Our Search for Identity
The picture we paint of ourselves, the idea we carry in our minds of who we are as individuals
relies heavily on the word of others. Our identity is an idea we are partly sold, partly given,
and which is partly self constructed.

What do we mean by the word identity?

We assume our identity is who we are and we assume our identity is fixed and unchangeable. Identity is a label in itself. We allow it to define us, and eventually to inform our boundaries as we stop finding words to describe us and begin to alter how we are in an attempt to fit the definition of the words we’ve already been given.

Here are some common examples of who we say we are:

  • What we do for a living. (‘I am a shop assistant.’ ‘I am a brick layer.’ ‘I am a teacher.’)
    Is that all? Who are you when you aren’t working?
    Who are you when you are at home? When you are asleep?
  • Our status within the family unit. (‘I am a mother’, ‘I am a father.’, ‘I am a grandparent.’)
    Is that all? Who are you when you're alone?
    The TV programme Wifeswap demonstrates that we are more than just role players.
    Take the statement - ‘I am a wife and mother’. The words describe roles, they don’t say anything about who a person is. If a woman could be just a wife and mother you could swap her with another wife and mother and no one would notice.
    If the wives doing the swapping in Wifeswap were just wives and mothers, the swap wouldn’t cause so much upheaval because the role would still be being filled in the same way it was before. But the fact is, there is more to a person than a role so a role cannot accurately define a person.
  • Paperwork. (‘I can prove who I am, here is my birth certificate and some utility bills.’)
    Are you a person or some paper?
    The British government says ID cards will prevent identity theft. The theft of paper work, words and numbers, yes. But is that who you are? Just words and numbers on paper?
  • What we look like. (‘I am beautiful’, ‘I am unattractive’, ‘I am blond’, ‘I am bald’.)
    Is that all? Just a body that people may or may not like the look of? If we were just our bodies then people could know all about who we are just by looking at us.

The Futility of Labels

The point I think it is important to make is that finding a label with which to define a person tends to obscure the person rather than reveal who they are.

Multiple labels can be applied to a single individual on any given day to describe their mood, interests, occupation, opinions and behaviour. Sometimes these words give you a reliable idea of the persons personality, and yet the danger is that we suddenly think we understand the individual if we can put words to them – we reference our pre-packaged understanding of what the words mean, rather than seeing the person bare; free from assumptions.

The labels we give to define who a person is can become a box with boundaries we expect them to live within the constraints of. We begin to think that if they step outside of the box they are no longer the person we thought we knew. By this point we have already made the mistake of thinking the word given describes a fixed part of who the person is. We have stopped looking at the person we are confronted with and instead made assumptions about them based upon our understanding of the label that has been applied, be it

‘attractive’, ‘unattractive’ ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, ‘barman’, ‘bouncer’, ‘MP’, ‘celebrity’, ‘mother,’ ‘lover’, ‘husband’, ‘wife’, ‘heterosexual’, ‘bisexual’, ‘homosexual’, ‘doctor’, ‘builder’, ‘historian’, ‘lawyer’, ‘accountant’, ‘artist’, ‘feminist’, ‘socialist’, ‘terrorist’, (whatever).

If we begin to think these words that describe the person is all they are, we don’t allow them room to grow. Similarly, if we define ourselves as any one thing we are setting ourselves up to miss opportunities to explore other facets of be-ing.

CASE STUDY -
“Kid I used to work with at mum and dads church… just had a relationship with a girl and grew heaps out of it. I’m real proud of her. Got out of the box and lived it real. She’s grown more in the last five years than some of those people will live in a lifetime. I guess its their choice but shit it makes me angry… mostly coz they wanted to keep me in that box too… and I know how hard it is to punch out and find daylight.” ~ Anon

A blogger from LiveJournal going by the name of Lukadia encourages people to be brave; to be themselves and ignore the messages they’re getting from the media or their peers that are telling them their identity can fit in a box; be defined by a word.

“Feel your goddamned feelings.” wrote Lukadia, passionately, “Be as male or female or Martian as you are, and stop rewriting your identity to fit other people's stereotypes.

You may imagine one label would suit you better, but envy and wishful thinking is no foundation for a life. If you have to work to make your natural state of being fit some bullshit standard that's been antiquated since long before the internet came around, you're trying too hard, and you're going to drive yourself insane.

Struggling to fit a label is a sure-fire recipe for disaster--as far as I know, you can buy blank labels by the box at any Office Depot, while humans only get written once per life.

Which would you rather try to change?”

This excerpt was taken from a blog in which Lukadia listed things that are often mistaken as an indication that a person is transgendered. Read the list here.

The Futility of Labels CASE STUDY -

A good example of individuality defying categorisation is recorded by an American blogger going by the name of uppityliberal.

In January 2006 she demonstrated the futility of labelling a person successfully by describing what assumptions she knew people to have made about her. Read the full text here or read the relevant excerpt below.


Feminism?

One of the myths about hairy legged women is that they are either a feminist, a lesbian, or both. I do not consider hairyness an accurate sign of whether or not such labels apply to a person. The blogger "the shaving feminist" agrees (see here).

Lets explore the flimsy nature of of the term 'feminism'. It is a familiar and yet confusing word, glibly used to define and group together all kinds of women. No one seems able to agree anymore on what feminism actually is. More and more concepts of what a feminist thinks, acts like, and looks like, are sheltering under the single word ‘feminist’. This is unhelpful.

"There are some people who believe sex work is inherently feminist. Some who believe motherhood is inherently feminist. Some who believe tarting oneself up like the cover of Maxim is inherently feminist.

I don't. And in fact, I tend to believe that none of the above acts have anything to do with feminism.

So someone who hears me express these views often defaults to the other pop culture definition of feminism, and assumes I'm a hairy-legged, anti-sex man-hater.

Well, the hairy legs I'll cop to. And there are some men I hate because they're reprehensible human beings. And I adore sex, but am not personally into expressing it with people I'm not emotionally involved with.

But anti-sex and a man hater, I am definitely not.”

~ uppityliberal, USA, January 2006, LiveJournal.com

In her blog on October 24 2005, Christy (from Australia, I think), proposed under the heading I am not a feminist but… that -

“…people often reject the label of 'feminist' because they don't want to get into a complicated discussion of trying to define exactly what they mean (or, more importantly, what they don't mean) by it.”

She reached this conclusion by exploring the multiple meanings associated with the term “feminist” and I am inclined to agree. My understanding is that the associations and connotations attached to the word feminism often confuse whatever point’s being made because its multiple identities fail to reflect the attitudes of any individual with accuracy. Perhaps the word never did, and only served to give the impression of a unified group of people.

To read Christy’s break down of the multi-faceted term follow this link to her blogspot: