Escapist Reality: Article / Determined Identity / Imprisoned Identity

Determined Identity / Imprisoned Identity
by savage on Thursday 05 May 2005

An essay on the subjectivity of gender and sexual identities.

You are not you. You also never were you. You may have been them and it, but all that was never you. You never had the chance to be you. It was over before it begun. Long before you things were set in motion and long before you were born, you were already determined and defined by these forces.

You came into the world predefined to follow certain roles. The you who you thought was real was really just ideas, concepts and images produced for you, not by you. There is a that and a they, but there is no you. What you thought was uniquely you was constructed, planned out, determined by something else. And when that which contains what you think of as you is defined by someone or something else, the you becomes a cage, a cell, where personal freedom is imprisoned by the iron bars of thoughts.

When a child is born the doctor announces to the parents, ?It?s a girl.? Or, ?It?s a boy.? That a baby was born with certain genital is a valid observation. And yet, it is only now, when identified/classified by that genital, that the child has now not been given a gender but rather forcefully placed into a gender. Once that child is labeled to be a ?boy? or a ?girl?, the child has already been set on a predetermined path which socially and culturally will define not just the rules of which that person must follow, but the very options that the person will have INCLUDING whether to break those rules.

A ?boy? must be masculine; a ?girl? must be feminine. When writing about ?boys? and ?girls? it is standard to write ?boy? first followed by ?girl? (i.e. ?boy/girl?, ?him/her?, ?he/she?, ?his/hers?). It is also acceptable to simply write ?boy?, ?he?, ?him?, and ?his? instead of including ?girl?, ?she?, ?her?, ?hers?. These rules will be learned and accept as a person goes though his life. Most of the time he won?t even know he is doing it.

This ?boy? is expected to love only women. He is also expected to shun the sexual advances of other men. He is allowed to slap other men on their butts when involved with them in sports. He is expected to play, watch, and thoroughly enjoy sports.

If this ?boy? shows interest in men as well as or in place of women, he is suddenly breaking the accepted rules of his gender. If he does not play, watch, and enjoy sports he is assumed to also be breaking other, even more taboo rules of his ?gender? such as sexual interest in other men or association with a feminine identity.

There are laws of gender which must be followed. To break these laws is unacceptable. To be unacceptable there needs to be laws to break. The laws of gender define what is acceptable and what is not acceptable by defining initially one as acceptable based on a physical characteristic (genital) and then forcing those that would choose otherwise to remove themselves from their initial category, from acceptable, into another, which if not acceptable must then be unacceptable.

The system that is already established does not allow for an option where multiple applications of gender, multiple gender identities, exist peacefully, neither more or less acceptable or privileged then the other. There is a defined concept of what each gender is and how each gender should act and THAT defined concept, having reached mass acceptance as the understood rule of gender and gender identity, THAT identity becomes that which one defines themselves. It is not on based on their own concept of their gender, rather the socially and culturally acceptable concept of gender which they themselves have internalized and allowed to replace what might have been their own definition of gender. Therefore, these definitions become the basis of the society?s ideology, the basis of how that society is formed, operated and sustained. In other words, when the society at large begins to separate people into groups of acceptable manner of actions, feelings, and thoughts, those separations become a hierarchy of privileged, of preferred, groups over undesirable groups.

This hierarchy then becomes not just a grouping of individuals and individual actions, feelings and thoughts, but a group of concepts within which these individuals fall. There is then a group of concepts, one which is accepted by the majority as preferred/privileged, and one which is not accepted by the majority which consists of those who do not conform to the majority group concept. Finally, once people have allowed themselves to be separated into groups based on defined concepts, these concepts then become definitions, concrete and unchangeable, written in the proverbial stone, such that they are appear to always have existed. There is now not just a preferred group but a group which, by definition, has become that wich always has been, the group that others deviate from, the ?natural? group.

