deserve more power than anyone younger than them
just because they are older, when in reality, anyone, no matter their age, can be just as deserving,
if not more, of that power. Which means that adults have been taught that they control the
world, but age is merely just a measurement of time, and people reach different milestones at
different rates. At a young age, I was taught to be artistic and creative by the influences of my
parents and that trait stuck with me throughout my life and I can say that I have been socialized
to be an artist, but I did not have the same influences for sports and I was introduced to them at a
much later time in my life, so I had not been socialized to be an athlete. I have been socialized to
be certain things because I was introduced to them at times in my life that allowed me to
embrace them; if I had been introduced to sports much sooner in my life, there is a much higher
chance that I would have become an active athlete, but because I was introduced to them at a
time in my life when I was not able to be socialized in that way, that did not come to shape my
identity. Certain opportunities are put out into the world, but often only last for a certain amount
of time and you often have to be a certain age to be a part of them. So, even the opportunities
that you so desperately want may not be available to you because they were released when you
were either too young or too old and if you ever do meet that age requirement, often times that
opportunity will no longer be available to you. One time, I was auditioning for a lead role in a
play and they said I had the one of the best auditions, but since I was too young they would not
cast me into the show. So, even though in reality it shouldnt always matter as much as it does,
we are limited to what we can do in our lifetime by our current age. By being able to be a part of
certain opportunities and not others, I have had certain experiences which contribute to my
identity as they influence my life choices and ultimately influence my personality. My hopes and
dreams for my future are limited by this too because what I know I want to do with my life now
may not be available to me by the time I reach a suitable age.
For as long as I am a member of society, I am expected to meet the norms of the gender
that I have found myself to identify with. Even though society has clearly illustrated that we
must fall into a specific gender category, there are often parts of us that fit the norms of other
genders and we dont fit perfectly into one specific gender category as much as society expects
us to. The video My Princess Boy illustrates this for us by showing us that you can express
yourself and that your gender is specific to you, that it is not something that should be defined by
the stereotypes and norms of the gender that society says you must fit: He looked me right back,
very very strong and said, I am a Princess Boy. Growing up, for many years almost all of my
friend were boys. I had a lot of male influences on me as my early identity was beginning to
form. I did a lot of things that most boys would do and the result was a person who can get
violent when angry, enjoys pretend battles, enjoys outdoorsy things, and as society would put it,
has a personality that mostly identifies with that of a male. The media was the one influence on
me that gave me the few stereotypically female qualities that I had when I was younger. I
watched mostly Disney movies growing up, so my desire to be Belle and Jasmine allowed my
identity to have qualities like dressing in a feminine way and trying to do activities that the
women I see in the movies and on television would do. As I began to make more female friends,
I slowly began to develop more female-typical qualities. How I go about my life and what I
choose to do with it has been largely influenced by the ideas of gender that have been
programmed into my head as I identify not with a female, but with my own gender that has
qualities of both which can lead to society viewing me as someone who does not fit the norm,
whether that view be positive or negative.

Many people have found it difficult to break the cycle of socialization and learn to
express who they really are in society and often dont. They fake it to make it in order to
appear like they fit the norm in society because its a much easier path, but often the right path
isnt always the easiest. Society has the great impact on our identities as it does because as
humans and more so as people, one of the most common desires amongst us is the desire to
belong. Since society sets these rules of what one must do and be in order to belong, we get
shaped by others and ourselves to try to meet these expectations, so that we can belong. In order
to break this harmful cycle, we just need to start to make a change. The movie Precious
Knowledge demonstrates how the impact of one group trying to break this cycle and try
something new can cause many others to feel like they also have a shot at trying to make change
and it can result in this incredible trickle effect. It showed a school that tried to make a program
that could positively benefit its students and that people tried to take that away from them and
when they retaliated, the news got out and others were inspired to fight for what they believe in.
Our society has tried to blind us from the truth that we are all still good, in that society has told
us that we are not good unless we meet all of the norms that have been set in place and that we
must be perfect to be worth anything. Society tries very hard to make sure that everyone falls
into specific categories and perfectly fits all the norms of them, but how we have been socialized
and simply who we were born to be is not found in any one quick defined common
generalization and all we have to do to stop this harmful cycle is to try.

Social Identity Mask

Society is an infection that feeds on all of us. It invades our minds, making us believe
stereotypes about other people, making us believe that certain people are better than others or
deserve more based on who they were born to be. My mask includes society symbolized as an
infection, spreading into my identity which has been symbolized as a night sky. Society blinds us
from the fact that anyone, no matter who they are born as can be perfect which is why I
stitched the eyes up on my mask as a way to symbolize society blinding us from what should be
reality. Society has told us to be a certain way which causes us as people to not speak the
complete truth a lot of the time in order to try to gain acceptance in society which is why the
mouth on my mask is covered by a zipper, symbolizing how society silences us. The overall idea
of my mask is that society tries to make us people that we are not by blinding us, silencing us,
and leading us to believe that their is a very specific definition of perfect in which not just
anyone can achieve.