Essays on Identity

1.1. What is “identity”?

In recent years it’s become vogue to “identify as” things. I’m supposed to identify as a woman, or a girl, or queer, or kinky, or whatnot.

The thing is, I’m not really sure I identify as any of those things. I identify as me. Those are terms I may use to describe myself when I need to convey an approximation of myself and my interests, but… I find myself questioning what it means to identify as any of them, or anything else.

Partly, what’s the difference between identifying as something and being that thing? Does identifying mean you imagine yourself as that thing, but may not be asserting your actual existence as that thing? If not that, then what’s the difference? If they’re the same, then why not just be something, why this extra step as identifying as it?

Secondly, the language can be confining or problematic. If I say I’m a woman, that gives one sense of what I am. If I clarify that as a tomboy, that gives another. The problem is, if I say I’m a tomboy, that definition excludes skirts and dresses from my wardrobe. I feel like these are other people’s definitions, so even though they’re helpful for describing myself and communicating, they’re also clumsy and contradictory, and don’t fit me right. I don’t want to choose between strong gal that likes bikepacking and backpacking, and being the gal that likes putting on a nice sundress and going dancing—I am both. But the language isn’t conducive to concisely expressing being both. I’m certain I’m not alone in this, and that this sort of duality is not limited to the overlap of {woman, tomboy}.

1.2. Controlling “identities”

There’s also the arbiters of identity. I can be a woman, and a tomboy—except to Christofascist extremists who demand that women are the homemakers, caretakers. Who are they to think they can tell me who I am? And a wider swath of society, although accepting of tomboys, is resistant to the existence of men who like feminine things.

It really gets my goat the way these fuckers work:

“Men are X, and do Y and Z things.”

“Well, no, I’m a man and I don’t do X or like Y things.”

“Well, you have to do X and like Y and Z because you’re a man.”

“Okay, then I guess I’m not a man.”

“Well… you have man attributes, therefore you’re a man, therefore you are X and do Y and Z things.”

“But I’m not. What are the other choices?”

“Uh… The choices are man and woman… ummmm…”

“Then I guess I’m a woman. I am A, and do B, C and Z things.”

“No! No, you can’t do Z thing. That’s a man thing.”

“But I like that, it feels right to me.”

“Nnn…nnn… No, you can’t do that if you’re a woman.”

“Then I guess I must be something else entirely. I’ll make up a new category.”

“What!?!? No, that’s not possible, there are only men and women! You have to be one or the other, and only men can do men things Y and Z, and only women can do women things B and C.”

They set up these definitions that don’t accommodate everyone. They demand there’s only two ways of being, and expect everyone else to comply with their model and mold themselves to fit. They are like HOA (home owner’s association) cronies, imposing their policies on everybody else: single men, you get the ranch; women, you get the 1½ story cape; married folks, you get the 2½ story colonial. You like Victorians? Too bad, not allowed. Here’s an allowable list of colors for your paint. The home furnishing store will know which furniture you need when you tell them which model house you’ve bought.

1.3. Identity as Forms vs. Templates

Perhaps identities are the chunks from which the soul is assembled? I don’t mean this in a mystical sense; by soul I mean “the essence of self.” Running with the definition of identity as the aggregate from which the soul is made, then what would that say about what identity is?

The philosopher Plato had the idea of “forms”: the idealized version of something. For example, in my back yard I have a fence. Plato says the “form” is the ideal of a fence, that perfect, straight, unblemished essence of fence that exists in our mind. My fence may tilt, rot, and eventually fall over; but the form of the fence is perfect and stays that way indefinitely. The arbiters of identity treat identity this way: ideals, goals, perfection to be aspired to.

This is wrong. If identities are subcomponents of the soul, that being the essence of self, they are not Plato’s forms, but instead templates. They are not ideals to grow into, but starting points to be shaped, trimmed, refined and reconfigured as we see fit. A blank sheet of paper may be perfectly flat and perfectly empty—close to the Platonic form of paper—but the pinnacle of any sheet’s existence comes only when it has been covered with a drawing, shaped into a piece of origami, or covered with writings or mathematics that express ideas. Identities, like a sheet of paper, are best when they are customized.

