I noticed that they seem to be the politically correct term for liberals and its so strange. What is the ideology at work here? What does "identity" even mean in this context?
Gender and race are discursive traits in the sense that they require the existence of an Other to have meaning. Just like it doesn’t make sense to talk about boneless pizza, it doesn’t make sense to talk about gender when you’re the only person in existence. This due to the definition “man” being useless without a contrastive “woman.”
But discursive identities are “performed” - at least if you follow Judith Butler’s school of thought, there’s no such thing as “a woman” so much as (and this is the phrasing she uses) her experience of “been being a woman.” That is to say the gender doesn’t exist in the person themselves, but rather in the communication between two people and the understanding springing therefrom (because we established earlier the need for an Other). So in critical race theory and queer theory and such, people are not “black” but rather “being black,” which allows for changes in what black means (and blackness can change because it’s a shared understanding and not an inherent trait).
TLDR It’s a way to distance yourself from gender and racial essentialism linguistically
wouldn't this therefore mean that a man who rejects toxic masculinity could accurately be called not a man as they aren't practicing aspects of what culturally defines a man because that sounds wrong
In this framework there is no such thing as “a man” but rather “being a man.”
But to answer your actual question I think proponents of this view would ask you to think about it like this: if a professor vindictively fails you for correctly contradicting them, did you really fail?
Certainly it’s possible to be in a situation where the Other’s understanding of manhood contradicts one’s understanding of themselves. But important to remember you’re only “not acting as man” in this person’s understanding or within your shared understanding with this person. So they can only really accurately say “you’re not a man to me.” This is the case with everyone.
not sure about this theory as it doesn't explain my lived experience of gender or how I have seen gender work as a cultural factor
That's the conflict I guess.
At some point, the culture can change. Things once seen as "not being a man" can be seen as "being a man". Or a person can find themselves in a different culture where the definition of "being a man" has a different set of criteria.
I disagree that "identity" is distancing from essentialism because we use descriptors all the time without implying that those characteristics are essential. People don't need to say "Bob identifies as a teacher" in order to clarify that they belive that teacher isn't an essential quality of Bob. I thought the opposite, that identity is sanitizing hierarchies like race and gender by implying that an individual is not coerced into comforming to a certain social category. Other replies in this thread prove the point perfectly. This is because "identity" here is often associated with "identify", and with "identify" it suggests that the subject is choosing the social category they belong in and accepts all the connotations that come with it. Its emblemic of the kind of amoral "postmodernism" where the status quo is simply deconstructed neutrally with the intention to describe, lacking a strong critique or even a recognition of the grave injustice of the situation. Honestly, I get the impression that the kind of academics who donate to Kamala's campaign simply don't care and are very comfortable with the status quo.
I think it's an acknowledgement that race and gender are self defined and often don't fit what society defines them to be. Like a Black person in the US may not consider themselves African American because they identify more as Afro-Latino or Carribbean, but society would still identify them as African American. Or for gender, people who are gender non-conforming are oftentimes misgendered by society as a whole.
Now you could make the argument that gender and race should already mean self definition rather than societal definition. But we still live in a world that has a tonne of weird race science and transphobia. So using the word "identity" I think recognizes the more important aspects of race and gender.
Need someone to tackle identity like Marx did value so I don't have to think that hard about it and can just imbibe the good takes (tm) :sit-back-and-enjoy:
About what it sounds like, the identity and experiences that come with being a certain race, gender, nationality, etc. At least in the US, race can be especially relevant since two people identical in all other aspects can have wildly different experiences.
It sometimes has a negative affect, like what you see TERFs say about "real" women, but it can still be legitimate in good faith contexts.Can you elaborate on why you think this language is a "politically correct term for liberals" and what you mean by "ideology?" Were you expecting something specific?
just my experience where a lot of institutions who try to be "woke" adopt this kind of language. by ideology I meant the ideology in Marx's false consciousness sense, where it twists our perception of the world