What once was simply existing now becomes existing within certain categories. What was once living life now becomes living life according to group definitions. What might have been natural before now is compared and contrasted to the ?natural? as defined by the grouping structure. Now, your natural may in fact be ?unnatural?, not belonging to the ?natural? group.
When one is initially defined as one particular gender, one suddenly finds themselves along a path of socially and culturally correct and incorrect actions, feelings and thoughts. It is socially and culturally acceptable to be attracted to members of the opposite sex, to be heterosexual. As such, it is ?natural? to be attracted to members of the opposite sex, to be heterosexual. It is ?unnatural? to be attracted to members of the same sex, to be homosexual. There is a socially and culturally acceptable and encouraged gender and sexual identity. Any variation on the socially and culturally acceptable and encouraged gender or sexual identity, including outright opposition, is not just personally - to the individual(s) who witness or are privy to the act - but, even more so, socially and culturally unacceptable and discouraged. There is an inclusion and an exclusion to gender and sexual identity. A person?s gender identity, whether masculine or feminine and male or female, defined physically and/or mentally, as well as their sexual identity, whether heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or transsexual, groups them into hierarchical categories which contain a privileged primary identity, masculine male heterosexual, and othered secondary identities.

The categorization of identities establishes a binary structure of one or the other. However, this binary structure is not just one or the other but gives privilege to the first over the second. It is a hierarchical structure of one (the acceptable/better/?natural?) over the other (the less acceptable/worse/?unnatural?).

These hierarchical binary categories of identity not only divide people into groups of ?natural? and ?unnatural? but, in doing so, create a hierarchical power structure where the primary ?natural? group also holds power over the othered ?unnatural? group. This power, among other things, inherently, and most basically, allows for the initial othering of the secondary group. The ability to push a group of people into a category which is/becomes that which is undesirable AND forcing them to remain in a position of weakness, is the power which comes with the binary structure of categorization and specifically with the grouping and categorization of gender identity and of sexual identity.

There, then, has now been established not just an a set of socially and culturally accepted rules to follow but also Ideology based on those rules which now must continually reassert itself such that it continues to maintain those rules as the founding principles of that society.

In order to maintain and sustain these societal foundations, institutions are created to reproduce, ?the values, meanings and logic of these rules (Mansfield, 53).? These institutions, defined by Louis Althusser (1918 ? 1990) as Ideological State Apparatuses, are structures such as the church, family, school and the mass media. The Ideological State Apparatuses continuously, endlessly reinforce the societal and cultural values, relentlessly reminding, consciously and subconsciously, of the appropriate actions, feeling and thoughts which are allowed in, and consequently are beneficial for continued supporting of, the dominate Ideological structure (Mansfield, 53).

?According to Althusser,? Mansfield writes, ?It [Ideology] succeeds by creating subjects who become its instruments and bears. Ideology needs subjectivity. It constitutes us as subjects by interpellating us (53).? The constant reminders of the groups and categories that have been created and we have been placed in continuously reinterpellates or defines us based on those very groups, categories and rules which bind us as subjects to the power of the Ideology.

Judith Butler (1956 - ) targets the concept of gender identity titles in an effort to dismantle the inherent complications of using the established matrices of gender identity markers to argue, defend, and attack other gender identities intrinsically tied to that which is subject to the discourse.

The hierarchal binary structures of gender and sexuality, as part of the Ideology which seeks to subject us, must too continuously seek to reaffirm itself through the domineering process of repeatedly reminding and reinforcing the structure of heterosexuality as the primary, ?natural? sexuality. ?And yet, If repetition is the way in which power works to construct the illusion of a seamless heterosexual identity, if heterosexuality is compelled to repeat itself in order to establish the illusion of its own uniformity and identity, then this is an identity permanently at risk, for what if it fails to repeat, or if the very exercise of repetition is redeployed for a very different performative purpose? If there is, as it were, always a compulsion to repeat, repetition never fully accomplishes identity (Butler, 363).?

By defining one category as ?natural?, Ideology provides power to one group over another all-the-while subjecting both. The acceptance of the ?naturality ? of one the privileged group is both a founding block and a reinforcer/enforcer of the Ideology. And yet, because it acts as part of the system of Ideology, it, the ?naturality? of one gender identity or sexuality identity, must, like Ideology, continuously repeat and reestablish itself as the only ?natural? gender and/or sexual identity.