Returning to the house metaphor, what is the perfect form of my house? When was it/will it be at its pinnacle? When the house was just built and closest to its blueprints? It’s been repainted, remodelled, reconditioned, rewired, improved—all the owners over the years adapting it to suit their personal preferences and needs. A prior owner painted it white and orange, I painted it a pinkish-purple. It will continue to be adapted and repaired in the decades to come. Should these not happen, the building will enter stagnation and decline. My house achieves its best not by sitting statically and rotting, but by adapting, changing, and serving the needs of its occupants. I say this is what identity is, and should be.

We humans seem to struggle with this form vs. template problem, forgetting that perfection is not necessarily a static state. While figuring myself out, I copied identities from the cultural definition, or from others I knew and/or respected, and “tried them on.” It seems odd that I needed a template to figure out something that is innate, and yet I’m certainly not the only one who has done it. At their best, these provided a basis for understanding or developing new parts of myself, and I shaped them to match my needs as my understanding grew—or, in a few cases, I cast them off when I found they fit too awkwardly, or came with too many restrictions. But the catch is that sometimes, I embraced a new identity only to later find it confining me—I let the idea harden, then define and limit me. I forgot that the thing I embraced was a template to customize to my needs, but instead treated it as a form that defined me.

It was difficult and painful the first several times I had to break out of a mold I had gotten stuck in. With practice, though, I find myself getting stuck less often, and better at escaping a trap I fall into.

1.4. Growing In and Out of Identity

1.5. What am I driving at here?

Identities change. It’s normal; we evolve and grow. If you’re not doing that, it’s kind of sad.

It’s normal to have multiple interests, and should a few of those grow deep enough to form a piece of your identity, that’s okay, it’s normal. We aren’t 1-dimensional characters, and we shouldn’t try to be.

But also don’t feel bad to let go of pieces you’ve outgrown; when it’s time to move on, holding on to them only holds you back.

There are patterns: Wicca provides “Child, maiden, mother, crone”—the stages of womanhood. For me, they’ve turned out to be useful ways of seeing and understanding myself and my progression through life. They are not exact—I never had children so I have never a mother, but I have been in a role where I can watch over and offer guidance—and the sequence is a little off. Even being an athiest, Wicca’s stages have been helpful to me. I’ll take wisdom where ever I can get it.

But beware the Christofascists and others who will demand you embrace the identity they specify for you. Beware also those who restrict the identities you are allowed to explore or embrace, and/or the sequence you explore them in, if they allow any exploration at all. They will call you names and insist you are evil when you do not comply with their model. But it is they that are evil, restricting the life and personal growth of others to fit their small-minded scope of what life is, what life can be, and what you can be.

1.6. Wrap-up

We all know what identity is, and yet pinning down a definition feels elusive.

Whatever it is, there are those who have their idealized models of what identity should be (or, at Plato would call them, “forms”), and they expect the rest of us to conform. But the problem is not that we don’t fit their models, nor is the solution to mold us to fit it.

Your life, like mine, is too short and too valuable to be wasted conforming simply for the sake of easing others' inhibitions.

The problem is that their models/forms are insufficient and limited; and the solution is to recognize that our souls—the essence of who we are, our identity—is authoritative. A model can be expanded, made more flexible, but like any simulation or approximation it is not and never will be as expansive or as detailed as the thing it represents. We must remember this, and stop allowing models and approximations—whether our own or somebody else’s—to become authoritative, because they aren’t, and never were.

I identify as Perette. When I’m filling out a form and it asks me what I identify as, I’ll provide some words approximating an answer to the question—but they will not, and can not, provide a fully detailed, perfectly accurate description. Those words are an echo, a grainy 2D snapshot of a detailed 3D identity—and are not the origin or a comprehensive definition of that identity.

2.1. The Unanswered Question

Some time ago I stumbled upon a question along the lines, “I have a fellow student who keeps commenting snidely on my looks. I’ve asked him to stop, but he won’t, and it’s upsetting me. What should I do about it?”

I composed an answer.

But I’ve learned from posting answers before that certain kinds of answers, helpful though I may be trying to be, get misconstrued and pounced upon by others. An honest response that may have taken hours to compose, that took effort and word smithing and finesse to get the meaning just right, is shot down because it counters the current politically-approved solution. Subsequently, not only is there arguing whether or or not my idea is a good one—which would be fine—but personal attacks telling me I’m evil, not a woman, homophobic, or whatever. For days my e-mail box or news feeds are filled with hatred letters telling me I’m a hater.

For a long time, I ignored these responses, who I think are often youngsters for whom the only correct solution is their simple, obvious, sledgehammer of a solution. But this time, I thought of those who would read my article, and summarize it down to “buck up and shut up”, and tell me why that was no good. People who would argue I was bad, that I was part of the problem, that I didn’t listen to what the original poster was asking, or say that I obviously didn’t understand what the original poster was talking about so why don’t I just shut up and bog off.

So finally, they won. Tired of the social nuisance that comes with sharing my perspective, I gagged myself.

I never posted this answer to the board where I found the original question, and I’ve since forgotten where I came across it. It’s late enough probably be irrelevant now anyway, but I hope she found an answer, a solution.

But I still wonder if this would have helped.

2.2. The answer

Many the proposed answers have dealt with external things you can do. Many are good answers; I do not claim to contradict or supersede them. I do not approve or condone the behavior to which you have been subjected, and I do not place the blame on you, though reading inattentively might lead to that conclusion.

In an ideal world, these things wouldn’t occur, or when they did, your objections would be taken seriously and the problems would stop. Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. I’m writing as someone who has survived that real world, where changing others' behavior is something you have limited control over.

You can talk to the problem people, but they might ignore you. Or they might be clueless and not understand what they’ve done wrong, thus be unable to fix it (I’ve been that idiot at times. Sadly, I think there’s a lot of this in tech—although I’m not sure if it’s self-selection because of introversion and the machines are less intimidating, or atrophied social skills as a result of too much time with screens and machines. But I’m digressing…). You can escalate to administration, but they might not take the matter seriously. I don’t mean you shouldn’t try these things; indeed, you should not just accept abuse. But in the end, in the real world, there’s a chance your efforts won’t resolve the problem.

What you do have control over is your self, and how you react to things. I’m going to write stuff that may piss you off, but it’s experience of a social misfit and outcast growing up, transitioning genders, and coming out for the better. It’s challenging to explain some of this: a lot of it is from personal experience, and it’s hard to sum up in text. I think I’m on the other end of the problem our parents had, when we discounted what they said because they didn’t explain why, and we didn’t yet have the experience ourselves. But with 30 years additional experience, it turns out parents knew more than we thought—they just didn’t offer reasons. So I’ll do my best to share what I’ve learned, and include the whys and wherefores too. I apologize in advance for my linguistic clumsiness.

Growing up, I got picked on and bullied all the time. I was told to ignore it, but that doesn’t work. No one ever explained how, and in reality, I’m doubtful you can just “ignore” it. It’s like a crappy algorithm on a server: it doesn’t change because you think of a better one. You have to implement it, test it, debug it, and push your changes onto the production server. Only then does it get better.

This is going to be a controversial paragraph, but please remember the problem of ideal vs. real world. If comments about your looks sting, then that’s evidence it matters to you. If looks really matter to you, you would put time and effort into them. So perhaps looks aren’t really important to you, since you don’t put much into them, and therefore they shouldn’t matter—but shouldn’t and don’t are two different things. You can’t simply switch off caring about something that’s been ingrained, without replacing it with something else; it’s something you’ve been told your whole life matters, so it’s wired in now. So what is important to you? What do you want to care about? Focus on that, and use it to override the unwanted default. It’s work, but do that enough, and the default gets rewritten.

I was, admittedly, a misfit. I wasn’t like the other kids, and consequently I was ostracized. My solution was to try to conform and emulate. But in retrospect, I’m doubtful that works: it’s no fun, they can tell you’re putting on a good front, and they like using exclusion as a form of power. They see your desire to be included, so they lead you on but don’t quite let you in. They toy with their victim, tempting with inclusion, and you get the brunt of it.

