Personal to Universal

I think the main avenue that I’m going to use is through that experience at the party. It’s so finite and small that I think it’s an easy thing to really open up and just kind of explore in a lot of modes and conversations. We’ve all had an experience like that. We’ve all met someone at a social gathering and it’s going great until they expose that one thing about themselves that you’re just like…Yikes. And I think it’s important to recognize that behavior and see why this person has this prejudice as well as why are we put off by it.

Furthermore, I’m going to make it more universal to make the audience ponder what prejudices they have within themselves that stem from fear. For instance, I’m really afraid of masculine men due to my experiences growing up in the closet. Any kind of masculine guy automatically reads to me as “this guy is one of those boys that made fun of me on the playground when I was a little boy,” and I will IMMEDIATELY shut down any possibility of us being friends. I clam up and I’m not expressive at all. That prejudice–THOUGH IT IS NOT LIFE THREATENING LIKE PREJUDICES TOWARDS RELIGION, SEXUALITY, RACE, ETC–does have an impact on myself as well as those people around me.

So, while this is an auto ethnography that starts out talking about antisemitism, it will ultimately be a discussion on how fear influences the human psyche, making my readers think about their fears, which we all have due to the human condition.