Max just wrote an interesting and challenging post about identity. I responded, but my comment was becoming mammoth, so I decided to just make it into a post and link it back. So here goes.
for me, identity is a constant struggle, to find who I really am among the multiple pressures: who my friends and family think I am and want me to be, who society says I am because of my physicality, who I am as a result of social discourses and interpretive tools like language and culture, and then who I want to become. The question of who-I-am (right now, in this moment) becomes lost in the din sometimes.
To try to answer your questions:
Who are you? – I’m me. Jennifer, Jenn, Jenna (never Jenny). Thinking Girl.
What are you? – I’m a woman, feminist, philosopher, white, heterosexual, agnostic, able-bodied, middle class. I’m a student. I’m kind, generous, optimistic, laid-back, fair-minded. I’m a Cancer. I’m smart, funny, easy-going. I’m a good writer. I’m a musician. I’m an artist. I’m a socialist.
What is your primary identity? – I don’t know how to answer that question. I don’t think it’s possible or even particularly useful to pull out one strand of my identity to holdup as primary.
What ethnic, racial, nation-state do you identify with? - I’m Canadian, east coaster.
How did you learn who you are/how to categorize yourself? – I’ve been taught all my life who I am, by my parents, by the society around me, by my teachers and friends. When it doesn’t fit with how I feel inside, that causes me a good deal of stress.
How does having/maintaining an identity detract/support one being their authentic self? - What is most challenging is when people make assumptions about me that don’t match up with my authentic self. But, I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary for everyone to understand me, or to like me. I have to like me. I have to understand me. I have to be me. And that is what really matters to my personal happiness. Gotta have integrity – integrate my authentic self into my outward identity as much as possible.
When we confront people as labels or categories, how does that affect our ability to see them for who they are? – I think it makes it really difficult. Really difficult. How can we truly know anything about anyone based on socially imposed and constructed labels? In all the tidbits about “what I am” I gave above, does that really tell you much about me, who I am? I don’t know. Wouldn’t it just be better to ask people what is most important to them for us to know about them? Labels, categories, stereotypes – they don’t tell us anything about anyone, because they homogenize, make essential, characteristics and qualities and experiences that are supposed to be common to a group but never really are.
Is having a simplistic, hand-me-down identity a form of ’security,’ and a strength or an ‘escape’ from the anxiety of growing into something beyond the flowerbox you were planted in? Or both? – Interesting complex question. I think it can be a form of security for people. Don’t have to question anything if you simply accept what you’re been spoon-fed from birth about who you are. It might make things easier on you, easier to just fit in and get along, get ahead. But also, I think it can be an escape – I think about rejecting one identity, and the best way to do that (so it seems) is to try on another one that is diametrically opposed. I hope it won’t be offensive, but I think this happens a lot when people come out of the closet and declare their sexuality as non-hetero. I think a lot of people join into a pre-existing queer identity that doesn’t necessarily express who they really are. Of course, it’s entirely possible that it does express them fully.
Do you ever ask yourself who and what you are, who and what you are supposed to be and whether you are being your truest self? – Everyday. I’ve spent a good deal od my life trying to fit my square peg into a round hole, and coming out frustrated and disappointed with myself for not being able to do it. But, instead, it’s about allowing my true nature to become expressed in how I live my life, and finding the square hole to match my square peg, allowing what has always been inside of me to become perfectly expressed in the person that I am becoming everyday.
“What is most challenging is when people make assumptions about me that don’t match up with my authentic self. But, I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary for everyone to understand me, or to like me.”
It’s so true, really speaks for my heart. I don’t like to be associated with a group I don’t like, and I hate to be primarily identified as a member of a group I don’t feel to belong to. Especially the ones I didn’t choose, and that are difficult or impossible to renounce. To be identified as a someone or something that I am not, is painful. Depressing. Sometimes devastating and rips my heart off, even if they like me as an assumed holder of that identity.
But I started to learn that there are always some people who identify me as I want them to, and it is better for me to be grateful of these friends who brightens up my life rather than to make a futile effort to get everyone recognises me as who I really am.
There is a piece of dialog I love in Children of Paradise (for me one of the best movie ever). A man meets another one who has just come out of the first man’s wife’s appartment; he asked him who he is. The other answers (loosely translated), “Don’t you find it preposterous to ask someone who he is? That’s probably why people always answer something else: name, situation. But what they are, really, deep down, they don’t say; they hide it carefully. I find your manners quite indiscrete. I mean, you don’t know me and you presume to ask me who I am. Incredible!”
