Quote:
Originally Posted by laruss
I write a blog and usually it is about inspiration and creativity and my journey through that. This week however I have been really thinking a lot about labels and I had already posted a thread under 'Gender and Identity' called "Where do I fit in?", but I wanted to share my blog article as well. I am looking to generate discussion.
http://wisdomworks-laruss.blogspot.c...-need-one.html
I open this up to discussion and my questions are... What's your label, how did you come up with that label and do you need a label?
I have changed how I identify on this sight 3 or 4 times and I have only been here a few days.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Can you tell I'm having a mini crisis this week?? |
I guess for me, identity "labels" have become more and more for situations where people just don't "get" it or for socio-political reasons where you need obvious visibility for something outside the norm. It can also be for finding community and building community when our societies still haven't fully come to accept human diversity. Basically, you often need some kind of discourse before you can find others who feel similarly as you.
I identify as queer as far as my sexual orientation, and transguy as far as my sex (which is important for me to make clear that I occupy a sexed space that is neither female nor
cissexed male, but transmale). Butch (still male-identified) is another that is still a part of me.
Queer is probably among the most stable of my identities simply because the very implication of queer is completely open and not attached to sex/gender or who you fuck, but has more to do with dynamics and existing outside a sexually normative framework. I actually see queer identity, for myself, as important especially when in Canada there's still a lot of G/L folks and straight-identified folks who think rights struggles are over since marriage equality happened (without challenging the oppressive origins and implications of the marriage institution) and basically are still on a crusade to prove that "we're just like everyone else." Basically the party Pride culture, white gay male "professionals" and the white picket fence. Whereas being politically queer, to me, means making the challenge to normativity (sexual, ability, racial, gender, sexed etc.), and not just to the "heterosexual" world. Queer is important to me because it's an identity that really acknowledges its function as an identity within a social/political context.
Trans at this point for me is probably not as static. As I mentioned above, the identity of transmale is important for me as far as continuing to push for the recognition of sex beyond cissexed female and cissexed male. I fall into the trans category as far as we understand it here, but I see it as temporal and definitely very socially and politically motivated. If society ever realises that more than two or three sexes exist, and that sex can't actually be defined within the narrow confines it is today, then "trans" itself won't need to be such a fixed identity. Mostly I'm content with "non-normatively sexed" for whatever it means. I also see the real importance of a trans identity (for me) on a political scale, as far as trans rights in Canada (mostly in amending the approach to medical care, acceptance within athletic competition at every level that cis people can compete in, acceptance in society as just as legitimate as cis people etc) and generally changing public attitudes.
On the other hand, all three identities for me hold personal value. When I was first really coming to accept myself and understand myself when it came to my sex, the b/f community and understanding myself through formation of my butch identity. That history is not going to go away and it's not something I intend to throw by the way side. Same with trans as an identity and everything it brought me with understanding myself.
Basically, identity labels mean whatever you want them to mean. Some of them are relevant because of the society we live in, some of them forced upon us, others we can reclaim or use for political/social change. Others might just help you understand you a little bit better until a time comes when you don't feel you need that discourse anymore. I think they're definitely relevant in a society that denies so many of us our own diversity; that tells us that heterosexuality is "norm" and "natural" state of being, that there are only two sexes, that gender/interests are tied to the current medical communities understanding of "biological" sex etc. It's a way of finding a place for yourself in a world that claims you don't exist.