Note: I want to acknowledge all the feminist, POC, and queer thinkers and actors on whose shoulders I work.  Some of these folks I am aware of and have read and many I have not but still feel their influence.  It is fun to think through this for myself and to share it, I imagine others have thought through similar ideas.  I welcome thoughts, comments, or suggestions of resources for further exploration of this topic.

As a queer, anti-oppressive, person studying how culture works, I spend a lot of my time and energy thinking about and seeing the world through identity.  How, I wonder, does this weird thing called identity work?  Are there unifying concepts that can help us understand why people choose identities, how they work, and how they are useful in our lives?  Is there a basic DNA to all identities and if so what is it? 

            First off, lets briefly define identity.  Identity is basically shorthand for a unifying commonality that not everyone has. When two people share an identity they are in effect saying, “Hey, we share X and that is different from those other people and as such we should stick together (in some way.)”  There is obviously more to identity, namely what this unification ends up looking like, but for now I want to focus on the X. 

Is there a way to understand the various kinds of things that people in an identity share?  Are there useful categories of sharing on which identities build themselves?  In what areas do humans find unifying commonality? 

I would propose four basic ways that identities find unity (note many identities use several at the same time.)  These are ancestral history, lived experience, personal desire, and common belief. 

            By ancestral history, I mean to point out that many identities base their membership (unity) on a set of common experiences their ancestors had before they were born.  For example, a key part of white identity in the US is that of immigration and colonization.  Although our families had different interactions with these historic forces, all white people (in the US) share a history of moving here from somewhere else and in imposing European values on an inhabited land.

Another important aspect of ancestral history is holding shared narratives about what happened before the current generation and how that impacts folks living today.  For example, a key part of white identity is our history of “discovering” and “civilizing” the world.  Although this has resulted in a diverse white population, white folks all share a common narrative about white exploration and taming of “savage” lands and peoples. 

            The second block of our identity DNA is lived experience, by which I refer to events that happened to people sharing the identity (as apposed to their ancestors.)  Lesbians and gays come in all shapes and sizes and yet everyone “comes out.”  Even folks who never “really had to come out” must address this common experience as part of their identity.  To be lesbian or gay is to have to actively define your sexuality as not straight and the first time you do that is your “coming out.” 

            Sometimes we build identity based on a shared set of desires.  Gay men want to have sex with men.  To be a gay man, most folks would argue, you must desire sex with other men.

Here we can see that identities often fit into multiple categories.  Gayness is both an identity of lived experience and common desire.  To be gay, it is generally held that you must have lived a series of events (including “coming out”) and hold a particular desire (having sex with people of your gender). 

Finally, there is belief.  Political organizations are a perfect example of this.  Being a socialist does not require any particular history, but instead requires you to adhere to a particular set of beliefs. 

It is definitely true that different people are often contesting the defining attributes of any identity and this creates a rang of who holds a given identity.  However, it is also true that for identity to be useful as shorthand for a unifying commonality, there must be some shared ancestral history, lived experience, personal desire, or common belief.  Without these there is no sharing on which to build the resulting manifestations of unity (ie. community, shared culture, specific spaces, etc)   

 

All this makes me wonder where queerness lies.  Is it an identity of experience, desire or one of belief?  Is queerness based on not being straight and cis-gendered and all the particular encounters with homophobia, trans phobia, and sexism that entails?  Is it an understanding of shared desires and, if so, what are they? Are beliefs the underpinning of a queer identity?  Do we share a similar understanding about how the world is and how people should act within it? Or is it some weird hybrid? 

And where does choice come to play in all of this?  How much agency do we as individuals or as community hold over the unifying attributes of our identities?  Are we stuck with what is or can we decide to make our identities into something new?

 

Not sure the answers but excited to keep looking.  I would love to hear any thoughts you have.