In my big news post, I hinted at a post about "vector identity theory" aka "I am a giant geek". Here's some stuff about how I think about identity groups and labels
( Read more... )
to me this seems a sort of rephrasing of geek code, or whatever-else code, but with a bit more granularity, and less standardization (in terms of which vectors you're actually looking at). wacky fun!
That is a good point, that the geek code works along these lines. Having a pile of identities and a range of coefficients you can pick for each is certainly better than "which of these are you" or "are you or are you not".
yep :) since things are not black or white. your system is a little easier to remember, though; i never remembered all of the fields in the geek code, even with suggestive abbreviations. :P
and yet now I want a gender-and-sexuality edition of the Geek Code, just because I haven't thought of that damn thing for YEARS and it always amused me. I remember when people used to put their Geek Codes in their email signatures... XD
Nice way to describe it! I like the mental picture it lends.
Just for my own sake, what terms are preferred over trans and queer by most people? I've heard plenty of folks in both communities refer to themselves and others using those words, and had thought they were generally well accepted - am I missing something?
Ah, totally missed that! In that case, I retract my confusion. Calling something "a foo" without calling them "a foo person" is something that's a problem.
One thing the disabled community is very big on (with a few big cultural exceptions) is person-first language, i.e. instead of saying "Bob is disabled" one should say "Bob has a disability." It removes the disability from consideration as the central fact of Bob's identity, which it usually isn't. Some of what violet is saying here reminds me of that, especially this particular point.
as a side note, that's always an awkward thing in scientific papers; you want to say "people with $clinically-relevant-characteristic" but it's kind of cumbersome to always say that, and for the purposes of a paper, that is the central fact of the subjects' identity, since you're theoretically controlling for the rest, so i always feel weird abbreviating it, but it's hard to deal otherwise. relatedly, i have yet to fully decide whether i think "normal controls" or "healthy controls" sounds less weird, though i tend to go with normal.
I totally dig your point that "are you a man or a woman?" requires at least two coefficients to answer. The whole one-dimensional spectrum has always felt only slightly less constricting than a binary to me.
I realize you're mostly just playing with ideas, but it's a fabulously apt way of putting it. =)
Comments 17
Reply
Reply
Reply
Reply
Just for my own sake, what terms are preferred over trans and queer by most people? I've heard plenty of folks in both communities refer to themselves and others using those words, and had thought they were generally well accepted - am I missing something?
Reply
Reply
One thing the disabled community is very big on (with a few big cultural exceptions) is person-first language, i.e. instead of saying "Bob is disabled" one should say "Bob has a disability." It removes the disability from consideration as the central fact of Bob's identity, which it usually isn't. Some of what violet is saying here reminds me of that, especially this particular point.
Reply
Reply
I realize you're mostly just playing with ideas, but it's a fabulously apt way of putting it. =)
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment