Where Does Identity Policing Come From?

6/14/2012

via Creative Commons

I bet we've all experienced at least one of the following:
(1) Being told we don't "belong" to a group we think we belong to.
(2) Having someone assume we're part of a group with which we don't actually identify.
(3) Hearing someone else identify with a group to which we belong, and being annoyed because we don't consider them a part of the group.

Where does identity "policing" come from? And why, in the LGBTQ community,* of all places, does it seem to happen so often? I was pondering this the other day and came up with a short list of possible (no doubt interrelated, and no doubt often subconscious) reasons:

You feel marginalized in various ways because of an identity you claim. If another person who claims that identity is not marginalized in the same ways, it may feel unfair that they "get" to claim that identity, too. (For example, I suspect this is why female-ID'd butches sometimes don't like trans men claiming butch identities. Butch women have to deal with looking gender-nonconforming virtually all the time. Many trans men can pass as gender-normative if they want to.)
You want a group to specifically define you, not to be some kind of broad identity that anyone can claim. (For example, ever encounter a hipster type who claims to be "queer but straight?" If so, you might know the feeling I'm describing.)
You're an "average" member of some group. But if the group is opened to people of some other identity, too, you become lower status within this group. (Butch women/trans men is a good example for this concept, too. Men are higher status in American society [and, unfortunately, in most others as well]. Trans men often pass as men, look like men, etc. If trans men can be butches and butch = masculine, then there's a way in which trans men are "more butch" than female identified butches. Some female butches may find this threatening.)
Your group is already low status in society, and you don't want an even lower status group to join it, because then it will make your group even lower status. (For example, I've heard lesbians eschew trans women who consider themselves lesbians, and gay men eschew trans men who consider themselves gay men.)
You think your group is cooler than some other subset of it, so you emphasize a boundary to separate you from that subset. (E.g., I've heard gay men say disparaging things about lesbians, distinguishing sharply between themselves and queer women--arguably, drawing on male privilege while implicitly chastising lesbians for their gender nonconformity and/or "unattractiveness." [To be clear, I firmly believe that this kind of statement is an outlier.])
They lack some aspect of the identity you claim. You see this aspect as central to the identity. If they don't share that aspect, you can't talk to them about it in the same way, so all of a sudden the group you felt comfortable in includes people you can't talk to (in the same way) about something central to the identity. (For example, if your queer women's group includes a bunch of bisexual women who are dating men, it might feel kind of weird to talk with them about what it's like to be, say, a queer woman at a work function to which partners are invited.)
You feel like you "got there first" and have a feeling of ownership over the identity. When people who aren't like you start to claim it, you may feel like the identity is changing in a way that excludes you. You want the group to define you--you want it to be a nice fit, not some broad umbrella identity under which you happen to fall. (For example, if you identify as genderqueer or neutrois and as neither male nor female, you may feel uncomfortable or discouraged if people who identify as [and appear to be] either fully male or fully female say that they are genderqueer.)

As I've talked about before, I'm no fan of identity policing. Nonetheless, I can understand the impetus behind it, and I bet I've unintentionally engaged in it. I hope I've caught myself, questioned myself, and asked where the impulse was coming from.

Of course, identity policing and boundary-drawing doesn't just happen in the queer community. It happens with regard to age, race, class, and just about every other social group we can think of.

Nor do I mean to suggest that identity policing always arises from bad motives, or the intention to exclude others. I suspect we'd all agree that it's important to have social and psychological spaces where we can understand ourselves, question our assumptions, and feel at home with people we believe are like us.

What do you think about all of this? Have you ever seen, experienced, or engaged in identity policing? Do you think it exists in the queer community?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.**

* I was recently a guest speaker in a queer studies class in which several of the students suggested that calling LGBTQ folks a "community" is false and s
** If you feel the urge to write, "Why do we have to label ourselves at all?" or "We're all human beings," or something similar, please read this first.

13 Comments

maddox link

6/14/2012 03:11:33 pm

"(2) Having someone assume we're part of a group with which we don't actually identify."

This happens to me ALL the time. People assume I'm a lesbian, which is absurdly false. 1. I'm not a girl. 2. I'm not sexually attracted to girls. What's left of the definition? Exactly NOT a lesbian. Moreover, I most likely get lumped in with "butch lesbians," hence why, even though I don't consider myself as belonging to this group, I feel some affinity towards it, since I often experience the same side effects as if I did belong in it.

As for the policing aspect, I'm sure we all engage in policing. I was trying to identify which ones I'd be most likely to fall into (at least mentally, I try to catch myself doing it), and it's definitely the last two, though the very last one perhaps is a subset of the previous.

"They lack some aspect of the identity you claim. You see this aspect as central to the identity."

This is a big one for me. On the inside I scream "NO, how can you say you're B when you don't Z?" yet on the outside I welcome and encourage blanket self-identification, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

(And where the heck do you get such wonderful stock images? :P )

Blue

6/14/2012 09:03:17 pm

I recently was talking to somebody who said they liked to use zie (rather than he or she) 'because it's kinda fun to challenge societies expectations'. My first thought was that it sounded like this zie was trying to be cool and didn't identify as genderqueer. Then I thought, well, maybe this person didn't mean exactly what they said. Or maybe they are genderqueer but are uncomfortable saying as much, so they beat around the bush. Without having an in depth personal conversation with them, how can I really know what's going on, so I'll just give zie the benefit of the doubt.

