Plotting Dots on A Fluid Identity
Ever have those moments where something clicks, and you realize something that had been there all along, manifesting itself in small ways in your life, intruding on moments that should be just like any other, but are suddenly not at all. For me, its recently been ‘aha!’ moments with kink, queer, and poly. I suddenly recall an experience, an emotion, or behaviour and see it clearly through the (relatively recent) prisms of theory and an identity I’ve more assertively claimed lately. These moments always make me laugh hysterically, mostly in gleeful relief, but also at a person who is so hilariously and almost naively looking back at themselves.
You might be wondering what this photo is doing heading this post… I took it last summer, once I caught my breath from laughing. It was (and still is, I’m sure) on the side of a hotdog stand in downtown Toronto. I still chuckle every time I look at it… but most people who know me as a feminist would probably expect me to react with a vocal disgusted tirade about patriarchal power notions permeating society, blah, blah, blah (not to belittle this response; it’s a valid one). But for some reason, this image strikes a humourous chord with the same part of me that can play in the ‘theatre of SM’ while still maintaining feminist values.
This is the question that brought me to theory in the first place… I was excited to have found terminology and communities for the way I had always felt (and felt crazy for feeling, most of the time). But each took a different path toward integrating in my identity: queer and poly I could easily come to terms with… but kink? That took a little more thought. In fact, it didn’t really click until I read “Race, Cross-Dressing and the Cult of Domesticity” in Anne McClintock’s Imperial Leather, and in particular, this passage: “S/M as Foucault puts it, ‘constitutes one of the greatest conversions of Western imagination: unreason transformed into delirium of the heart’. S/M is a ‘theatre of transformation; it plays the world backward’” (McClintock 1995: 143), converting instruments of power into those of pleasure. If BDSM is the ‘eroticization of power role-play’ through theatrical organization of social risk, and a reorganization of powers (where all parties find it empowering), then it makes complete sense why I would be attracted to that aspect of it (amoung others) as a feminist. So, without going off on a longer tangent on this (which I’d like to return to later, anyway), the basic point is that theory has been integral to my understanding. This is a part of the identity process that has worked particularly well for me, but may not work for everyone.
So why are these realizations and evolution of identity important, both on a personal level, and as part of the movement? For me, it’s been revelatory, but also full of tensions- how closeted and in what way, how political do I make this, how publically ‘off the cliff’ am I willing to fall? The ‘personal is political’, at least, it always has been with me (from vegetarianism to peace activism, etc). And so I’m not shocked that I have this urge to be political about sex, to take this identity and be proud of it, as it’s a fairly predictable part of my personality. Hence, part of the impetus for this blog. But, do other people do this? Is this one of the major forces behind the movement?
As it impacts the individual members of the moment, identity acts to bring people into the movement, especially through online discussion on various aspects of these rapidly evolving communities (the plethora of online forums and blogs on kink, poly, queer, and LGBT bear testament to this!). Identifying as part of a larger community and being networked with like-minded individuals also facilitates organization and motivates mobilization. As discussed previously, identity politics have been an important tactic, just as rights discourses have been. Which causes me to wonder if these two are so easily separable… don’t we identify as belonging to a loose category (poly, kinky, queer, pomosexual, whatever… part of the appeal of the label ‘fluid’ is exactly the plastic boundaries of it) so that we can act collectively to secure certain rights?
And as our identity as ‘those transgressive weirdos’ is often formed by us by mainstream society, as well as in many other ways the previous post covered, then can the movement ever move out of using either rights or identity as major frames? We social humans will almost certainly continue to use commonalities to form groups… this just happens to be a group that embraces multiplicity, a group of common differences. So, the struggle now remains the construction of a publically intelligible sexually diverse identity, or a publically literate argument against conformity. I think it can be done, but must be a shift in cultural thinking, and not an assimilationist tactic… it is a challenge to the underlying social order. An important place to start may be within academia itself, as Mehre Khan pointed out– we should start by more adequately incorporating sexuality and gender analysis… but when we do start, what definition of sexuality will we use? So, the challenges the fluid sexuality movement raises to hierarchy, categorization and oppression, are concerns common to the many disciplines that aim to de/reconstruct. Sex isn’t so separate after all, no? And a conception of fluid sexuality becomes absolutely central to anyone aiming to shift the cultural order.
I’m very tempted to use an astronomy metaphor here (where endless constellations could be created by breaking institutional constellations and reconfiguring the points of light based on your creativity and the way you’re looking at it at the moment)… but it’s hard for me to keep to a straight face. It certainly fits for me, and seems to fit for the movement… I’m interested to see how theory, activisms, and individual lived experiences evolve in the movement, the alliances and networks that form, and cross-overs into mainstream culture. And I’ll continue to laugh when I have moments where I realize I’ve been this way all along, and can appreciate the multiple meanings of it.
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