Personally, I couldn’t answer that question. I can give a context (although that would be closer to “what am I?”), but can’t say anything beyond “me.”
“Wouldn’t it just be better to ask people what is most important to them for us to know about them?” One of the first question people usually ask when meeting someone is “What do you do?” Meaning, what is your job. Sure, I do my job, but that’s just part of what I do. I actually alsways have a hard time answering “I’m a translator.” That’s what I do to earn revenue, that’s not what I am. That’s why I prefer to ask people what are their passion, what turns them on in life, lights up their eyes. When you want to know someone, isn’t that more important than how they get their paycheck? (Unless, of course, they’re lucky enough for it to be the same thing).
“When we confront people as labels or categories, how does that affect our ability to see them for who they are?” Wasn’t it Kirkegaard (or Dick van Dyke) who said “Label me and you deny me”? It’s easy to ignore someone once we label them a certain way, to not pay attention to the person. How often have we heard “you say that beacause you’re [put label here].”
“Is having a simplistic, hand-me-down identity a form of ’security,’ and a strength or an ‘escape’ from the anxiety of growing into something beyond the flowerbox you were planted in? Or both?”
Sometimes I think it’s just neurological. The brain clusters and assimilates millions of impressions and experiences and ideas and reactions, and compresses them into Self. That’s what it does, that’s it’s organic function, and if it didn’t do it so well we’d just be awash in data chaos.
Perhaps it’s possible to say no to this, but in limited ways. In my grad studies, fashionable theory (hate to say it, but you know what I mean!) is moving away from strategic essentialism (“I’m here and I’m queer!”) toward an insistance on plurality, recognition of heterogeneous experiences of what it is to be gay or black or female or anything. I approve. However strategic the essentialism may be, it still excludes. On the other hand, can you really recognize heterogeneity? Is it possible for our overworked brains to comprehend plurality? It’s a lot of mental work to pick out one’s own identity by way of absorbing and understanding experiences individually, rather than in reference to an existing type–and it’s also work for other brains to look at your individuality and comprehend you seperately from a type. If those brains are juggling many other stimuli, they are likely to take a shortcut.
I’m not entirely critical of the poor brain; I’m just thinking out loud. It is possible to say the experience of being gay or black or female is not a unified experience, and that’s at least something.
Many years ago, someone asked me “what are you doing?” I had just spend a year or more after graduating from college, marginally employed, trying to figure out my next move, and having to live with my parents. I was used to that question on a fairly daily basis.
Fortunately, in this particular case, which was right before a reception to a college friend’s wedding, all the person wanted to know was if I was busy and if not, could I run to the store to get a lighter for the candles since I was one of the early guests (’cause I had sat at the back of the church). Still, that question threw me. My first impulse was to say “I’m enrolled in graduate school! I’m trying to become a professor! I do have a plan now!”
I actually responded by saying, “Doing how? On what level?” You can be doing (or being) so many different things at one time. To answer that sort of question you really need the context to know how deep your answer should be.
I think that an important part of our individual identities is what choices we make and the freedom we feel to make such choices.
I have friends let’s call them: “a” and “b” who have been in a strong (het) primary relationship for many years. “B” told me years ago that she wouldn’t marry “A”, nor have children with him because she felt that she couldn’t be truly free and raise children married in the Sexist World – that we live in, despite her love and respect for “a” – who is her ally, lover and closest friend.
My partner has not met “a”, nor “b”, but feels like their choice is a sign of White, Upper-Middle Class, Het privilige. “X”, my partner, feels that as a Black Woman, having children, being a Mother, and confronting – Racism, Sexism, Heterosexism etc. – are all challenges that we all must face.
As White, Upper-Middle Class Men – we, I think, face particular challenges in not pretending to be “progessive”, while we tacitly support various oppressive structures in our worlds.
As individuals we must all confront our demons – whether individual/personal – such as from our families of origin as well as what we face in society as a whole.
Hopefully we all ally ourselves with others, where we can and find ways to support a variety of causes that together support a better world for all of us.
Amongst all the seriousness, we also must strive to find happiness in humor, silliness and warmth which often has little to do with politics and oppression. Nurturance is important!
Thanks!
This is god–the question of identity and the politics and subsequent construction of such is an important aspect of critical cultural theory.
i will try and answer these questions, but I am aware that the binarisms that are intrinsic to some of the qeustions make it difficult!
Thanks for the ThinkingBlog on this Friday!
