Entry tags:
Identity, Words, and Concepts
In today's author's group, one of the participating authors read a piece about the process of choosing words, and how picking this way of saying things would send your mind down a somewhat different track than if you'd picked this other possible way of expressing the same thought, so that the whole way the story goes ends up taking a different form.
That really resonated with me, because I very much feel like all my attempts to express my gender situation in words is like artwork, not precision science. That I have found a way of sketching out my experience and my identity, but not that it's inevitably the only way. And in contrast to that, it feels like most of the people I interact with, on gender discussion boards and in feminist groups and within LGBTQIA political groups and so on, think of these things as if there were an Objectively Right Answer and hey, we happen to have found it and it has to be expressed in these terms or else it is Wrong.
It's a difficult concept to address and explain. But it's important. Bear with me.
You ever seen Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting? It's not a literal rendition of how the stars in the sky look, but it captures something that photographs of the night sky don't -- it expresses how it feels to be outdoors at night when the stars are out. It does it compellingly, excellently, which is why we like it. But when we discuss art, we don't go around discussing "Starry Night" as if there were a precise true "Starry Night" waiting for someone to get around to painting it, and that there's no other possible way of capturing on a canvas what it feels like to be outdoors under the canopy of stars. I think we realize and recognize that someone else could paint a painting that would also express that -- but differently. We even realize that Vincent Van Gogh, in a different painting session, perhaps at a different time, might paint a different expression of the same underlying notion.
But when we discuss social issues and politics, and talk about "how things are" or "how it is", we so often act as if the words and concepts in which we've wrapped our understandings are sacrosanct.
Alcoholism and alcohol abuse, wherein people had previously been thought of as weak-willed immoral people who indulged and ruined themselves, was rethought of in medical terms. As a disease. Other addictions were thought of in a similar fashion because it was a useful way of reframing the situation. But does that mean no other model could have been formulated that would have also reshaped our thinking about alcohol and other addictions? To call something a "disease" requires familiarity with the medical model, most of which revolves around infectious organisms or physical failures of physical organs. It's a good way to frame things, but it's poetry in a way; it relies on metaphors and extensions of existing meanings to embrace additional territory, and to be blunt, it could have been put into words, and concepts, differently.
Being gay is another example. It was once perceived as an immoral behavior, something that a person who was so obsessed with sex would be reduced to, as if the person who sought same-sex sexual experiences were no different from anyone else except for the lack of restraint. Recasting it as a different way of being sexually oriented, that one was born with a built-in same-sex attraction, created a wellspring of understanding and compassion from large segments of society, so it was a very successful reframing of how to think about something. But now, of course, we treat that as doctrine, as "how it actually is", as if there were no other way to frame (or reframe) the matter. And yet it is said that under at least some circumstances nearly everyone is capable of finding a consideration of a body of the same sex to be an erotic one, even if limited to identifying with that body and imagining that what they see happening to it is happening to themself. It is possible that in an alternative social world someone would have formulated an affirmative proud description of being gay that still viewed it as a behavior that some people engage in, and challenged the judgment that those behaviors are somehow bad, and then we'd have an array of concepts and terms that would be different from the ones we have now. And that doesn't mean they'd be wrong and we are right.
My own situation, as I've often said, is that I came out in 1980 as a male-bodied person who had historically been one of the girls, always emulating them and internalizing their value systems and measuring myself against them. That, in and of itself, is something that could have gone another way. I could have conceptualized it differently as it was happening. But this was my reality as I lived it and thinking of myself in these terms shaped my sense of identity, you know? But it didn't involve rejecting my physiology, my maleness, the fact that I didn't have a clitoris and vulva and vagina and instead had a penis and testicles. That wasn't wrong, I was a male person who was one of the girls. And when I came out at the age of 21 in 1980, I explained all that, but it didn't mesh with the identities that were available.
Still doesn't.
People cling tightly to specific identity-descriptions of being transgender, in particular, but also how to be genderqueer, or nonbinary. And when my narrative doesn't mesh, some people say "You are saying that wrong. That is offensive. You are contradicting how it IS. You sound like you could be nonbinary. Or you are a transgender woman and should embrace that. You are valid, but not in the words you're using, because they aren't the right words, okay hon?"
It's all modeling clay. It's oil painting. Not just the words but the concepts. They are attempts to make an experience real. When they resonate with other people -- the way "Starry Night" resonates for so many of us -- that still doesn't make it the only possible way of rendering that experience.
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DreamWidth and LiveJournal are not on speaking terms at the moment. The corresponging LJ entry is here: https://ahunter3.livejournal.com/90878.html
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My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, is also being published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It's expected to be released in early 2022. Stay tuned for further details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
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Index of all Blog Posts
That really resonated with me, because I very much feel like all my attempts to express my gender situation in words is like artwork, not precision science. That I have found a way of sketching out my experience and my identity, but not that it's inevitably the only way. And in contrast to that, it feels like most of the people I interact with, on gender discussion boards and in feminist groups and within LGBTQIA political groups and so on, think of these things as if there were an Objectively Right Answer and hey, we happen to have found it and it has to be expressed in these terms or else it is Wrong.
It's a difficult concept to address and explain. But it's important. Bear with me.
You ever seen Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night" painting? It's not a literal rendition of how the stars in the sky look, but it captures something that photographs of the night sky don't -- it expresses how it feels to be outdoors at night when the stars are out. It does it compellingly, excellently, which is why we like it. But when we discuss art, we don't go around discussing "Starry Night" as if there were a precise true "Starry Night" waiting for someone to get around to painting it, and that there's no other possible way of capturing on a canvas what it feels like to be outdoors under the canopy of stars. I think we realize and recognize that someone else could paint a painting that would also express that -- but differently. We even realize that Vincent Van Gogh, in a different painting session, perhaps at a different time, might paint a different expression of the same underlying notion.
But when we discuss social issues and politics, and talk about "how things are" or "how it is", we so often act as if the words and concepts in which we've wrapped our understandings are sacrosanct.
Alcoholism and alcohol abuse, wherein people had previously been thought of as weak-willed immoral people who indulged and ruined themselves, was rethought of in medical terms. As a disease. Other addictions were thought of in a similar fashion because it was a useful way of reframing the situation. But does that mean no other model could have been formulated that would have also reshaped our thinking about alcohol and other addictions? To call something a "disease" requires familiarity with the medical model, most of which revolves around infectious organisms or physical failures of physical organs. It's a good way to frame things, but it's poetry in a way; it relies on metaphors and extensions of existing meanings to embrace additional territory, and to be blunt, it could have been put into words, and concepts, differently.
Being gay is another example. It was once perceived as an immoral behavior, something that a person who was so obsessed with sex would be reduced to, as if the person who sought same-sex sexual experiences were no different from anyone else except for the lack of restraint. Recasting it as a different way of being sexually oriented, that one was born with a built-in same-sex attraction, created a wellspring of understanding and compassion from large segments of society, so it was a very successful reframing of how to think about something. But now, of course, we treat that as doctrine, as "how it actually is", as if there were no other way to frame (or reframe) the matter. And yet it is said that under at least some circumstances nearly everyone is capable of finding a consideration of a body of the same sex to be an erotic one, even if limited to identifying with that body and imagining that what they see happening to it is happening to themself. It is possible that in an alternative social world someone would have formulated an affirmative proud description of being gay that still viewed it as a behavior that some people engage in, and challenged the judgment that those behaviors are somehow bad, and then we'd have an array of concepts and terms that would be different from the ones we have now. And that doesn't mean they'd be wrong and we are right.
My own situation, as I've often said, is that I came out in 1980 as a male-bodied person who had historically been one of the girls, always emulating them and internalizing their value systems and measuring myself against them. That, in and of itself, is something that could have gone another way. I could have conceptualized it differently as it was happening. But this was my reality as I lived it and thinking of myself in these terms shaped my sense of identity, you know? But it didn't involve rejecting my physiology, my maleness, the fact that I didn't have a clitoris and vulva and vagina and instead had a penis and testicles. That wasn't wrong, I was a male person who was one of the girls. And when I came out at the age of 21 in 1980, I explained all that, but it didn't mesh with the identities that were available.
Still doesn't.
People cling tightly to specific identity-descriptions of being transgender, in particular, but also how to be genderqueer, or nonbinary. And when my narrative doesn't mesh, some people say "You are saying that wrong. That is offensive. You are contradicting how it IS. You sound like you could be nonbinary. Or you are a transgender woman and should embrace that. You are valid, but not in the words you're using, because they aren't the right words, okay hon?"
It's all modeling clay. It's oil painting. Not just the words but the concepts. They are attempts to make an experience real. When they resonate with other people -- the way "Starry Night" resonates for so many of us -- that still doesn't make it the only possible way of rendering that experience.
—————
DreamWidth and LiveJournal are not on speaking terms at the moment. The corresponging LJ entry is here: https://ahunter3.livejournal.com/90878.html
—————
My book, GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet, has been published by Sunstone Press. It is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble in paperback and ebook, and as ebook only from Apple, Kobo, and directly from Sunstone Press themselves.
My second book, That Guy in Our Women's Studies Class, is also being published by Sunstone Press. It's a sequel to GenderQueer. It's expected to be released in early 2022. Stay tuned for further details.
Links to published reviews and comments are listed on my Home Page
———————
This DreamWidth blog is echoed on LiveJournal and WordPress. Please friend/link me from any of those environments on which you have an account.
————————
Index of all Blog Posts