You are killing me. Or I am killing you. I am sorry, somewhere along the way I got confused as to who was killing who. Wait, how is this, we are killing each other.
Shocking isn’t it? We are dying from social asphyxiation and we are both holding the pillows to each other’s mouth while we straddle each other’s one-dimensional “identity” between our legs. The person, our very being, in its most dynamic, multiple fluid forms is trapped inside of our bodies, screaming for air, screaming to be allowed freedom. Ironically enough, we both want our beings to be free, yet somewhere along the way, we were taught to keep it in the closet, that it’s not “normal”. Somewhere along the way we confused this idea of the normal, that it somehow exists; it’s this fairytale we convinced ourselves is there and we want to be it.
It doesn’t exist. I’m sorry to break it to you. I have finally realized it. Now please, remove the pillow from my head and allow me to be.
Now, you may wonder how I finally came to this conclusion. Was it drugs? No, fortunately this time it wasn’t. Was it idealism, liberalism or some other “ism” that has poisoned the mind? No, there were no “isms” involved. Where did it come from then? It came partly through issues of my own identities, class discussions, assigned readings and considering how social change comes about. For me, to a certain extent, this class wasn’t just about LGBT issues, but identity issues as a whole. I wanted to know how my numerous identities intersected each other and could join together in the movement for positive social change. I know, perhaps a bit idealistic, but allow me to take you through my personal, intellectual journey through issues surrounding identity.
To begin, I have considered how my various identities have somehow interconnected and clashed. I was told numerous times that my sexuality somehow separated me from my other identity as a Jicarilla, as a person of color and so on. Socially, I was also told that each of these identities were like small little buckets, separate from each other, that only shared the water it collected. In Lisa Kahaleole Chang Hall’s Bitches in Solitude, she considers this type of behavior as “exclusionary identity building,” as the excerpt below shows:
“There are at least two kinds of exclusionary identity building. One is the exclusion based on power and privilege, the ability not to have to take other people’s existences seriously. The other comes from the less privileged end of the spectrum. For some, identity becomes a fortress under siege that’s protected by denying connections with others and oversimplifying connections with “their own”.
As a woman of color with my certain sexuality, this was the exact case; the identity that others forced me to confront was a “fortress under siege”. I was to choose and define in precise words the “side” I was to be on, either the LGBT, or people of color. However, I never felt that either was my own and exclusive of the other.
I didn’t want to have to choose. Somehow I knew I shouldn’t have to; I knew that there was an interconnection between all these identities and it had to be more than this concept of the “normal”. Perhaps my mistrust of what “normal” is came from my cross- cultural experiences growing up on the reservation and then coming to Carleton (Blog Entry: Ideas of the normative that aren’t so normal.) In that blog entry, I hoped to argue that ideas and concepts that some commonly terms as the normative, like perspectives on sexuality, are different for other cultures. It is through a cultural and social lens that these normatives are created, but to assume that there is an overarching normative to confirm to, is something we as individuals have created.
Then the question came what to do with it. How is it that my individual identity, as a multidimensional dynamic being, could attach to society? Now enter Hall’s identity politics, which she nicely summarized in the excerpt below:
“For me, identity politics is about making connections between personal histories and larger political and social context. Basic but far from simple. Identity politics is important because it shatters the alienating slit that we’re taught exists between the realities of our personal lives and the public “political” reality. It’s important because paradoxically, not recognizing and acknowledging where we’re coming from makes it even hard to get beyond the limitations of our experiences. Both things are true, we are the world; we’re just not all of it.”
You see, that’s just it. Identity as we practice it today is thought of as one-dimensional and separate from each other. We are taught that “realities of our personal lives and the public “political” reality” is somehow different. ‘My actions are my actions and mine alone, and there is only the interconnections are those that I choose to create with you,’ is the overarching lesson the majority is taught through an American, western Judeo-Christian cultural sphere. Today, as a society, as Americans, somehow we are still stuck on this linear thought process of every man, woman and child for themselves as we move forward, and progress towards “normal,” the “ideal”.
How does this relate to the LGBT? It relates as everything does. Since it’s historical development in the U.S. gay men and women have strived to carve out a place for themselves in society (See Blog Entry: Development of the Homosexual Identity). From Stonewall, to today, where identity politics is still a heated debate where as a community we are trying to decide the “LGBT agenda” towards equality and freedom. Identity is still an issue. How is it that we define each other and how can we use that definition of identity to unite and move forward en mass as a group to conquer injustice and overcome oppression for all gay people? That’s it, isn’t it? We’re trying to overcome oppression and declare we’re “just like everyone else,” and that we are humans so accept us. That is what every oppressed minority person, group, thing demand, to not be define and confined to a normative that we really can’t define.
Then how does one overcome this perceived normative? How is it that we can share boxes? Identity politics is important because it awakens the person to the interconnections they share with other. When you can identity who you are as a being, then you are able to see how that being interconnects with other. Here, being is in the sense that it’s multi-layered and dynamic, human beings are “being” because they interconnect with what is around them and are in constant change. As Hall points out:
“Taking seriously the idea that identity is a complicated mixture of sometimes contradictory layers of gender, racial, sexual, and ideological identifications means that there exists a number of possible connections. Identity is as multiple as the communities we form.”
Identity is a mixture. Identity politics is then a mixture of one’s identities with the movement towards uniting and overcoming. Then why isn’t it working then, why aren’t we living in this utopia? It’s just that, we aren’t considering our own identities and how they connect. Hall hits it on the head when she says that we aren’t taking identity seriously enough.
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