Active vs Passive Identities

The starting point of this is the conversation between me and Option C at this post, which went far enough from the post's original topic that i thought i ought to separate it. It's also inspired by the comment thread at this recent post about "passing" at Questioning Transphobia, which reminded me that, while i have written about "passing" before, there were aspects of it that i hadn't covered and that post, and i'd intended to return to those at some point. Some of those aspects will be covered here, while i may cover others that don't really fit in here in a future post (as i seem to say about everything...)

One of the difficulties that i see affecting a lot of conversations about identity issues is an often-unexamined failure to distinguish between two very different ways of seeing "identity" - namely, active identity (a person actively identifying as something) and passive identity (a person passively or unintentionally being identified as something by others). This can cause a lot of confusion, frustration and perception of things people have said as intolerant or offensive - when they weren't at all intended that way - because they used a "passive" rather than an "active" definition of a particular identity and were assumed to be using the other one.

The areas i've particularly noticed this happening (probably because they're my main areas of interest in identity politics - i'm sure it happens with regard to other areas of identity as well) are gender and disability, so that's (mostly) what i'm going to discuss here. In the gender context, it mostly comes up with regard to terms like "gender variant" or "gender non-conforming", and who is included within them. As i said in my first comment at Option C's post, i can easily see cases both of people who do not see themselves as "gender non-conforming", but are seen by others as such, and of the exact opposite - people who do see themselves as "gender non-conforming", but are not (or not always) seen as such by others - with myself as a probable example of the latter category. (An example of the former could be a transsexual woman with a "traditionally feminine" gender identity who does not "pass" as a cis woman, or a transsexual man with a "traditionally masculine" gender identity who does not "pass" as a cis man [see below for clarification of what "passing as" actually means... and yes, i'm aware that the terms "traditionally feminine" and "traditionally masculine" are problematic, but i couldn't think of a better way to express it in that sentence] - who would see themselves as conforming, internally if not externally, to the gender role/expression mostly associated to their sex identity, but would still be likely to be seen by others as having a "mixed" or "variant" gender expression. An example of the latter could be someone who - like myself - identifies as non-binary or genderqueer, but (in my case mostly unintentionally) happens to prefer to dress in a way that superficially fits with the gender role/expression mostly associated to their assigned or apparent sex - who would feel that they are not - or at least not intentionally - conforming to any gender, but would be seen as passably gender-normative by a casual observer.)

This reminds me of how, in my teenage years, i classified the people i knew into 4 categories with regard to the then-current "mainstream" teenage culture: 1) those who both wanted to conform and easily could conform to "mainstream" norms of dress, appearance, musical taste, speech patterns, etc., 2) those who didn't want to conform to the "mainstream", but could easily have conformed if they did want to, 3) those who wanted to conform, but couldn't conform easily or at all, for reasons beyond their control, and 4) those (like myself) who were likewise incapable of conforming, but had no desire to conform anyway. (It's interesting that, long before i was diagnosed as autistic or even knew about autism, i recognised that for me (as for some others i knew, a few of whom i wouldn't be at all surprised if they also turned out to be autistic), conformity to mainstream social norms was very much inherently impossible, while i could tell that many of the other "culturally alternative" young people i knew could, very easily, have been a part of the "mainstream" social group if they had wanted to.)

(Edit: I decided to make a Venn diagram to illustrate the above paragraph, just in case it wasn't clear.)


(2nd edit: i don't seem to be able to make the image any bigger in the post without making the text blurrier. If you click on the image, you can see it at full size, which is 950 pixels wide.)

Those people - the category 2 people - i admired, but also felt envious of, and even possibly a little bit bitter or resentful towards, because, even if i didn't want to take those opportunities, i was still keenly aware that they had social opportunities that i didn't and would never have - what i didn't then, but do now, recognise as privilege. The people who, however, i really felt bad for (in what was very probably, although unintentionally, a horribly patronising way), and thought had by far the worst deal in the whole "mainstream vs. alternative" teenage culture war, were the people in category 3 - those who shared the cultural values of the mainstream, but were not allowed into it (including many disabled, especially "learning-disabled", young people who were very much into the chart pop music, soap operas, clothing brands, etc. that were mainstream at the time, young people from ethnic groups with particularly strict parenting cultures whose parents wouldn't let them do the "mainstream" things their classmates did, those too poor to afford the requisite clothes and other trappings of conspicuous consumption to be accepted into the mainstream social groups, many fat or otherwise not-conventionally-attractive young women, and probably others). As someone firmly in category 4, it was hard not to see the people in category 2 as suffering from some sort of "false consciousness", and to think that they would be much better off if they could view the mainstream culture more critically and move into category 4 (where they would also be accepted by at least some of those in category 3) - so i can easily relate to, if not agree with, the same attitude expressed (among other examples) by radical feminists who argue that all women who put effort into "feminine" gender presentation, even though it is impossible ever to completely live up to the patriarchal expectation of female appearance, are suffering from false consciousness, or by some "subversivist"* genderqueer activists who regard those who openly and visibly defy norms of gender presentation as somehow inherently "more ethical" or "more radical" than trans people with "binary" gender presentations, who are seen as "reinforcing the binary".