Language is clumsy, and I know I've said things that came across as not what I felt, and gender and sexual orientation are complicated.

6/14/2012 09:05:58 pm

And I did Not mean to say 'this zie'. It should read 'sounded like zie...'. Also 'societies' should read 'society’s'.

Lee

6/15/2012 02:14:02 am

Wow! Yes! This is a thing! Haha, thanks for articulating all the angles on this so well. Currently a woman in my circle who has 'had it all' in terms of acceptance and success in the mainstream het world is having a sexual identity crisis. While on the one hand I'm absolutely supportive and like, 'yay, go you!', on the other I'm having this bizarro panic, this sick to my stomach kind of feeling. Like...everyone we know already loves you best, you don't get to encroach onto my turf now! Like she's going to be a 'better' lesbian than me, haha, after I've struggled all these years and she's just waking up. Arghh! I know it's silly. I absolutely love her and want the best for her. My private feelings seem so petty and so juvenile. But they're there.

mx. punk link

6/15/2012 03:07:05 am

#2 is pretty much my life. (hi, maddox!) people assume i'm a cis woman (i'm not), and people assume i'm a butch lesbian until they meet my partner (let's just say my partner is... hairy).

also, #1. after meeting my partner, people assume i'm a masculine, heterosexual cis woman-- and get pissed off at me for having pride patches on my clothes. this drives me to distraction, cat.

and i totally get weirded out by people who appear male or female, say they id as male or female, say they're cis-- and genderqueer. that's pretty much why i id as a non-binary trans* person rather than as genderqueer. i'm not going to actively police people (as blue said, i don't know what's going on with them), but it makes me feel weird.

tatiana

6/15/2012 02:34:33 pm

This is a fantastic post and I really relate to all of the points you've made - either personally or anecdotes from other people's stories.

And, in terms of gay men making disparaging remarks about lesbians, someone on my TL was JUST retweeting about that tonight. Her name is SpectraSpeaks, I don't know if you follow her on FB or Twitter but she's pretty amazing. I love her experiences and I was shocked (though perhaps not really) that many gay men dislike women (in general) and I've heard about how gay men don't like lesbians and the like. So... yeah. :3

Anyway, I engage in this type of behavior with enough frequency that I can't even be embarrassed by it. It's mostly mental though, so I have a pretty good systems of checks and balances in place, but it's tough! And it's so easy and tempting to police another person's identity, especially if that person has a lot of uncertainty or is going through a transition. It's a false sense of power to tell someone who they are (or are not) which is part of the reason why it happens to begin with. All your reasons have a premise in insecurity.

So as always - this is awesome. I love your posts.

DTanner

6/20/2012 09:43:26 pm

I was shocked as well to find out how a guy I thought a lot of , who was outwardly gay, say some pretty strong shit about a sister that walked thru the emergency room. She was very strong in appearance and the wife beater fit very very welll.....lol.....But he said, there goes another woman that wants to be a man and said it with a snarl......so did that walk on his turff....I told she didnt want to be a man.....she is already a strong as hell woman.....why would she want to be a man.......he puffed off.....What a little bitch......

6/17/2012 01:41:18 pm

Superb post, and very astute, helpful responses from your commentators. This needed articulating--the world needs to read it, but, in keeping with the brutal honesty of the commentators above me, *I* needed to read it, too.

I am a minority in many ways, and having grown up in a state of constant alienation from the White American majority around me, I came to treasure my minority identities and clutch at them as a badge of honor. If they would mock and revile me for my ethnicity and culture, I'd wear it loud and proud! Imagine my consternation when, as I grew into young adulthood, I saw others--both people who shared my identities and people who didn't--"take my identity in vain" [at least from my own narrow perspective].

My response as a teenager was to strike back with identity policing. I remember being 16 and lecturing two boys of my ethnic group on how they were traitors to our strict cultural background for sleeping around, and with White women to boot! My policing arose from my deep ambivalence towards my own tenuous place within our culture, and out of jealousy over the sexual agency they, as boys, enjoyed (and which I, a girl, lacked).

That is just one example of many, and the adolescent urge remains deep inside me all these years, especially whenever *I* feel uncertain about my own position within a group.

To give you a queer-related example: I came out to myself when I was on the edge of 30, while in a long-term relationship with a man I loved (still do) but was unable to desire. Also, I'm not European in ancestry or culture, and in the U.S., most of the *visible* queer culture is Euro-dominated; my experiences as a woman of a non-Western background are utterly invisible. All these things automatically made me tenuous within the Lesbian circles I encountered.

Even more alienating was the fact that, despite a lifetime of manifestations of a born-this-way homosexual orientation, I still had an emotional affinity for men, and valued them as life partners but for the fact that I did not sexually desire them. I feel queer even in my queerness, fitting in neither with Bisexual groups (because I don't understand what it's like to desire men, and great suffering--mine and my male partner's---could have been avoided if I did), nor with Lesbian circles (because men are emotionally attractive to me, and for a sex that often privileges emotional interests over sexual desires, this puts me out of the running for claiming the L-word label).

