Mariam Zihiri, Period 2, 1/12/23

Socio-political Consciousness

• What are your thoughts and feelings about issues of inequity, oppression, and/or power?
• How do you reflect critically on your own beliefs, assumptions, values, and experiences, and how these can influence your perception of self and others?

Issues in gender equality have always been something that has mattered a lot to me. In the recent Norse presentations that my group had done, we decided to present our given story from a feminist critical lens. This was especially important to me because of its prevalence in society and my own personal life. Growing up, the women who most inspired me in my community were those who were outspoken and brave, willing to call out antiquated traditions particularly when it surrounded the patriarchy. This transferred onto me in the hopes to become what I’ve always looked up to. I grew up in a household that lived on conservative gender ideals, which affected my image on gender equality in the beginning years of my life. I believed that there used to be womanly duties and manly duties that needed to be done and that the two weren’t allowed to switch. I was first inspired by my sister who showed me that it was possible to do both and not have it affect your femininity. She taught me that the term feminine did not have to be so strict. I was also greatly inspired by my older cousin, who knew what she wanted in life and didn’t allow the criticism or the expectations of her to drag her down. She always told me “Our parents and the whole world is always going to tell you that you need to be feminine but shame you if you want to be girly, you just can't win, you can't.” I always hated that idea of “you can't win” especially when it came to something like this.

When it came to writing our Norse presentation, I really loved the idea of having three characters representing Freya because it felt like she needed to be heard so that the concept of “you can’t win” is portrayed out loud for people to see and understand every step of the process of what Freya did to fight this idea. It’s so important to allow women’s voices to be heard and I feel like it’s a common theme in certain mythology and in real life that women are constantly weaponized and blamed or they are talked over and are helpless victims which has been something that has angered me for a long time. This is one of the main reasons why I believe it’s so important to speak on gender inequalities and I hope to remember that while misogyny is endemic, women have continued to persevere throughout the centuries.