Arguing Against Someone's Identity-Label is a Form of NOT LISTENING
= A =
I'm amazed at how often someone introduces themselves as having a specific identity and goes on to explain in more detail how life has been for them and what their experience has been, only to have people immediately contradicting their identity: "Well I think that makes you this other thing, not what you are calling yourself", or "You shouldn't use that term, it doesn't belong to you, only people who fit such-and-suchg other description should call themselves that", or even "You're just a mainstream person with no relevant differentiated identity to speak of, and you should quit calling yourself by any identity-label".
It happens within generic LGBTQIA community groups, it happens within highly specific support groups organized around one or more solitary letters from that acronym, and it happens within the larger surrounding society as well. "I reject all of what you're saying about yourself -- because you're calling yourself something that you're not".
It's a special form of not listening. I mean, any time a person uses a label for themself, it's a form of shorthand, like a book title or the title of a term paper or something. It's never going to express the entire thought process, but it's their chosen starting point. Then they go on to elaborate and explain about themselves and how they fit in (or fail to fit in) against this backdrop and that backdrop and how they have come to understand themselves as a person.
Now, it's one thing for someone to give a long thoughtful reply to the other person's entire narrative and offer comments and show understandings of that person's experiences, and to then mention along with all that other stuff that they think maybe this or that other term might be more appropriate or more useful. But to give a reply where the entire focus of the response is "you're not what you just called yourself"? That ignores the person's story and puts all the focus on the label as if the correctness of the label were the only important thing being said here.
It's the equivalent of writing a movie review of Sixth Sense that contained nothing except "This isn't about the sixth sense. The sixth sense is extra-sensory perception, like when you know what is going to happen before it happens. This Bruce Willis flick is just a ghost story, give it a pass". Or reviewing Boy Meets Girl by writing "Robby already knew Ricky at the beginning of this movie so it has nothing to do with 'Boy Meets Girl', don't bother".
People in narrowly defined groups sometimes do this as a gatekeeping function: "You tell a nice story but you aren't one of us and you shouldn't really be here in our space". People in broader LGBTQIA groups often do it as a form of shoehorning: "I divide the queer world up into these categories and excuse me but you belong in this category". People in the broad mainsteam culture do it fairly regularly as a way of denying the legitimacy of a marginalized identity: "You say you're that specific kind of person but really you're just a normal person who is trying to explain away your behavior or the outcome of it".
In all cases, it erases the full detailed story that the individual is trying to tell, by refusing to acknowledge that it has meaning aside from functioning as an example of a piece of terminology.
= B =
This is not just a case of people being dense or of getting caught up in little things that don't matter. It's political. They're rejecting what is being said because they don't like it, they feel threatened by it, they don't want a wider awareness of this kind of experience or understanding to catch on and they want to shut it down.
A person's choice of their own labels is also political, of course. To label our experience in the first place, in this manner, is to assert that it is part of a larger pattern, and that what we've been through has been the way it has been because of stuff that we have in common with other people who share the same identity-factor, that it is categorical, that it's an aggregate identity and not just our own personal narrative or our own unique personal quirks and traits.
There's always a backdrop, too. One chooses one identity as a way to push away some other identity, a default identity of some sort, that is otherwise constantly being foisted upon one. For example, if there were not a heteronormative expectation no one would need to come out as gay or lesbian. In the absense of being able to identify as gay and be recognized and understood as such, an individual's behavior, if still seen through heteronormative assumptions, looks strange: "Eww, you are so sex-obsessed and so unpicky that you would do perverted things like have erotic experiences with people of the same sex, which is clearly less desirable, so you are therefore a sex maniac and a threat to public decency!" Asserting the different identity (gay) shifts perception by establishing a different norm, a different set of expectations and values for understanding those same behaviors: "Oh, so for you, erotic experiences with the same sex are the desirable ones, so when you're sexually interested at all, that's where it will occur and it doesn't mean you're more sex-obsessed or less picky, you're different".
= C =
Our backdrop includes a world of existing labels, too. But they may not be useful to us, especially because labels that describe people so often bundle together a whole batch of meanings and implications that the person trying to explain their identity needs to untie and separate from each other.
Imagine a female person, perhaps from a previous century, who wants to designate herself as an expert in her field. The male people in her world call themselves "masters" of their subject areas. But "master" is a term that in her time is reserved exclusively for male people. The corresponding term for female use was "mistress". But the two terms have very different connotations, and she finds that saying she is a "Mistress of Science" doesn't convey at all what she wants to express. Perhaps she chooses to refer to herself as a "Master of Science" only to be contradicted by people who tell her that it is inappropriate for her to use the word "master" because it means she is male, and she isn't. The problem is that mastery, in the relevant sense, has been regarded as male, and yet she is. A person possessing mastery. Her choice of the term "Master of Science" is political. It is controversial (or was, once upon a time) because it is political. The people rejecting her entire claim on the basis of not liking her term for herself, that is also political, and their rejection of the entirety of what she's trying to say by focusing exclusively on her choice of term, that's also political: the politics of Not Listening.
