Identification In Progress…

As a whole, we tend find categories and labels easy to grasp and comprehend. Sorting things into their spot allows us to feel like we have a better handle on any given topic or situation. We tend to rely on these as a matter of instinct, these classifications guiding our expectations and understanding of the world around us. However, like much of the rest of human experience, the reality is messier than we like to easily process. This is especially true regarding the topic I’d like to approach today. It is imprecise, imperfect, and dependent on our capacity to understand what we’re looking at. So, lets talk about shifts in identity.

The concept of shifting identity is, I think, something of a misnomer. Our ability to engage with our own identities is complicated by our journeys of understanding. This can include understanding of ourselves, of the ways our personal intricacies interact with social norms and expectations, and of how to relate to human experience on the whole. All of these things evolve throughout our lives, or at least they should. The process of questioning your own perceptions of the way things are invariably leads to new perspectives and observations, new ideas, new possibilities. This is not to say every endeavor of introspection and self-discovery results in evolutions or changes in the way you understand or present your identity. It is absolutely possible to come away from such a process having reaffirmed convictions and solidified aspects that were already in place. Indeed, this is just as valuable an outcome. Further, by nature of engaging in the process, it’s likely you’ve engaged with questions that were on your mind, or that you’d been afraid to approach, and whatever the answers, there is personal value in dealing with those over avoiding them.

However, I’d like to look more closely at the other possibility here. Something that has been a massive factor in my life over the past several months is dealing with what felt like shifts in my identity. This can be extremely difficult to approach and understand. In particular, for someone like me who is, out of necessity, intensely familiar with large-scale discourse over topics like sexuality and gender identity, finding a way to navigate the realities of evolving understandings of my identity within the framework of having to fight for recognition of that identity as valid and real is tricky. The “born this way” point of discussion is a common and loud point in pushing back against those who would assert non-cishet identities are morally, ethically, or religiously bad or invalid. It is a rallying cry, because it is a relatively easy concept. If someone is born like this, then it’s just who they are, and how could someone else possibly tell them they are wrong. The reality, as usual, is more complicated than this. There is truth in the fact that, from most any angle, variation in the way humans exist makes way more sense than a very small number of rigidly defined categories, and that this is true from birth. There is also truth, however, in the fact that human development and the human brain are both incredibly complex and variable. There are so many different moving parts that no two people will come out of a situation exactly the same. Even if there are common themes that play out, they will not exhibit exactly the same characteristics. Understanding how this affects the concept of identity, I think, requires looking a level deeper than that outward expression.

To bring all this into the realm of how an individual handles their own identity, I believe there are three important layers to understand, as well as understanding how they interact. The three layers are identity, understanding of identity, and expression. The identity itself is pretty straightforward, it is how you identify. It makes up who you are. Understanding that identity is a little more complicated, as that understanding is often influenced by circumstances of childhood, surrounding culture, social expectations, personal perceptions of those around you, and personal perceptions of yourself. Expression is the aspect we’ve examined most to this point, the way you present yourself to the world and what everyone around you sees. As far as how these interact, the answer to that is where the key to all this lies. Expression is, arguably, the most distinct, as it involves a fair amount of conscious decisions about what we show others. However, between our ability to hide things from ourselves and taint our own perceptions of what actually shows to other people, it get ties up in that understanding. The other two are heavily intertwined and tied into each other, so much so that it can be almost impossible to tell them apart.

I believe the discussion as to whether identity, especially in the realm of things like sexuality and gender, is immutable is inherently flawed because of this. This aspect means that variation in times when people approach or address an identity that might vary from what is presented as the majority identity should be expected. Different journeys in life will present people with different priorities and different opportunities for exposure and consideration. Furthermore, it means that those who begin to develop the skills to engage in that form of questioning and begin to break from feelings of being required to adhere to a particular identity are more likely to have their presentation of that identity evolve and continue to shift as they gain deeper understanding of what it means to them. As you might expect by this point, this has played out in my life in many ways. My understanding of my sexuality has gone through numerous shifts and recalibrations as I have dealt with other aspects o myself I needed to change, or areas of trauma I hadn’t yet engaged with. This happened a few months ago with my gender identity, which I will likely talk about in-depth in a separate post at some point. That evolution in understanding around gender has taken almost 4 months and involved interactions with numerous other aspects of myself coming to the forefront, and a number of traumas surfacing that I had buried. It has involved recognizing and internalizing that I have been a victim of abuse. Those things have not shaped my gender identity, but they have impacted my ability to understand what it is. At this point, I identify as Agender, but oddly enough, I am actually more comfortable with gendered references like “woman” than I have ever been up until this point. I am still working through why that is, but I do feel fairly confident that at least in part it is a result of being more confident in my gender identity and how it relates to the world. This may have always been my identity. I don’t feel as though I can assert whether or not that’s true, because my understanding of it is undeniably flawed. What I can say is that this is currently the most comfortable I have ever been in myself, and it is the best I have ever understood myself and how I exist in the world.

This kind of evolution is too uncommon. We rarely talk about it, let alone discuss how to engage in it. Conflating it with identity itself leads to difficulty with concepts like experimentation with sexuality and gender presentation, when these things should be encouraged as a means of exploring our understandings of who we are. Being free to do so is cathartic, it is uplifting, and it is freeing. It can be difficult and occasionally cause strife with those who don’t want to accept those who are different, but coming out the other side of it is almost universally a positive, improving the lives of anyone who undertakes the journey. Question yourself. Be open to new answers. Don’t be afraid to live them out. This is the kind of progress that reverberates throughout your life and lifts you up in areas you didn’t even expect.

This kind of vulnerability has often been difficult for me, exposing this kind of deep nuance to who I am and how I understand myself. These processes are scary, and they are deeply personal, but I have come to believe that sharing them is not only valuable to share any knowledge I might have gained, but also to keep moving myself forward and make me more comfortable putting myself out there. I hope that these sorts of explorations do make a difference to those that read these posts, and I hope that maybe I bring something new, or some different approach, that helps some readers understand the world around them better. But in addition to all that, I gain so much just from putting all these things out and feeling like I’ve taken the time to put something together. This is just another step in all these evolutions, and I look forward to continuing to bring these posts to the table.