Identity

Another one of those posts from Andrew Sullivan that sparked a few thoughts of my own. I've probably taken issue with Sullivan on this before -- he spends a lot of time decrying "identity politics," particularly when engaged in by people he doesn't identify with -- but I have to hand it to him: he does spark some thinking from time to time. I'm not researching this one -- I'm just following the thoughts to see where they lead.

He says something that once again betrays a lack of depth in his thinking:

As to the broader issue, it is undeniable that our identity forms us; but it is still important in my view to aspire to something beyond it.

My question is, does he honestly think that people have only one "identity"? I'm positing this in full realization that his use of the term is fluid: there is any individual's identity, which is composed of any number of facets, and then there is the group identity that is generally being referred to in discussions of "identity politics." But these group identities are never monolithic.

The stellar illustration of that last observation is the gay movement: What started off once upon a time as "LGB" is now "LGBTQ" and growing. (I've seen extenstions of that one that stagger the imagination, but I've forgotten all the initials.) This is identity politics carried to the point where it no longer has a coherent identity, and no longer has any effectiveness as a mode of operation. If you don't believe me, just look at the overwhelming success of the national movement organizations in the past decade or so. Right.

Sullivan's use of the term is inevitably pejorative. It seems that no one who discusses movements and interest groups in those terms is in favor -- except of course, for their own movement and interest groups, which are by definition not based on "identity." (I'm sorry, but I can't resist: Does this mean that old, white, straight Christian guys don't have identities?) I mean, once again, what we're dealing with here is lazy thinking, this time apparently focused on Sonia Sotomayor, and I have to say that I'm amazed at Sullivan, or nearly: you have figure that if the far-right noise machine is saying it, it can't possibly be true. (This is based on empirical evidence, so is subject to change as new evidence becomes available. I'm not holding my breath.)

My problem with Sullivan's statement is that people, and even groups, do aspire to something beyond -- not only aspire, but achieve, regularly, and as a matter of course. Not to acknowledge that is not only lazy, but sloppy. You're going to come to the right conclusions only by accident because you've set artificial parameters for a discussion of real phenomena.

I'm not saying that identity politics is not real -- look at the alphabet soup that's the gay movement, or any one of a number of blogs that hew to the party line (whatever the party happens to be, and whatever the reality of the subject under discussion). In most cases that's a natural outgrowth of the demands of the situation: there's an issue at stake, and most issues do not affect 100% of the population. Those that do don't affect everyon the same way. Identity becomes a viable rallying point for a point of view.

This is sort of interesting:

I have long struggled to achieve a balance in writing about homosexuality - objective and subjective - and haven't always succeeded. But the point was trying. On this blog, I write passionately about the subject but I hope I do not do so out of a sense of victimhood or in a way that doesn't assume that heterosexuals can easily grasp and agree with what I'm saying.

As to Sullivan's "balance in writing" about homosexuality, why? I make no bones about the fact that I'm an advocate. Otherwise, I wouldn't be blogging. Frankly, I think that's pretty much the case across the board on the blogosphere. I'm a lot more fair than many bloggers (which regularly gets me trashed from both directions, when anyone bothers to notice), but I'm not at all reticent about my agenda.

My basis is different: I'm not apologizing. (And frankly, that surprises me in one regard: not that I'm unapologetic, but that Sullivan, who is substantially younger than I, is bending over backwards to make himself acceptable to non-gays. I guess it's not purely a generational thing after all.) I'm putting the shoe on the other foot: anyone who is going to be critical of me solely because of my sexual orientation has to prove to me that their opinion is acceptable and deserves attention.

That may very well be using identity as a club, but in a different way than is the usual case when discussing "identity politics." Sure, my politics, at least on social issues, particularly on the issue of gay rights, stems from my identity as a gay man. To be honest, I've never been very good at being a victim -- I'm just too damned ornery for that, and I don't have much patience for it in anyone else. My feeling is that if you're a victim, chances are you've been cooperating. (Don't take this as an absolute: there are certainly situations in which someone is a victim without any influence on their situation. Interestingly enough, those people don't seem to spend much time playing the victim card. They tend to sue.)

To loop back around to Sullivan's remarks and my objections to them, where this is leading seems to be one more blast at Sullivan for dismissing a perfectly legitimate strategic basis for activiy by what is a perfectly circular argument: the arguments are invalid because they are based on identity politics, and identiy politics are by definition suspect. (Full disclosure: as I noted at the beginning of this post, I don't know the circumstances that prompted Sullivan's post, but he seems to have jumped on the "affirmative action" bandwagon with regard to Sotomayor's career, which he now admits was wrong. "Affirmative action" is simply one of the mechanisms of identity politics.) In this case, the argument -- Sonia Sotomayor's successful career, and consequently her qualifications as a Supreme Court nominee -- has been given a suspect pedigree -- identity politics -- in order to carry out a radical right-wing agenda. I'm sort of surprised at Sullivan for being a party to it, but at the same time I'm not: it's Beltway thinking, after all.