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I'm amazed at how often someone introduces themselves as having a specific identity and goes on to explain in more detail how life has been for them and what their experience has been, only to have people immediately contradicting their identity: "Well I think that makes you this other thing, not what you are calling yourself", or "You shouldn't use that term, it doesn't belong to you, only people who fit such-and-suchg other description should call themselves that", or even "You're just a mainstream person with no relevant differentiated identity to speak of, and you should quit calling yourself by any identity-label".
It happens within generic LGBTQIA community groups, it happens within highly specific support groups organized around one or more solitary letters from that acronym, and it happens within the larger surrounding society as well. "I reject all of what you're saying about yourself -- because you're calling yourself something that you're not".
It's a special form of not listening. I mean, any time a person uses a label for themself, it's a form of shorthand, like a book title or the title of a term paper or something. It's never going to express the entire thought process, but it's their chosen starting point. Then they go on to elaborate and explain about themselves and how they fit in (or fail to fit in) against this backdrop and that backdrop and how they have come to understand themselves as a person.
Now, it's one thing for someone to give a long thoughtful reply to the other person's entire narrative and offer comments and show understandings of that person's experiences, and to then mention along with all that other stuff that they think maybe this or that other term might be more appropriate or more useful. But to give a reply where the entire focus of the response is "you're not what you just called yourself"? That ignores the person's story and puts all the focus on the label as if the correctness of the label were the only important thing being said here.
It's the equivalent of writing a movie review of Sixth Sense that contained nothing except "This isn't about the sixth sense. The sixth sense is extra-sensory perception, like when you know what is going to happen before it happens. This Bruce Willis flick is just a ghost story, give it a pass". Or reviewing Boy Meets Girl by writing "Robby already knew Ricky at the beginning of this movie so it has nothing to do with 'Boy Meets Girl', don't bother".
People in narrowly defined groups sometimes do this as a gatekeeping function: "You tell a nice story but you aren't one of us and you shouldn't really be here in our space". People in broader LGBTQIA groups often do it as a form of shoehorning: "I divide the queer world up into these categories and excuse me but you belong in this category". People in the broad mainsteam culture do it fairly regularly as a way of denying the legitimacy of a marginalized identity: "You say you're that specific kind of person but really you're just a normal person who is trying to explain away your behavior or the outcome of it".
In all cases, it erases the full detailed story that the individual is trying to tell, by refusing to acknowledge that it has meaning aside from functioning as an example of a piece of terminology.
= B =
This is not just a case of people being dense or of getting caught up in little things that don't matter. It's political. They're rejecting what is being said because they don't like it, they feel threatened by it, they don't want a wider awareness of this kind of experience or understanding to catch on and they want to shut it down.
A person's choice of their own labels is also political, of course. To label our experience in the first place, in this manner, is to assert that it is part of a larger pattern, and that what we've been through has been the way it has been because of stuff that we have in common with other people who share the same identity-factor, that it is categorical, that it's an aggregate identity and not just our own personal narrative or our own unique personal quirks and traits.
There's always a backdrop, too. One chooses one identity as a way to push away some other identity, a default identity of some sort, that is otherwise constantly being foisted upon one. For example, if there were not a heteronormative expectation no one would need to come out as gay or lesbian. In the absense of being able to identify as gay and be recognized and understood as such, an individual's behavior, if still seen through heteronormative assumptions, looks strange: "Eww, you are so sex-obsessed and so unpicky that you would do perverted things like have erotic experiences with people of the same sex, which is clearly less desirable, so you are therefore a sex maniac and a threat to public decency!" Asserting the different identity (gay) shifts perception by establishing a different norm, a different set of expectations and values for understanding those same behaviors: "Oh, so for you, erotic experiences with the same sex are the desirable ones, so when you're sexually interested at all, that's where it will occur and it doesn't mean you're more sex-obsessed or less picky, you're different".
= C =
Our backdrop includes a world of existing labels, too. But they may not be useful to us, especially because labels that describe people so often bundle together a whole batch of meanings and implications that the person trying to explain their identity needs to untie and separate from each other.
Imagine a female person, perhaps from a previous century, who wants to designate herself as an expert in her field. The male people in her world call themselves "masters" of their subject areas. But "master" is a term that in her time is reserved exclusively for male people. The corresponding term for female use was "mistress". But the two terms have very different connotations, and she finds that saying she is a "Mistress of Science" doesn't convey at all what she wants to express. Perhaps she chooses to refer to herself as a "Master of Science" only to be contradicted by people who tell her that it is inappropriate for her to use the word "master" because it means she is male, and she isn't. The problem is that mastery, in the relevant sense, has been regarded as male, and yet she is. A person possessing mastery. Her choice of the term "Master of Science" is political. It is controversial (or was, once upon a time) because it is political. The people rejecting her entire claim on the basis of not liking her term for herself, that is also political, and their rejection of the entirety of what she's trying to say by focusing exclusively on her choice of term, that's also political: the politics of Not Listening.
-------
This LiveJournal blog is echoed on DreamWidth, WordPress, and Blogger. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
--------
Index of all Blog Posts