PART I.
I don't really know where to launch into this from. But I have to just do it. I've been meaning to write about identity for a while... but every time I try to cut the extraneous bits of the conversation away, I can't do it. I want to write something witty, or succinct, or unshallow, but I'm not really sure I can.
There isn't any way for me to write some amazing entry about identity, because it can't be wrapped in a neat little package and tied up with a cute little bow. I have, by no means, gotten my mind around what identity even means. Besides the fact that understanding your own identity is ... the penultimate struggle of our lives, or something epic-sounding like that. [Part of it is also part of a confidence game – admitting you question things about you identity implies you haven't figured out who you are, which is seen as dangerous and awkward. But I guess I have to let go of both of those things and just do it, or I'll never get anywhere in understanding it.]
I will start by saying: I have a hard time making decisions. Its a truly complex particular breed of indecisiveness. I've stated this previously, and I don't mean to repeat myself, but recently I've wondered if indecisiveness is a much bigger issue than I give credit to. Not just with me, but with a whole culture of people. And I guess it goes further than indecisiveness, even the aggressive strain I seem to have. It crosses over into the world of commitment to identities and to labels.
I don't like being simplified, or simplifying other people. I value complication and complexity; I don't like multiple choice questions, one word answers, all-inclusive titles... I don't like being simplified.
As teenagers, and as children, and generally as human beings who are raised and educated by other human beings, we are taught to define ourselves as much as possible. We are taught to learn the categories that exist, and fit ourselves into them. In the process of doing that we receive a lot of mixed messages. A lot of conflicting ideas about who we're supposed to grow up and be. There's who our parents want us to be. Who our culture wants us to be. Who our friends want us to be. And then, eventually, who we want to be.
But who do we want to be? Even that sentence doesn't really make any sense. It implies that we wake up as one day as a finalized, categorized product. Which, as a culture (and as a subjects of social psychology) we want to perpetuate: we need to codify everything, so we know how to respond.
Everything is categorized, and then you have to pick one. Black and white, one or the other. As little kids it was: you are a girl or a boy. OK, you're a girl: here are your options for how to be a girl. (Not like anyone really has a choice there. Or at least when we're younger, gender doesn't appear to be optional.)
We get older, and find out that maybe there are more options present. You can be the subversive but sexy girl, but you have to be her in a certain way. You can be the 'tom-boy' girl-next-door, but you have to be her in a certain way. Even the “alternative” female identities have to fit into a certain status-quo.
At Hampshire we get it beaten into our heads that identity based qualifiers are on a spectrum. Gender is a spectrum; sexuality is a spectrum. But as much as we're taught that, I still see an intense pressure to conform to new identities present within Hampshire's insular communities. And Hampshire is pretty progressive... outside of Hampshire, its “Are you gay?”. Then once that answer is established, maybe its “Are you a lesbian?”, and if the person is really direct: “Are you femme?”. So I'm led to believe that once you “decide” that being queer is part of your identity, then you're supposed to find a way to fit in again. Early theory of homosexuality was dependent on lesbians being masculine and gay men being feminine. Are we really that divorced from that idea?
If I don't consider myself a lesbian, I don't consider myself butch, I don't consider myself femme, but does that mean I give up my right to be considered? Then when, exactly, is the tipping point when I'm considered queer enough to call myself that? To me, this mindset is just a whole other kind of binary.
This is from from NYMagazine, about Manhattan's Stuyvesant High School teens: (http://nymag.com/news/features/15589/index6.html):
“These teenagers don’t feel as though their sexuality has to define them, or that they have to define it.”
“But kids are... in the process of working up their own language to describe their behavior. Along with gay, straight, and bisexual, they’ll drop in new words, some of which they’ve coined themselves: polysexual, ambisexual, pansexual, pansensual, polyfide, bi-curious, bi-queer, fluid, metroflexible, heteroflexible, heterosexual with lesbian tendencies—or, as Alair puts it, “just sexual.” The terms are designed less to achieve specificity than to leave all options open.”
The article seems undecided whether Stuyvesant's small sexuality sub-culture is immature or just different; are they radically changing sexuality's definitions, or just not committing to a sexual identity out of uncertainty?
It's never been a conscious effort on my part to reject definition, it just happens. I just don't feel like being reduced to single descriptive words. A refusal to be defined became part of my identity. But at the same time, I always wonder... can an undefined identity be a legitimate identity? Or, in some way, is identifying as non-defining simply symptomatic of my generations inability to commit?
Is refusing to commit to an identity, actually because I'm scared to own it, or because I'm indecisive? If that's true, then am I not owning parts of myself? Or not owning parts of cultures that I'd want to be a part of?
By claiming no label, do I forfeit the right to be certain things, or to participate in certain cultures? As far as gender is concerned, am I not “feminine enough” to be a woman, but not “masculine enough” to be a man? Or as far as sexuality is concerned, am I not “lesbian enough” to be considered queer, but not “straight enough” to be considered heterosexual? Perhaps then, non-definition is just reactionary to not fitting into any of those categorizations.
[A note: Gender identity and sexual orientation/identity are not the same. I'm not lumping them together except for my own writing ease to address them both simultaneously. I'm also not addressing cultural, class, racial identity right now either, because there are only so many hours in the day.]
If we could strip away all the messages society has shoved down our throats, the words that have defined us throughout our lives, the people who dictated what we were, all the times we masqueraded as people we wanted to be, or thought we should be: if we could strip down to the core of who we are:
Who would that be?
Its almost too ridiculous to comprehend: with those external layers peeled away, definitions and words don't mean anything. But the ideas behind them would still exist. So who are we, then?
The problem is, our identities aren't created in a vacuum. Our identities are all wrapped up in the outside factors. Not only that, but its essentially impossible to exist without context. We only understand ourselves by what exists around us.
And then... at a certain point, when my face is an inch away from someone else's face, all of this stops mattering. And I have to put it to rest and say: fuck it... Theory ends here.
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