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Identity

vonFiedler

vonFiedler

I Like Chopin
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnus
Who are you? And what do you want?

Identity is how we relate to ourselves. It is a combination of traits that drives us, affects our major decision making, and changes over time. If I was making a philosophical debate thread then I am sure I just started a shitstorm, but for now just go with this.

Identities are too often dumbed down into one issue, and far too often treated like a binary matter. As should be soon clear, I for instance don't think everyone needs a gender identity to be functional and happy. That's just one example that seems to come up a lot, but I don't personally need to identify with either my gender or another one. The reason is that there are plenty of other aspects to my identity that are totally unrelated that keep me happy with myself.

The purpose of this thread is to really explore our complex and most importantly multifaceted senses of self. The following is a simple exercise, but I think many people could really stand to give this thought.

So I went to this website and I made a pie chart listing the important parts of my self identity and a gut feeling about how important they are relative to each other.

2qwn8js.jpg


I put similar subjects under color groups. The percentages are all messed up because I added a category near the end. Keep in mind my chart is not the definitive example here. I left out things like gender, race, nationality, but those are certainly important to some of you. Likewise, aspects of your personality could be more important to you. Or you could surprise me. I want to see what you guys think about yourselves, and I want you to take some time with it.

Much of my chart is pretty self explanatory. I'm a libertarian, but that often comes back to a burning passion for the rights of children and consumers. Jesusist is a pretty recent term I've discovered, and it is pretty dumb word but it cover my specific religious beliefs or specifically how I care about the teachings of Christ but I'm pretty flippant towards the rest of the bible.
 
straight/gay is pretty useless as an identifier if i don't know what gender you identify as
 
That's clearly not part of how I see myself, but I enjoy the company of people with different dangly bits. And probably too much, or else I wouldn't have listed it.
 
Isn't putting stuff into percentages nearly as bad as treating them in a binary fashion?

And how would you judge parts of identity based on importance? Certainly, in certain situations, some parts will be more important and evident, while in others, the same parts might not be present at all.
 
Percentages is a pretty rough way to do it, but it's also just supposed to be a simple exercise. Smogoners love their Personality and Political quizzes, but inevitably complain about the lack of control. I just want to see you put yourself out there with your idea of who you are. If that's not a pie chart for you, so be it.

And while some things are repressed in certain situations, this is taking inventory of what really matters most of the time.
 
(EDIT: Ninja'ed) @Mastadi: von explained on IRC about that, something to do with people wanting tests like this, then complaining about not having complete control over the test.

Anyway, as per von's request, to stop this from sinking:
2qk79r7.png
 
Yet even from just that, we can see a lot. Notably, you chose pink to represent yourself, you didn't capitalize your name (showing you feel no sense of self-entitlement), yet you did bold your name, showing you still want people to see you, even among a noticeable background.
 
Or, explicitly it means that I identify with being heterosexual, but less than some non-sexuality aspects that are important to me and more so than others.

It'd be like saying that I like cats.
 
vonFiedler said:
Or, explicitly it means that I identify with being heterosexual, but less than some non-sexuality aspects that are important to me and more so than others.

It'd be like saying that I like cats.
Click to expand...

I don't see how, as if being heterosexual is a very important aspect of your life, and you feel like you have to mention it when you talk about what you associate your life with, I take that as you have to tell people that you are straight to get that point across. Instead, of say, meeting someone and them immediately realizing your sexual orientation, which most people assume the moment you walk in. Having to tell us you are heterosexual would be like, if I act bitchy, but then I tell them I am not a bitch, it's kind of sad that I have to tell them that I'm not a itch for them to realize it, and then they would probably just think I'm a bigger bitch for saying that I am not a bitch.
 
Adam Lambert said:
I don't see how, as if being heterosexual is a very important aspect of your life, and you feel like you have to mention it when you talk about what you associate your life with
Click to expand...

You sir are really failing to grasp that this is an introspective thought exercise. I don't walk up to acquaintances and start listing my job, political stance, or religion either. Though I am autistic so I guess that's not something that can taken for granted...

You are coming up with very good reasons as to why your sexuality wouldn't be that important to you, just as things like nationality and race are not important to me. Don't get hung up on it, just show us what makes you who you are.
 
vonFiedler said:
Identities are too often dumbed down into one issue, and far too often treated like a binary matter. As should be soon clear, I for instance don't think everyone needs a gender identity to be functional and happy. That's just one example that seems to come up a lot, but I don't personally need to identify with either my gender or another one.
Click to expand...
While that would seem to be the case to people who never experienced their gender identity and physical sex not to be in alignment, that being a certain gender doesn't seem like it would have a feel to it and one doesn't have to think about it, it's much like breathing: being able to doesn't make you happy, but not being able to is suffocating; it's extremely terrible to the point of it almost being like a terminal disease for those of us who happen to be transgender, especially transsexual (just the gender dysphoria itself, without even factoring in all the discrimination). Unfortunately, there have been multiple scientifical studies that show that gender identity is neuroanatomically hardwired so it's not like someone can "choose" whether to have a gender identity or not, and which one to have.

That being said, there are multiple possible subsets to being transgender besides just transsexuality, including being agender/genderless (not identifying with any gender at all), genderqueer (identifying somewhere in-between, since gender isn't a binary but rather a spectrum and some people happen to fall between the two extreme ends of it, and I'm not even talking about gender expression which is far more obviously fluid and spectrum-like, but about gender identity itself), genderfluid, bigender, etc., which could also be likely explainable by neuroanatomical size variances of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, just there hasn't been enough scientifical research into those particular cases yet.

Even though my gender identity should've normally been the least interesting thing about me, due to all the repression, inability to at all express it and all the gender dysphoria, it has become my dearest, most important part of me, greatly overshadowing all other parts of my identity.
 
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