Thoughts on identity politics

A dangerous path to the destruction of empathy

Growing up in the 80’s and 90’s, there was a concerted effort to push back against labels and the “collective” experience. While an argument could be made this concerted effort made those in Gen X a “collective” of rebellion (which would be true), one thing kept this desire to be individual without borders that labels imply from collapsing in upon it’s own egocentric focus and a “movement” orientation. The ability to be offended without being wounded. Gen X did not bother with a desire to educate or elucidate the “ignorant” about diversity and inclusion. The goal was to simply resist being boxed into stereotypes and formulaic ways of being.

In many ways it was freeing to grow up in a time when one could explore interests, attractions, and beliefs without constantly defining and redefining what that meant for oneself or others. That time also didn’t offer any anchor or foundation upon which to understand oneself or build. Endless navel gazing and experimentation without the boundaries of truth or tradition tends to lead to further decay of morals and values. In my experience it took years of undoing the consequences of all my exploration to find who I am on a more concrete and eternal foundation of truth.

Postmodernism in American culture became even more adaptive to our culture when there were no definitions for the way one exists in the world, conducts oneself, or is in relationship with others and things. Yes, the beginning of postmodernism occurred years before. (I would argue the Sexual Revolution was the birth of postmodernism in America, which is another essay in and of itself.) Gen X, due to a lack of foundational truth, built a framework one which identity politics could exploit.

In a defiant or even flippant response to the offensive and offender of identity, Gen X did not go as far as the Civil Rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr. did in identifying and upholding the humanity of the offender which was possibly what opened the door for our current state of identity politics. “You be you” is not quite the same thing as “I see your inherent worth and your perspective”. Subsequent generations, uncomfortable with a lack of absolute truth or foundation in identity, began to create religious fervor to the ideal of “being seen and celebrated as existing within an ‘outgroup’”. Victimization as an identity and virtue was born.

It was no longer enough to be free to identify how one wishes. The need for validation of both self-declared identity and felt offenses (microaggressions) regardless of the lack of adherence to objective truth or proof became the standard for inclusivity. Out of this rumination of slights, internalized shame, and “othering” a powerful narrative of a hierarchy of victim status arose. Intersectionality has worth on a personal level. Understanding the intersections where various experiences based on immutable characteristics meet can give one a window into the systems and cultures we exist in and how they work together or clash.

The experiences of biological men and women alone are going to in some ways be the same and in some ways drastically different due to both genetic factors and cultural norms. If you add nationality or race (if we are going to agree to propagate a concept that is and of itself exclusive to those with mixed heritage) onto that, experiences become even more diverse while still sharing many human joys and sufferings on a personal level. Then adding sexuality, which we continue to debate as whether it is attraction or action, we create another level of diversity and again sameness to experiences. Gender identity, which is necessarily based in binary norms that Gen X refused to acknowledge, is so fluid it is difficult to extrapolate whether an experience one has was due to genetic realties and cultural norms about biological sex or one’s adoption of an identity based on feelings of a subjective view of what it means to be any gender.

Was my negative (from my perspective) experience with a successful male psychologist in my area (he had asked me if it was even possible for me as a mother of 4 to run a successful private practice, never mind he was a father of 4) due to misogyny based on societal norms of biological sex or was it due to my misunderstanding of his attempt to acknowledge what he assumed my experience of life must have been based on subjective opinions of gender identity? We can begin to see how rife with opportunities to tear down another can become when we play the game of identity politics. You must not only acknowledge the objective truths of my experience, but also be able to correctly intuit whatever subjective interpretations I have layered on top of that and affirm them as real.

Any failure to affirm another’s subjective view of themselves and how they exist in the world has been deemed a phobia, “ogyny”, bigotry, and/or lack of empathy. Unfortunately, the meaning of phobias, “ogynies”, and bigotry has become so diluted they carry almost no weight in any serious desire to understand or correct harmful behavior. I am setting them aside for now. It is the erosion of empathy that has me most concerned.

Empathy is simply the ability to understand another’s perspective and connect to their feelings about their experience. It does not require agreement, ally ship, activism, advocacy, or any action at all. The shift to demanding performance as an indicator of empathy has rapidly accelerated our decline in having civil conversation and finding common ground upon which to build. By framing another’s response as inherently evil if it is not instantly affirming, we remove the possibility for understanding, growth, and problem solving. Creating puppets of conformity is a massive overcorrection of the goal of Gen X to create agents of anti-conformity.

And here we see the repeated cycles of correcting a lack of morality and understanding with dramatic swings to the other extreme. This most recent swing has added a religious fervor to it with cries of “heretic” toward anyone whose immutable characteristics match but their views to not conform to the status of “victim” or the suggested solutions, even if there is agreement to the definition of the problem. As an example if we go by attraction and the ability to “fall in love” as the defining features of sexuality, than I would be most closely aligned to polyamory and thus queer. However, I define myself as heterosexual for two important reasons.

First, I have been in a heterosexual relationship that I am deeply committed to for over 16 years. This is no small feat and the commitment is so sincere I regularly distance myself from those I may be enamored with in a way that has the potential to degrade my relationship either internally to me or my spouse. Secondly, I find the practice of polyamorous relationships to be unsustainable due to human nature and deeply unfulfilling to my values of providing sustained stable and secure attachments for myself and my loved ones. When I push back against labels placed on me as “queer” or “poly”, I often am accused of internalized phobia and bigotry based on religious fundamentalism. This is so preposterous as to be almost laughable if it weren’t so divisive and destructive. Such gaslighting is a failure to understand my morals, values, and deeply contemplated commitments to a way of existing in the world. There is no enlightenment in such claims. They do not inform the accuser of my position, nor do they endear me to the accuser’s struggle from which such allegations are born.

Being someone equally committed to seeing the value in all humans, an agapé love for all humans, and a desire to increase understanding; I do not simply cry “offense” at the accusations hurled at me. That would be unproductive and perpetuating the cycle. Rather, I attempt to explore the accuser’s point of view and find the source of why my resistance to their label is felt as a danger to them. Typically, a deep desire for homogenous belonging is at the heart of such fears. Being part of an “in group” no matter how small or segregated is a need we all have to be safe and understood. Unfortunately, hijacking the very tools that create understanding and safety across and amongst various groups in a demand for affirmation is the very thing that will further push us toward cultural war. Tribalism is inherent, but the desire to destroy or absorb other tribes need not be.