What is your identity and how is it constructed? ‘There is no essence of identity to be discovered; rather, identity is continually being produced within the vectors of similarity and difference (Barker, 2003: 231). Along with identity fundamentally being created by how people construct you, it is also produced through your consideration of similarities and differences to others. Identity is constructed from the circulated concepts from the culture into which you were born. In stride with postmodern theory, the self is made up of many unfixed identities that are in a continual process of changing through encounters with similarities and differences within other people, discourses, and places. The way we understand ourselves and the way in which we are understood by others is ultimately our identity while this is assembled through the discourses we come in contact with throughout our lives. Therefore identity is relational and constructed, as opposed to fixed and innate. It is apparent through the examination of certain gender and sexual discourses that your constructed identity is continually being produced within the vectors of similarity and difference.
The process of identifying ourselves involves determining if others are like us or not like us, or being the same or different. We identify ourselves and our identified by others according to dichotomous logic, which lays the ground work for similarity and difference within humans (Barker, 2003: 218). This includes binary pairs such as male/female, homosexual/heterosexual. Therefore the different or divergent identity to that of the mainstream, such as homosexuality is to heterosexuality, is viewed as the negative or lesser identity. Someone who is homosexual might feel out of place in a hetero-normative space, but might immediately feel comfortable with another person in that space who has a homosexual identity, even though they might not have much else in common. They find comfort in this similarity thus producing one aspect of their complex sexual identity.
Categories such as homosexuality and heterosexuality, and male and female can be considered sexual and gender identities, but not natural identities. They are something that is part of us and given to us through our culture, but not natural or easily changeable. Within postmodern theory sexual identities are rarely secure and heterosexual and homosexual identities haunt each other within their cultural similarities and differences. Our sense of self is produced through discourses, and through cultural induction we are placed into these already created sexual and gender identities. These categories are who we are; they are real and culturally evident, but not natural.
The anti-essential position regarding one’s cultural identity stresses that, ‘as well as points of similarity, cultural identity is organized around points of difference’ (Hall, 1990). Cultural identity is seen as a process of becoming with the subject de-centered. Cultural identity is not an ‘essence’, but an always changing group of positions. The points of difference around which cultural identities can form include identification aspects such as gender and sexuality. One’s identity such as being male or female, homosexual or heterosexual is continually changing with a meaning that will never be finished or fixed.
The terms ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’ arose for the first time in the 1860s. Before this time society did not deem it indicative to socially identify someone or a group of people by their sexuality. This is an example of the ever-changing context of identity. Hetero-normative society, along with the newly identified homosexual subculture, finally decided during the mid-19th century that this alternative lifestyle was to be named into existence (Hall 1990). Obviously, it does not mean that homosexual people did not exist up until this point; however it does mean that people felt at that point they had to clearly identify themselves with the gender they wanted to have sex with. It is clear that the modern homosexual identity has emerged because of the feeling that this group needed to be differentiated from the mainstream heterosexual identity.
In modern times, sexuality has become the center of many of our identities. Today our daily activities, where we live, what kind of car we drive can be related to whether we have a homosexual or heterosexual identity. Apparently, in some areas of modern society it has become more important who we prefer to sleep with rather than who we want to vote for in the next presidential election. Our sexual identity defines who we are because of it is something that can be deemed as similar or different to another person.
There is a striking parallel between the construction of gender and sexuality with the construction of one’s identity. Gender and sexuality are culturally constructed concepts. Society decides whether someone is male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, along with segregating even further, those who fit into neither of these categories. Identity is similar in that it is constructed within society’s cultural similarities and differences. Gender and sexuality and identity are all created with relation to a formal cultural understanding.
Judith Butler argues in Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, that biological and physical attributes are not natural, but rather learned. Sexuality does not exist outside of the discursive and indirect practices of gender. The term ‘hetero-normative’, the dominant notion, such as male being superior to female is prescribed and reinforced in cultural institutions. She declares gender as ‘performative’ and not about choosing to put on a gender as if it was a performance. The ‘performativity’ of gender in all of its variations implies that gender is constituted by performative acts which come to form a “coherent” gender identity (Butler 1993). One’s gender identity is formed within the similarities and differences of their actions within their own gendered roles.