You describe these folks treating you badly, yet you want to be accepted by them. It sounds like the same game. But, you can’t force them to accept you; you have no control over their behavior. But why would you want to be accepted by them, if they treat you so poorly? (I did the same thing for years.)

But what else can you do? You don’t want to be alone! It can be really hard in small towns; I grew up in one. You said you’re in a small school, that does make this harder. But avoiding doesn’t fix.

The other option is to exit that game and all its rules, because it’s a game you can’t win. They make the rules, they’ve already decided you’ve lost. The only way to “win” on the surface, is to sell yourself out to gain acceptance, in which case you’ve lost in your heart. And selling yourself out is bad news: how will you respect yourself?

And this is where I’m blessed to be transsexual. It forced me to look at what was really important to my self-image and self-respect. Girding for transition, I had to come to terms with reality: I was going to lose some friends, some family, and I would lose certain career options. I was about to do something that would ensure the mainstream would never accept me. (Keep in mind, this was 1992.) The trying-to-fit-in strategy was not going to work, ever again. So ask yourself this: Do you really need everyone to be your friend? Do you want these jerks as friends? It’s hard risking friendships when you’re an introvert (as many of us techies are), but what is it costing you to maintain? Is it even a friendship if they’re doing these things? You may be better off thinking of these as acquaintances, or classmates, rather than friends, because they aren’t living up to their end of friendship.

When you redefine your self-value to something other than acceptance by the mainstream, you won’t need these morons and their comments. In my case, I remember using the ethical standards I lived by and appreciation of my overcoming adversity/trail blazing. But take time to be introspective; think about what you value in others (or rather what you should value in others, which might not be the same thing—ideal vs. real again), and apply those valuations to yourself. Work on living up to your own standards (it’s not always easy, 'cause you know better than anyone when you’re trying to cheat). Reflect on successes and failures, change your behavior, change your thinking, change your standards. Talk with others, especially those you respect, to get new ideas and integrate them.

Over time, the wired-in default is replaced with your own value system, and with it will come freedom and liberty. No longer will you have to adhere to social conventions or expectations, you can do what you want, subject to your own values instead of society’s. And frankly, you become a better person along the way, because society’s standards are pretty low.

My life before was boring. The more I reject the standards and invent my own (it’s ongoing after 20-something years), the more rich my life gets. I have more adventures than I can fit in a paragraph. My friends these days are composed of people from various counter-cultural circles (some requiring I overcome my own prejudices), who appreciate individuality. Many have unusual perspectives on what is important in life, and I appreciate them for what they are, just as they do me, even though we’re different. The normals compete to have shiny cars and big homes, hoping they won’t get sacked because they’ve got the payments, and look down on me for the old beaters I drive and my modest house. But my real friends respect my approach, even if it’s different from theirs, and I sleep comfortably with my financial solvency. I’m very glad something kicked me off the normal path, because I’d have had a much less interesting life and friends, and I’d be less happy.

And so these days, when someone rejects me or insults me? It’s okay; it’s their choice/opinion. There was a time every name I was called stung; now they roll off—because I assess myself by my standards, and I’m awesome. If someone didn’t notice, or some prejudice got in the way, that’s too bad—but I’ve got software and novels to write, skills to develop, things to learn, adventures to have, and more. If I keep demonstrating a better way, then perhaps in time, they’ll notice and clue in.

So screw those guys. Making software is fun, but there’s an amazing world out there. Mountains to climb, roads to travel, countries to visit, people to meet. Or other things that excite you. You’re young, smart, and on a promising career path. Take time to figure out who you are, what you want out of life—more than just a career banging out code, going home and playing video games. Find other things and spread your passions around, and live for fulfilling what you want out of life, instead of living other people’s expectations.

And when you become that multifaceted person, doing all that stuff, the comments just won’t stick anymore. You’ll be too busy doing stuff, and life will be so rich that a few dumb comments won’t matter.