HI everyone,
Thanks for the comments!
Liberallatte – good for you! I know how frustrating it can be when people characterize you a certain way and it’s not really who you are. I’ve decided, for myself, that I don’t really care. I don’t need everyone to like me, or to understand everything about me. I like me. I understand me. I have faith in me. And I have people in my life who do, too. That’s what matters most! Sounds like you’re in that place too – it’s good, right?
Marc Andre – I loved that little snippet you gave from the movie! Maybe I’ll use that next time…
and I totally agree, the question of “what do you do?” is so limiting. I’d much rather know something about someone that reveals more of their self to me, like what they’re passionate about, what they’re interested in, what kind of music they like, what they do to unwind. That is so much more interesting than how people spend their 9-5.
and so true, easier to ignore someone once we’ve decided they fit into X little box. Labelling identifies not just who you are like, but also who you’re not like – “which one of these things is not like the other,” and so I don’t have to pay much attention. Great point!
whicj brings me to Tanglethis – “which one of these things is not like the other” came to mind as I was reading your comment, and I wondered how much is a neurological “natural” process, and how much of it is learned… I remember Sesame Street teaching me to look for commonalities between things, similar shapes, colours, kinds, sizes, etc. in order to identify what “didn’t belong” in the group. Maybe it’s as simple as Sesame Street? I’m more likely to think that the social and “natural” combine in these instances – social practice transforms the natural, takes raw material and gives it a purpose.
In any case, I completely agree with you, any essentializing is unhelpful, whether it’s used for political means or not. It is a challenge to recognize heterogeneity, for sure, but I think it’s the BEST way to go about the world. I’m doing a lot of reading on intersectionality lately, the theory that we cannot actually separate out the various strands of who we are in any meaningful or helpful way, and in fact it is harmful to try to do so because it denies or in some cases even privileges the parts that aren’t held out for examination. I like this quote by Audre Lorde: “My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am…” Kimberle Crenshaw wrote that the best way to tackle oppression is to begin with the most marginalized and work to liberate those people, instead of starting with one little part of a person, like gender, or sexuality, and trying to work to end oppression based on those labels. She thinks that if we can remove multiple oppressions, then it will necessarily also help bring up the status of those who are singularly oppressed (like white straight able-bodied middle-upper class women, for example). Interesting theory, I thought. I don’t know how it would work in reality, since we do have this binary classification system going on.
Clio – thanks for sharing that little story – I like the answer you gave, “on what level.” Very concisely put.
Geo – great point about tacitly supporting privilege, and progressive politics hiding that privilege while we live our lives in ways that actually do nothing to help shift the power matrix. Excellent! thanks for bringin this up – it is such a challenge, I think, to actually recognize privilege in oneself.
Robyn – binarisms be damned! I’m sick of them, they need to be exploded – especially since they never speak to the full range of diversity that exists within the human species. I’m reading about intersexuals lately, people who are born with ambiguous genitalia and/or chromosomal makeups that are not XX or XY, and various other conditions. And these people exist in nature – 1.7% of live births – yet we deny their existance through medicalization and surgical alteration of their bodies in order to support a binary sex classification system that is inherently invested with power relations.
Binaries suck.
Perhaps the binaries exist b/c we [the world community/u.s. America] are uncomfortable w/ difference? Difference when it comes to something beyond the binaries? I will answer those questions you have…and then trackback here [something I said I would do on your 'crash' entry and then didn't do it
]. would you comment on it when I do post? Perhaps we can have an critical conversation on the “politics” of identity and/or the construction of identity?
the question of identity?: formation, construction, politics
These questions pose a challenge for me. After finding a couple of feminist sites on WP, I have continued to read the ThinkingGirl’s site–feminist philosophy! ThinkingGirl addressed these questions; I mentioned/commented that I would try …
Thinking girl, it’s awesome that you take time to give really thoughtful responses to comments.
I too usually prefer to go down the middle between nature and nurture–if anything, I usually lean more to the latter–but it’s tricky with brainworks. I can’t off the top of my head think of any culture (with perhaps less access to Sesame Street) that fosters a non-clustering way of comprehending things and people; on the other hand, that may just reveal the limits of my knowledge.
I heart Audre Lorde; I’m not familiar with that quote, but it connects nicely to other things I’ve read that warn against privileging one of those parts against the best interests of others: for example, taking on a “feminist” identity without acknowledging that feminism is about the rights of white women (a frequent argument in the 60s-70s); or, as Lorde argues back, defending a racial identity at the expense of womens’ rights. But, like you say, I’m not sure how the comprehending-integrated-parts thing works out in practice. I think Lorde usually recommends writing poetry. : ) But it’s a good point; maybe the first act is to speak it, then it might become clear how to do it. Belief follows kneeling, and all that.
Marc Andre, Kierkegaard: “Once you label me you negate me, but now with God’s help I can become myself.” – I don’t think we need God to define ourselves, but, hey, whatever works.
I am my profession all the time. My primary label is teacher or worker/fighter maybe. Yet I hate the way that affects people, the connotation of the word. People expect to be judged and admonished by me (or clarified as I just did above!), but I mainly just want to learn from them. It is easy to discount people once we label them; we’ve decided we’ve figured them out, and don’t need to look further. Frustrating. It’s a lot more work to look beyond the surface, but worth the effort I think.
With lots of incoming information, it’s perhaps necessary to sort it into boxes as a means to keep it all straight in general terms, but then, at some point, it’s necessary to open up each box for further exploration, especially when there’s a real live human being in front of you.
One of the worst insults I’ve ever been given was by a guy in high school who insisted I was “easy to figure out.” I believe I’m quite complex, dammit!
Tanglethis – oh thanks! I find it’s the best way to encourage discussion… by participating myself!
yes, this is true – perhaps the quick classification thing we do is more brain-function than social-function. I don’t know… all I can say is that since these categories are socially constructed in the first place, I can’t help but think the way we classify people is too. maybe it’s all a self-reference thing, like we notice differences in others as a way of continually reaffirming our own identity.
yeah, Audre Lorde is pretty great. and maybe we do just need to start talking about intersectionality, insisting that we not be seen ourselves as just one thing or as representing a monolithic identity. Don’t ask me to disentangle my various externally imposed classifications from one another – I am all those things, not just one at a time, and the whole of me is not reducable to the sum of those parts!
Sage – you’re right, it is easy to discount people once we’ve labelled them. I hate being identified by my profession. There are too many negatives associated with it – mostly with the intelligence of those people who do it, and that we’re all frivolous and only care about surface things and appearances, no depth. I have been condescended to more times than I can count by clients, managers, and just people I meet who ask me what I do. Well, not for much longer! I’m leaving it all behind! (then I’ll probably hate the associations people will make with my future career… but at least they’ll recognize that I’m not a dummy!)
Sage: “People expect to be judged and admonished by me (or clarified as I just did above!)” I hear you. I’m a linguist by training, a proof-reader by trade, so you can imagine how people can react (it’s actually worst in French). Funny thing is, linguist don’t tell people how to speak or write; we observe how they actually do it, and try to fig out what goes on underneath.
“easy to figure out” to me also that is an insult.
(As for the Kierkegaard quote, to my shame, I must admit that it’s actually a line from Wayne’s World.)
Marc Andre – To your shame?? Wayne’s World is one of the most excellent movies for line-stealing ever!
[...] post came from thinking girl’s post on identity. I want to answer the questions too. She did a pretty fab job at answering them – mine will likely [...]
The overall gist of these questions is quite interesting to me… because the thrust of their argument is that identity fractures our ‘true self’, as in this question:
How does having/maintaining an identity detract/support one being their authentic self?
Of course people have already mentioned heterogeneity and the reality of multiple identities. As Clio put it, ‘You can be doing (or being) so many different things at one time. To answer that sort of question you really need the context to know how deep your answer should be.’
I think the idea of a ‘true self’ is pretty fascinating… what the hell is that? If we are constantly negotiating our identities there is no stable or true self, no ‘whole’ as we like to imagine it, and beating ourselves up about how we might obscure ourselves from it through any one identity is just an exercise in guilt. The way everyone here seems to navigate that concept seems as honest as any I’ve found.
[oh, and tanglethis, your comment re: lorde using poetry as a way to explore these questions might have just helped me bring together a blog post, so cheers!]
[...] girl has a post up about identity, in which she answers a series of questions, which [...]
petitpoussin (which, by the way, sounds so much better in French than its english translation!) – yes, this is an interesting point. What is one’s “true” identity, or self? How does that work?
Identity is a pretty hard thing to navigate, what with all the pressures from both outside and inside to conform with various conceptual categories. I feel like I am being “true to myself” when I follow a path that helps me achieve my deepest desires, when I bring myself closer to who I want to become. I like the idea of becoming, that we are never really finished our identity-projects, but are always becoming something more, different, whatever.