I think it's interesting how people define themselves. From nationalism to ethnicity to socioeconomic status to sense of humor to gender to age to physical characteristics to (infinity and beyond). I think there is a lot more to explore and say about this topic. But tonight I just want to say that as much as I think it can be liberating and enriching to take different perspectives and question how we define ourselves, the ability to assign concrete words to who we are as people seems so reassuring. I would never hope that anyone would be fully able to define themselves with words, but I would also never deny the value of knowing that there was a constant, an immutable, identifiable core to people--a core that words could help illuminate.
two things:
ReplyDeletefirstly, the response to your comment on my post -- i'm so sorry!!! i totally forgot about that title; and i forgot that we brainstormed for it! ads;lkjfs.d forgive me?
secondly, a response to this post. if you read the paper that just came out last friday, we had a whole thing on homosexuality (page 3) and i thought/discussed with the other editors/daren for a long time whether she should put "lesbian student Bob Bobbo said 'etc'". Because on one hand, while it should be unecessary to label people, there were times when opinions and thoughts would be made more clear when sexuality was defined. for example, if the first quote under the headline was from a straight student, couldn't it easily be interpreted that the student was gay, especially if his/her opinion was "gay marriage should be legalized without question." so is it bad if it's assumed that person is gay? hopefully not, but maybe so. and it's just confusing to think about ... but people label anyways whether you hand them the correct label or not; in the end, I believe we decided to keep most of the clarifications (to be safe and not misrepresent anyone). but it was quite a discussion, and an interesting one that sort of related to people being anchored down and 'defining themselves.'
((p.s. i think my comment on your post was longer than the post itself))