That the very nature of the ?natural? should be so at risk that there exists a chance, a mathematical percentage of failure, which would be implied from the statement that the identity must repeat itself so as to establish and reestablish its identity, then the question, ?what if it fails to repeat? or what if that which it repeats is a mutation on its former core identity, becomes as vital a conundrum as why the heterosexuality is compelled to repeat itself at all. The condition of the ?truth? of the ?natural? identity of the heterosexual identity is not just dependent on having always been ?natural? in the past, but continuing to always be ?natural? in the future.

To address its own intrinsic flaw of a ?natural? sexuality, Ideology must, in addition to creating and repetitively replaying its own performance of heterosexual ?naturalness?, it must all, at the same time, not just allow for but, demand something for which it may point its finger at and yell, ?That is not natural!?

However, even in contestation of the accusation, the simple acknowledgement that the statement applies to the offended individual, is further reinforcing the subjection of that individual as ?not natural.? In explanation, Althusser writes, ?The hailed individual will turn around. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject (Mansfield, 53).?

The process of subjection includes positioning the other as a means from which the privileged may be compared to as better than. Ideology needs the other, for the other also defines and reinforces Ideology and the Ideological structure itself. ?The notion of an ?original? [?natural?] sexuality forever repressed and forbidden thus becomes a production of the law which subsequently functions as its prohibition. In other words, the law which prohibits that union is the selfsame law that invites it, and it is no longer possible to isolate the repressive from the productive (Butler, 76).?

The outright opposition to the othering of the Ideological structure is, as well, inclusive of the Ideology. To say that you are the other but are proud is to still acknowledge that the group which Ideology privileges is justifiably privileged. You can not be proud to be the other without first bowing down to the fact that the binary structure does exist and that the primary group has power over the other, that group which you just involved yourself with.

Then, the homosexual who wishes to ?come out? has already internalized the primary binary structure of which he is part of. ?For being ?out? always depends to some extend on being ?in?; it gains its meaning only within that polarity (Butler, 356).?

?The ?sex/gender system,? the regulated cultural mechanism of transforming biological males and females into discrete and hierarchized genders, is at once mandated by cultural institutions (the family, the residual forms of ?the exchange of women,? obligatory heterosexuality) and inculcated through the laws which structure and propel individual [internalized identity] development (Butler, 73).?

So, therein lies a harsh reality of determined sexual and gender identity and the already established resistance to that determination/subjugation. To fight against the Ideological ideal of the heterosexual, masculine, male identity by confronting it is to make it real. By acknowledging it, it becomes that much more physical, yet, by trying to ignore it you are simply allowing yourself to be subjected and used by the Ideological structure. From this stance, the battle for gender identity could be considered a lose/lose situation.

However, Butler writes, Gayle Rubin, author of ?The Traffic of Women: The ?Political Economy? of Sex,? published in 1957,
?envisions the overthrow of gender itself. Inasmuch as gender is the cultural transformation of a biological polysexuality into a culturally mandated heterosexuality and inasmuch as that heterosexuality deploys discrete and hiarachized gender identities to accomplish its aim, then the breakdown of the compulsory character of heterosexuality would imply, for Rubin, the corollary breakdown of gender itself (Butler, 75).?

There, then, is one idealized vision of how to overcome the established Ideology which represses and reinforces based on gender and sexuality: dismantle the category of heterosexuality and, with the demolition of the primary binary element, the structure itself will collapse.

Though, until that process has succeed, if ever, the opposition to the primary structure will continue to help reestablish and redefine the structure as something worth dismantling and hence something that does exist. To insist that there are gender and sexuality categories that exist to be fought against is allowing oneself to be invited in to and to help propel that very structure. The opposition to the structure is inherent within the structure. It was over before it begun.

Bibliography

Mansfield, Nick; Foucault: The Subject and power
Butler, Judith; Imitation and Gender Insubordination; Queer Cultures; Carlin, Deborah and DiGrazia, Jennifer.
Butler, Judith; Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Heterosexual Matrix

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