I am a cis-female. A Junior at Wellesley College. An ally. A relatively new "twenty-something". Born and bred in New England, I have never lived outside of the state of Massachusetts. I've never actually lived in Boston city proper, but will nonetheless call myself a Bostonian. American with Canadian citizenship.
Well, Asian American if we're being specific. Of Taiwanese and Cantonese descent but I really only capitalize on that when there is food involved. One who has in recent years taken an interest in almost every single asian culture except her own, but not intentionally so. Lover of J-doramas and Jpop and Kpop. KissMe with a bias towards Eli at the moment, but that's flexible. Mildly obsessed with sushi, dim sum and frozen yogurt. Will not turn down offers for Korean BBQ.
Other Identifiers?: Student, former musician but life-long music lover. Lover of bossa nova, jazz and classical but will also listen to One Direction and Taylor Swift on a regular basis. Former film photographer who gave up and has since decided to use her phone exclusively. Writer sometimes. Perpetually observing and thinking about life and the Human Experience. ISTJ-The Inspector. Sister. Daughter. Friend. Not incredibly self-confident but working on that.
Swimmer with Yogi tendencies. Not clinically overweight but there's always room for improvement. Occasional rock-climber that has been known to spend quite a bit of time on a boat (dinghies or otherwise). I would spend almost every moment I have by the sea if I could and would be ridiculously sad if I had to go and live somewhere that did not at least have a fairly sizeable body of water nearby.
Biologist by trade but have experimented(haha) with the other sciences. Art Historian on the side. Classics enthusiast. Kind of multilingual-some French, Greek, Latin and Japanese. A few German and Italian phrases for flavor. Nerd sometimes, nerd fighter all the time. Occasional Tumblr user with a strong preference for Pinterest. Gryffindor. Stark sympathizer but Daenerys supporter. Member of the Sherlock fandom. Social media addict.
Lover of all things pink and fluffy(as well as sparkly), proud unicorn owner. Currently obsessed with bows, tweeds and brightly colored pants. Will not compromise comfort in fashion. Tea enthusiast.
Liberal-ish. Slightly addicted to YouTube, particularly vloggers (the British ones are awesome). Avid film watcher who used to like rom-coms a lot but is working on branching out. Despite the fact that it is a very unpopular standpoint amongst feminists: I still love fairy tales.
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So those are just some of the ways that I identify myself. I could probably say a lot more(I kept going back to put more things in) but I think you get my point.
I think I became much more aware of identity and trying to find my identity the moment that I stepped on campus. I think it's just the nature of our school that finding your identity is more prominent/encouraged than it might have been at other schools. That being said though, I think I hesitated writing anything about identity because I thought mine wasn't interesting enough (as though I had some sort of obligation to you to be interesting). And I thought that I wasn't qualified to talk about privilege and identity because I am a cis-heterosexual female. How could I possibly have anything interesting to add to the conversation?
What I realized when I saw this video from Sexplanations that not only am I qualified to talk about identity but EVERYONE is able to talk about identity. Why? Because there is no one who knows more about being me than me and no one who knows more about being you than you.
The one point I would disagree with Nick is that identity isn't just a part of who we are, it is everything that we are. The way we feel, act and treat others(while hard to define in words per se) is still a part of our identity, how we can know ourselves and how others can know us. And to paraphrase Hank Green, the creation of the self is one of greatest things we will ever create. Identity transcends gender, race and sexual orientation because yes, it encompasses all of that but also so much more.
I think the most common problem that I've encountered is that the people I see only get to see part of my identity at any one time. I haven't stopped being all the things that I wrote above but in different settings with different people, different things take precedence. I'm not actively trying to be different selves for different people or that I'm trying to be deceiving, it just sort of turns out that way.
Over the years, I've always gotten kind of offended when people have tried to distill me into a few facets of my personality. An example of this is that I am "addicted to studying". Someone once told me that "oh, I miss having you around because I know I never have to worry about anything because I know Tiff will do enough worrying for the both of us". And then there's the "Oh you're Asian, so all of this math and science stuff must come really easily to you"(No, it doesn't.) Someone even used to liken me to a baby panda, which retroactively I'm realizing that even though it wasn't meant to be racist, it probably did have racial undertones and was undeniably condescending and I probably should have been much more offended than I was. Anyways.
Now, I don't think these remarks were made with any sort of malicious intent but when they came out they just didn't sit very well with me. I think I've come to the realization though that these people who tried to make these generalizations about me already thought of me in a certain way and probably had no intentions of getting to know me to find out the nuances. It showed to me an incomplete understanding of my identity and that made me sad and a little frustrated. I started worrying about whether or not I should be changing the way that I act or what I talk about so that I could leave a better impression. But then I realized that it would probably not make a difference. And that I have every prerogative to not include them in my life in any significant capacity if I don't want to. The best friends that I have made have realized that I have good days and bad days and everything in between and are incredibly supportive of that. Because I am human and so are they, and so are you. And because we are human, things are inherently complicated.
And that's okay.
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The Videos I was referencing:
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