While proofreading this entry before posting, I found myself thinking about the question of "what are identity categories anyway?" This also comes from the book that I was writing up an entry for last night (which won't post for quite some time), which talked a lot about the difference between "modern sexual identities" versus "pre-modern sexual tastes." Thinking from my own personal experience of "sexual identity," it sometimes feels like even "modern sexual identities" is an invented construct rather than an objective phenomenon. My sexuality category is "lesbian" (also "asexual") but when I contemplate understanding my sexuality as part of an objective, identifiable, widespread cultural "thing" that is a lesbian identity, I either have to conclude that there is no unified "lesbian identity" or I'm not part of it. Similarly, to the extent that there is an objective, identifiable "asexual identity" I also don't feel part of it. Part of my identity is "woman, " but it would be a snare and an illusion to suppose that there is an objective, identifiable cultural experience of "woman" that all women belong to and participate in. And I'm not sure that I feel any more comfortable about assuming that the unease I feel is simply a matter of factoring in the question of intersectional identities. And yet...I do feel confident in identifying with the concept "lesbian" even if I don't identify with some universal unified lesbianhood. I do feel confident in identifying with the concept "asexual" even if I don't identify with some universal unified asexuality. I do feel confident in identifying with the concept "woman", etc etc.
So does this mean that I'm really a social constructionist? I don't think so. Because I don't think that my experience of those categories is an arbitrary product of a fleeting conjunction of cultures. In fact, I think that my unease with the idea of belonging to "objective, identifiable identity categories" is an unease with the specific social constructions produced by this fleeting moment in time. (I sometimes point out that I identify much more with the sexuality category of "romantic friendship" than I do with the sexuality categories available during my own lifetime.) I experience something--I guess "building blocks of identity" is a good way to put it--that feels apart from the specific conjunctions of features to which gender/sexuality labels are given. But to represent those building blocks as "a matter of individual personal taste" (as the book I was writing up last night would put it) feels trivializing. The distinctions in how I experience romantic and sexual attraction are not the same as my dislike for kale and my love of sushi, even those the latter are both shaped by specific, transitory cultural factors. Would I have always felt a vague, undefinable yearning to eat raw fish if sushi restaurants hadn't been "a thing" within my lifetime? Somehow I don't think so.
At the same time, there are vocal (though minority) voices on the "identitarian" side, both with regard to sexuality and gender, that seem bound and determined to narrow and specify the categories of "lesbian" or "woman" so strictly that we may end with no one qualifying for membership at all, either in the present day or the past. (In some cases, this seems to be an intentional goal.) Human categories are complex and fuzzy. Any time we have tried to eliminate that complexity and fuzziness has ended in tragedy and horror.
These meandering thoghts boil down to a couple of points. 1) Are the social constructionists/anti-identitarians simply wrong-headed in treating contemporary gender/sexual identities as a fixed point to react against? 2) Does it trivialize the inner subjective experience of "identity building blocks" to dismiss them as less meaningful than the complex intersectional structures of those building blocks that we give names to? (This is the topic of my podcast "Prepositions, Sexuality, and Gender: Unpacking Our Bundles.") 3) Can one belong to a category that never entirely seems to fit? Anyway, on to the article.
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