So here I am: extremely borderline, tenuous me, caught in the no-woman's land of having both a lifelong homosexual orientation and bi/pan-emotional needs....yet still feeling an overwhelming urge to identity-police others, whether other outliers, or women who claim an identity that I feel is foreclosed to me (specifically Lesbian) even though there are marginal things about them as well. It's quite similar to the "bizarro, sick to my stomach" feeling that Lee, above, articulated so well (thank you).

For instance, imagine my surprise when I started moving in Lesbian circles and hearing from more than a few of them that "Yeah, I used to be sexually attracted to men, but now I'm a total lezzie" and even (from some old-school, activist dykes in their late 40s and 50s, no less!) things like, "I'd totally be Bi if I could feel emotionally about men the way I do about women; I'd have a few one-night stands with men, but never a relationship."

Hearing these things, that inner adolescent sometimes just rebels and rears its ugly head. "Why the bleep do these bisexuals get to claim a Lesbian identity when I respectfully relinquish my right to that label, out of deference for those women--apparently in the minority among Lesbian-identified women--who are both homosexual and emotionally interested in women alone?"

Another thing that grates on me is the prominence of the "sexual fluidity" narrative in media and literature that are marketed or touted as Lesbian-focused. You know, the story that so many queer women seem to treasure: a woman whose proactive sexual desires have heretofore been directed only towards men (i.e. heterosexual in the clinical sense) suddenly makes a connection to a special woman, from which sexual desire then arises. I don't see how these stories are triumphs for Lesbian identity, yet they heralded as such, and several women I've known who identify as Lesbian have, in fact, followed this same trajectory.

Perhaps, deep down, I am jealous that those women can so easily depart from their native orientation and desire someone who doesn't "match it." Perhaps I secretly resent how they don't seem to have suffered for it, how they can so cavalierly hop into bed with someone from a sex they've never yearned for, and enjoy it and embrace it. If only I could have been able to do this, to make myself desire the wrong sex (for me), instead of living out years of sexual frustration and inflicting pain on a wonderful man who didn't deserve it.

So, yes, you ha

6/17/2012 01:42:37 pm

[my comment was too long. The rest of it follows]

So, yes, you have pegged it so very well, with such incisiveness. Those of us who feel the urge to identity-police are most likely coming from a place of deep ambivalence and anxiety about our own identities, our own place in these little worlds we have carved out for ourselves and guarded with such care.

Human nature never ceases to fascinate, with all its paradoxes and dissonances.

Thanks to all of you for the discussion; I won't soon forget it.

butchwonders link

6/18/2012 02:32:40 am

Wow... That's an intense set of reactions and experiences, and I'm grateful to you for sharing. Thank you.

6/18/2012 02:58:48 am

Thanks for giving us a respectful space in which to deconstruct these socially-unacceptable feelings. If I couldn't "unpack" them among receptive, thoughtful listeners (who may or may not harbor their own similar feelings and reactions), I might never be able to [try to] work through them. Self-knowledge is a priceless gift to give ourselves.

And though you no doubt hear it every day, thanks for this blog and your writing. I'm not butch, but we have a fair bit in common both from a coming-out perspective and a professional/education one. It really helps me to read what you write. Cheers.

6/17/2012 01:49:21 pm

Shou Shou

7/5/2012 03:45:07 am

Dear BW,

I recently just discovered your blog (my girlfriend introduced me), and I'm hooked. I LOVED this post. What you're doing and bringing to the surface on this blog is so important.

This may sound silly, but I've just recently discovered the femme/butch dynamic. To clarify, I've understood it for years (I've read Butler, Foucault, hooks, Fausto-Sterling and the like in college) but have never experienced it firsthand until now. I didn't know that it was what I needed. I spent several frustrated years in Los Angeles looking for women to date. I look very straight, so I was wildly unsuccessful at finding a mate. I would go to "lesbian" events and nobody would even sneeze in my general direction. I was told by several of my gay male friends that it was because I looked too straight & that they were either intimidated or just thought I was there in support of a friend.

My point is this: I have been adamantly against compartmentalization my whole life, but have recently discovered the value in placing oneself in a box. I love to push boundaries and love it even more when people are completely in shock of who I am once they speak with me, compared to who they thought I was when they had only looked at me. By placing myself in the box of "femme" and embracing (by living within) the butch/femme dynamic, I actually have found a place in the LGBTQ community. Before, I always felt like an intruder because I looked so straight and was treated as such by everybody. I find that I have engaged in identity policing even more so after I found my niche in the LGBTQ community than before. Perhaps it's because I struggled for so long to find someone after my ex-girlfriend & I broke up. I had never dated a true butch (not just in looks but in spirit) until now, so I had never placed importance on gender roles within my own relationships. And now that I do, I want to protect it. Thusly, I have to check myself with the identity policing that has more frequently popped up now that I've found my box. Pun intended.

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