Identity politics and progress: Don't fence me in (or out)

Off Our Backs, Apr 1998 by Severson, Kristin, Stanhope, Victoria

Identity Politics and Progress: Don't Fence Me In (Or Out)

There is no doubt that identity politics has led us into a new awareness of marginalization, discrimination, and equity. Before the suffrage movement, the civil rights movement, the feminist movement, the American Indian movement, and the gay rights movement, to name a few, this country was under the impression that "all men are born equal." By becoming aware that they, as a group, were being denied legal rights, these movements gathered around these "identities" and used them to mobilize against discrimination, create "safe" communities, garner political power, and generate social and economical influence. Today, institutions are more inclusive, minorities are better represented and served, and gradually people are becoming aware of lives beyond the white privileged male. But the struggle is far from over and more awareness and more legal gains clearly are needed as debates continue to swirl around women's roles, race issues, and gay rights. So, given the success of identity politics and the distance yet to go, what could possibly inspire talk about the limitations of identity politics and the emergence of post-liberation movements such as post-feminism?

Identity politics basically uses the "Master's Tools" by adopting the same model dominant groups used to single out minority groups for discrimination. The identities of "gay" or "black" or "woman" have little meaning except in how they relate to what they are not -- straight, white, male. Therefore, once upon a time, it would have been possible that these identities would have had no more value than other descriptives or informatives such as red hair, long legs, grandmother, runner. But within our present reality, it matters very much if you are white or native american, male or female, straight or queer. Identity as a political maneuver is also based off the idea that the given identity does matter -- but here is where we must remind ourselves why it matters. It matters because and only because a long time ago someone in power said so and a world was created in which it came to matter.

This article is trying to figure whether the concepts involved in identity politics can ever be long-term tools of change. Is identity politics merely a strategy and compensatory technique to draw attention to the needs of our own political groups? How does it further our thinking? A byproduct of identity politics has been fragmentation, divisiveness, and a general lack of unity both within movements and across movements. Political correctness has led us into a first amendment nightmare and allowed the right-wing to think we are as closed minded as they. We are now faced with the challenge of applying our movements to society as a whole. We can no longer just claim our piece of the pie for equity's sake, we have to show how everyone can participate and more importantly gain from a world free of discrimination.

Perhaps some of the arcane world of postmodernism can in fact help us think through identity politics and even figure out what is right and wrong rather than leaving us in an "anything goes" moral vacuum as is sometimes suggested. Deconstruction helps us get beyond the "red herrings," the things that get cracked up to be significant and in fact are not, they are just made to seem like that because somebody is gaining by it.

Maybe, in response we are creating some red herrings of our own. There has been a lot of nonsense in the past that somehow white straight abled males should have more rights and are more esteemed just because of who they are. Just because that is not true, does not mean that it is true for marginalized identities. However, the experience of oppression can give these groups a depth of insight that is invaluable to any discussion on how we want society to be. Identity politics at its most militant can block the way to genuine social, moral, political process. Shouldn't a movement be essentially about what you believe, your values and ideology rather than who you are or what you do? How many of us have been disappointed by the anti-feminist woman, or the Republican gay person? Political beliefs and identity do not necessarily coincide. But Identity is often a tricky concept upon which to base a long term political movement.

In the case of the gay movement, Colin Powell may be right that sexuality is less about what you are and more about what you do, but of course, we would differ profoundly with Powell about his judgment on gay sex. Gay behavior is just one in a huge spectrum of complex, varying, back and forth, imaginative and unimaginative ways that human beings are sexual. But the premise that is prevalent in the gay rights movement that when it comes to sexual behavior we are born a certain way; the bio-deterministic either you are or your aren't is generally replicating much of oppressive heterosexual culture even if it is in a new proud homosexual face.

Thus, many gays want to get married, fight in the army, and have access to the capitalist structure. In the face of the gay rights mantra of "please give us a piece of the pie, we can't help being like this, we were born like this," human beings are often acting out a much more complex set of behaviors that do not fit into these binary concepts. And maybe more would if there was not so much propaganda that you have to be one or the other. Bisexual people have a hard time feeling part of the gay rights movement and it's because they don't fit the rhetoric. Perhaps we get more short term sympathy if we plead lack of agency in the whole thing an say it is discrimination based on a biological basis, but it takes us no further in creating a truly ethical and inclusive view of sexuality. Until we say yes, I made a genuine choice and it's OK because this is just one of many sexual behaviors that should be judged according to concepts such as respect, mutuality, and caring, and not the particularity of gender, we are not making any real progress. It just takes leave us further down a road of "them and us." So where does that us in the wonderful world of gay pride marches, rainbow calling cards and lesbian cruises? Gay culture has all the wonders of subverting shame to pride and all the energy of the maverick alternative, but at times seems as shuttered as the straight world. If gay culture is to truly rebel against the elitism of this heterosexist world in which we live, it must become more expansive in its views of sexuality and more cognizant of its connections with other identity based liberation movements.