As opposed to the fixed male/female gender binary, Judith Butler argued that gender should be seen as flowing and changeable. It should be based on the way we act at different times and in different situations rather than who we are identified as. Butler suggested that by ‘deconstructing’ the way we think about gender we might move towards a new equality where people are not restricted by male/female gender roles and the difference from which they are formed (Butler 1999). This implies that gender roles, an aspect of our gender identity, are formed by a rigid society that does not allow it to flow freely, while Butler deems that gender is a changeable aspect of identity. Our gender identities always emerge and change within their similarities and differences.
The identities of gender and sexuality are always changing. A man that identifies as a woman and is attracted to men has a different identity to that of a man who identifies as a man is attracted to men. Cultural identity is organized around multiple discourses. The identities of these two men are formed by the differences and similarities of their gender and sexual dispositions.
Intentional positioning makes meaning possible in one’s identity. Identity is a ‘production’ of numerous and changing identities that can be ‘articulated’ together in variety of ways (Barker, 2003: 232). Identities shift according to how subjects are addressed or represented. We are all constituted by fragmented multiple identities. ‘The proliferation and diversification of contexts and sites of interaction prevent easy identification of particular subjects with a given, fixed, identity (Barker, 2003: 233). This displays that the same person’s identity can change across positions according to an individual set of circumstances.
This ever-changing phenomenon of identity can be observed in a contextual instance. In the David Cronenberg’s film, M. Butterfly, the formation of identity within is observed through the emerging themes of gender and sexuality and the similarities and differences within the characters. In M. Butterfly, Song Liling suggests that in a Peking Opera, women were always played by men because ‘only a man knows how a woman should act (Cronenberg 1993).’ Song takes on a female identity even though she, contrary to her love interest Rene Gallimard’s beliefs, is in fact a male. Rene’s view of Song’s identity was already constructed, he perceived that she was a normal female gendered oriental woman that was shy therefore did not remove her clothes. Rene associated any conflicts with his view of her gender to be because of cultural differences. Song’s female identity was thus formed in Rene’s mind through cultural differences.
In Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein is represented as a rational and objective human while his creation, Frankenstein is represented as an overemotional and irrational monster. In My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix, Susan Stryker believes that her gender identity is constructed to be that of a monster. She is persecuted through her physical differences from which her monster/gender identity emerges. She is divergent and is differentiated from gender norms. She is reduced by others because they fear to understand her and the possibility that they might have things in common with her because she poses a threat to hetero-normative society.
An example is a heterosexual man fearing friendship with a straight man because of cultural constraints, even though they could in fact have a wonderfully fulfilling friendship. Stryker/the monster is told that her gendered identity is unnatural and that she should be excluded from society even though her identity is formed in difference and similarity to that of other human beings who should be considered her peers.
Further gender variation from the ‘normal’ male/female binary is considered to be even more deviant or submissive to how the female is considered to the male. As in Susan Stryker’s case, her gender identity is considered to be extremely deviant because she fits into neither constructed category; comparable to someone who prefers sex with inanimate objects as opposed to having a concrete heterosexual or homosexual identity. It is therefore evident that in binary pairs and dichotomous logic, there is a ‘lesser’ of the two, but even within these pairs, within the vectors of similarity and difference emerges new categories, new divergences from the once considered concrete and universal, binary pairs. Meaning is produced from this dichotomous logic of binary pairs, and through this our modern identities emerge.
Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that what is important about the individual is that we are all different. Even though we form our identities through comparing ourselves to others it allows us to form the most unique individual that we can be. We use similarities and difference within gender and sexuality to construct our identities and form vibrant, distinctive, and inquisitive individuals. Our modern culturally constructed identities are challenging the boundaries of the past social constraints and are in stride with the aspect postmodern theory of the individual with multiple identity variations.
Bibliography
Barker, Chris (2003) Cultural Studies Theory and Practice, Second Edition, The Alden Press, Oxford, England.
Butler, Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, Routledge, New York, New York.
Butler, Judith (1999) Gender Trouble, Routledge, New York, New York.
Cronenberg, David (1993) M. Butterfly, Warner Home Video, United States.
Hall, Stuart (1990) Cultural Identity and Diaspora, London, Lawrence and Wishart.
Stryker, Susan (1994) My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix, Gordon and Breach Science Publishers SA.
