(April 21, 2017 at 9:23 am)Tiberius Wrote: ...I don't see how that is a choice, unless you can control your inner sense of self. I can't certainly.
In the most neutral way possible, I am trying to reason through the apparent mixed messages in our culture about what the various components of identity are, how identity is formed, and how it is experienced. It seems that thinking about identity-as-such should inform how people think about particular identities or ways of identifying one’s self and others.
For example, people are identified by everything from their family relationships to their political views. Is sexual preference more like being a beer snob or more like having blue eyes? Is being African-American more like an inheritable trait or more of a cultural heritage? Is being religious more like being an architect or more like being a cancer survivor? A little of each…sometimes one, sometimes the other…?
The line between when it is right and proper for people get to choose their identity and when others get to choose it for them gets fuzzy fast. A woman may believe she is beautiful (how she sees herself) while the editors of Vanity Fair may not (how others see her). The sociopath’s self-assessment that he is not “crazy” probably shouldn’t determine the response of health-care professionals towards him. When it comes to the letting of State contracts, business owners do not get to decide their own demographic categories. The body politic decides who is a protected class and who is not. From these examples it would seem that identity is not entirely a personal matter but can, in some situations, may or may not be an appropriate imposition on someone by the society in which he or she lives.
With respect to gender identity, I question whether this must be an all-or-nothing proposition given that at least some components of identity come from culture in which we live. Maybe it is not proper to carve out gender identity as a special case in this regard. Maybe there are other opinion options that are not polar opposites, meaning not just fully biological or completely personal choice. So, on this one, I quoted Tiberius, because I suspect that while for him, and most people, not everything in their inner sense of self is under his control, but certainly some things are. And at the same time, there are many instances when someone’s inner sense of self is irrelevant to their place in society.
Of course I have my own opinions about the relationship between biological sex and identity. And I’m open to discussing them without advocating for a particular stance, but for the moment I think clarity about identity-as-such is much more important than agreement about the nature of any particular kind of identity.