*I have issues with this usage, but haven't got space to address them in this post.

However, if we are going to define all those who are not part of the "mainstream" culture (with regard to gender or anything else) as "non-conforming", this sets up a problem: IMO, it's unfair to both groups to put people in the equivalents of categories 2 and 3 in one box. It could be argued that category 3 are the only true "non-conformists", as they are the only people who had the choice to conform or not and chose not to, but that conflates categories 2 and 4 and, IMO very offensively, writes them off as worthless to the anti-conformism cause, effectively saying that only those with the privilege of being able to conform to those norms if they wanted to can be true activists against oppressive norms: i think anyone with even the most basic understanding of anti-oppression politics can see just how fucked up and wrong that is. A possible response to that is to say that only those who cannot, by their nature, conform to socially imposed norms can truly oppose them... but that's problematic too, as it sets up an essentialism in which members of the privileged group can never be anything but oppressors - dooming marginalised people to perpetual "outsider" status, and not really allowing any framework for the dismantling of structures of privilege themselves - and by implication erases the desires and identities of those who would like to conform, but cannot.

So, what's the solution? The only way i can see to untangle this is to recognise that there are at least 2 different axes of "conformity" and "nonconformity", only one of which meaningfully maps onto privilege/oppression. The difference between these axes is the difference between "active" and "passive" identity (and i think that this applies to more aspects of identity than those which are defined relatively to social norms, but has to involve aspects of identity which are subject to the perception of observers). With regard to gender, we thus have two possible definitions of "gender-variant" or "gender non-conforming" - A) people who identify themselves as anything other than one or other of the "normative" binary sexes and the gender identities and expressions that are "supposed" to go with them (however others see them), and B) people who are seen as anything other than one or other of the "normative" binary sexes and the gender identities and expressions that are "supposed" to go with them (whether they see themselves that way or not).

In response to definition B, i'll quote Option C's response: I really dislike it when people use passive definitions to identify others, personally... A couple main problems I have: First, people are, by nature, active participants in defining their identity. It's impossible to define identity in the absence of this fact - or, at least, you run into all sorts of philosophical problems about defining where the passive individuals somehow are able to aggregate into an active identifying agency. Second, it's inconsistent by nature - if many groups of people experience someone's identifier differently (out as bi in X, but straight in Y, unknown in Z, etc.), is that person now all of these things simultaneously, and how is this even verified? It seems clear to me that the best solution is that the person is what ze identifies as.

I broadly agree with this, and so i see definition B as inadequate. However, the category of people described by definition B clearly exists, so it is, IMO, necessary to have terms with which to talk about it. A better way that i can see of conceptualising this category is as the category of people who are subject to oppression on the basis of (perceived) non-gender-normativity. This group of people clearly has common interests (i.e. in the ending of such oppression), which overlap with, but are not necessarily identical to, the common interests of the group of people who identify as non-gender-normative (not all of whom may necessarily be oppressed as such).

Something very similar, if not identical, occurs with disability-as-identity - there are many people with impairments who do not consider themselves to be "disabled" (often because of the perceived stigma attached to the term), although they do experience "disability" as defined in the social model* as "the restrictions caused by society when it does not give equivalent attention and accommodation to the needs of individuals with impairments" - so are those people "disabled people"? Yes for an experience-of-oppression-based definition, but no for a self-identification-based one. (Interestingly, as noted in this thread from 2006 on the BBC Ouch! message board, the UK's Disability Rights Commission has chosen for essentially this reason to use the term "people who have rights under the DDA" (Disability Discrimination Act, which defines disability in a mostly-medical-model way centred on impairment) rather than "disabled people", except in the context of (self-defining) "disabled people's organisations".)

*Apologies for lazy Wikipedia usage here. I know there are better links to concise descriptions of the social model, but for some reason tonight i couldn't find them. I think the Wikipedia quote is adequate, though.

One major aspect of all this IMO is that choices that should be value-neutral (such as whether or not to actively identify with a group one is or may be perceived by others as belonging to) are made not-neutral by living in an oppressive society which is set up so that, whatever we do and however we identify, some of the choices we make will end up inadvertently supporting (or at least being perceived by others as supporting) structures of oppression - a phenomenon that i have also noticed in many other places (for one example, BDSM relationships in which a male plays a dominant role and a female a submissive one) - so what can be done about it? Asking people to change or police their choices - as the radfems do with regard to BDSM and "normatively-feminine" gender presentations (among other things) and the "subversivists" do with regard to binary-identifying or binary-presenting transsexual people - is clearly not acceptable in any even vaguely libertarian perspective, as it's against the most basic principles of individual freedom and autonomy - but, as far as i can tell, that leaves the only real answer as to work towards changing the wider society into one which doesn't oppress people based on either chosen or unchosen identities - which obviously is what we are all (or all should be!) fighting for, but which also feels kind of inadequate in the here and now...

And i wanted to say more here, including something about "passive" and "active" verb constructions in English, and the ambiguity of the verb "to pass" (in a "passing as..." context), but a) i'm knackered and need to go to bed (and want to post this now as i've got a lot to do tomorrow), and b) this is already well over 2000 words, so i'll leave it here for now. Potentially more later...