Response to "Issues of Subjectivity and Identity"

Barker’s Issues of Subjectivity and Identity made me question how I would explain my identity (to myself and others). I’m sitting on a train and I just changed my shirt from a baggy soccer t-shirt to a fitted orange sweater. Already I am sitting up straighter and walking with better posture. I feel more feminine and obligated to demonstrate that to perfect strangers. I’ve probably done things like this before, but without notice or worry. But after reading Baker’s article, I became acutely aware of how I think I should act, and how I think others think I should act (did that make sense?). Barker points out an interesting idea: our identities are constantly evolving and developing. We are never the same person each day. I like this idea for two reasons. One, it parallels the chief concept taught in developmental biology that we as humans (and other creatures too) are never fully developed; we always changing and developing whether we are a fetus growing fingers and toes, an elderly person aging, or a sick patient battling cancer. So too are our identities shaped by the environment, our DNA, and ourselves; they are subject to change throughout our whole lives. This is an incredibly freeing realization. Every day we can wake up and be whoever we happen to be that day, and we don’t have to apologize for that. If our actions and thoughts don’t’ fulfill the standardized expectations established by ourselves and society, who cares? Knowing this inspires confidence and acceptance in me. I never expect to be perfect every day, but I realize that I usually think things like, “what would I normally do in this situation?” or “how would I normally react to this?” I hope I can channel these thoughts to a place in my mind where I don’t have to filter and process everything, and direct it to an area where I can just act.

Reaction to Glenn’s article

Evelyn Nakano Glenn argues that gender and race cannot be considered independently; they are interconnected relations that people identify with simultaneously. I’ll admit, I usually separate gender and race, but having read Glenn’s The Social Construction and Institutionalization of Gender and Race: An Integrative Framework, I completely agree that race and gender should be an integrated, linked study. Glenn believes that the most effective way to achieve this analysis is through the study of social constructionism. This theory expresses that the way cultures have defined and established sex and sexual meanings, as well as race, is rooted in biological means. In an attempt to eliminate cultural expectations that are typified by our biological condition, the word “gender” was created. It allows individuals to claim both masculine and feminine traits; choosing to identify with one or the other is not dependent upon biology. Race is often associated with physical characteristics, even though scholars agree that “social attitudes and arrangements” are responsible for the dominance of one race over the other. For example, Europeans contributed to the concept of biological race to help distinguish between Christians and non-Christians in the 18th and 19th centuries, which eventually led to the social structure of white, European superiority over “other” races.

The formation of race and the act of engendering others are both manifested in a “system of relationships” including norms, symbols, and practices defined by differences. Glenn notes that race and gender share three chief features that can be utilized for further study: “they are relational concepts whose construction involves both representational and social structural processes in which power is a constitutive element.” For me, this unbounded study is too overwhelming and complex to tackle. It can take a lifetime to change a single person’s attitudes about race and gender. I applaud Glenn and other social scientists who are able to articulate issues related to race and gender, and who bring light to the fact that race and gender are nothing more than concepts that we as a society have created.