Constructed Self
According to Carl Rogers, founder of the humanistic psychology movement from the late Fifties, the self-concept has three different components: the view you have of yourself (your self-image), the value you place on yourself (your self-esteem or -worth), and what you wish you were really like (your ideal self).
While these views, values, and wishes emerge uniquely in every child under a range of stressors, LGBTQ kids are usually presented with dire crises on all three fronts. They must spend a lifetime disentangling and redefining their personal potential - and very consciously reconstructing their selves - in the face of ubiquitous persecution.
I like to think that this early struggle has made the world's doomed sexual outcasts an interesting bunch who get broken early and, as Hemingway once observed, end up being strong in the broken places.
TITLE - "Constructed Self"
WHERE - Port Moody, British Columbia (2019)