A moment of self-reflection: from stigmatized self to empowered self

Abstract

This research aims to understand a woman’s self-transformation process from the stigmatized selves to the empowered selves, and to understand the different dimensions of strategies a woman used to negotiate with herself and society, particularly how a women give meanings to her interactions symbolically to a social world. There are two main concepts in this study which are; Social Norms on Gender and Sexuality, Negotiation of Women in Social Interactions. This study is a qualitative research using autoethnography as a research methodology. From the result of this study, the main findings show that a woman’s selfformation was not only about the concept of gender and sexuality but also from the development of self; the formation of broken, stigmatized, traumatic, and empowered selves. There are four dimensions of strategies a woman used to cope with failures from past relationship due to traumatic self; education, economics, relationship, and writing. She has to negotiate with social structure and allow herself to live under the norms sometimes. At the same time, she tries to totally free herself in both public and domestic sphere. It shows the process of a woman’s self-transformation from the stigmatized self to the empowered self.