Sunday, June 7, 2015

Screw your identity politics

Look, you wish to play the identity politics game. Fine. Go ahead. You can define yourself anyway you want. You can have a string of a thousand identities that put you in a little niche all to your own, a million miles from anywhere else. Not a problem. Enjoy that. In fact, heck, I support you. You can do whatever you want with your identity. You can call yourself or identify yourself in any way, shape or form that you wish! Go nuts! Have a ball!

But, whatever you do, do NOT get me involved in your little identity politics games. I do not wish to play identity politics. You don't get to determine what my identity is, thank you very much. No matter how much you want to, no matter how hard you want to try, the reality is my identity is mine, and I define who I am, not YOU. Keep your identity politics to yourself. I will not be defined by my gender, sexuality, colour of my skin, etc. I am who I am, and I will define who I am. You don't have that privilege. You can define who YOU are, and that is all. Period.

Do you have a problem with that? Oh well, I am not really concerned about that. I'm not concerned because by wanting to play identity politics with me and define me in ways that you see fit in order to fulfil an agenda or to create a narrative that I most likely have nothing to do with anyway, you aren't actually concerned with me. You are concerned with YOU. It is YOUR game, not mine. It is your wish to play identity politics, not mine.

Most likely, I don't fit into the little stereotypes that you have of me based on the identity or identities you want to stick on me anyway, so just stop. Stop right now before you even think of defining me. Go ahead, get all pretentious, tell me how privileged I am and no matter how I wish to identify myself, I am still what you identify me as. It doesn't change the fact that it is not up to you to define me. It is none of your business who I am, and I am not what you want to tell me I am.

Have we got this all straight now? My identity is determined by me, not you, but me and ONLY me. Okay, good. We can now move on. 

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