Can I really rest: “Identity Fragility”
In the current state of the world, the world troubles with faith, justice, leadership, politics and traumas. Our world is in fight and flight, and how we are responding could talk to our sense of identity fragility.
I have been thinking and processing a lot around “Identity Fragility”.
‘Identity fragility’ is the: defensiveness, denial and invalidation that characterizes some human’s responses to being antisemitic, biphobia, classist, disablist, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, sexist, transphobic. I want to make clear that discrimination is not on some hierarchy and perhaps we need to learn to understand each other by hearing the others pain more. As a friend pointed out to me - thinking about identity fragility helps us think about the nuance of identity politics.
This takes Robin Diangelo’s concept of ‘White Fragility’ from their book “White Fragility: why it’s hard for white people to talk about racism” (2018) further.
By doing so I hope it helps people to know that identity fragility is a universal experience. In their book they define White Fragility as:
“White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress be-comes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviours such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviours, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium”.
Being challenged is not comfortable for any of us; yes, we are only human and we all make mistakes.
But ‘identity fragility’ can become toxic if as humans we don’t check what privileges we have and that another person or community group that we don’t have lived experience of, may not. We only learn as humans by listening, not immediately responding - by going away and questioning, ‘why is the person challenging me’, and then coming back and taking some accountability. We only truly take accountability by expressing what we have learnt and what might do differently in the future. Too often the wrong people are being silenced on social media or via WhatsApp groups; we can only truly understand the other persons lived experience by truly listening and understanding why we are getting defensive - being defensive talks only to our identity fragility.
Here I want to take from, “What Is White Fragility? Plus 5 Key Steps for Overcoming It” blog on Healthline, medically reviewed by Bethany Juby, PsyD (Healthline written by Crystal Raypole on June 13, 2022, cited examples further and by doing so making them more universal to our human experience.
These ‘Identity Fragility’ feelings are often expressed by:
Angrily insisting you aren’t any of the things that someone may be asking you to check your privilege about: antisemitic, biphobia, classist, disablist, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, sexist, transphobic. For example, as a white person I need to accept that I can walk through the world easily as I blend into the white majority in the world, whereas if you think of the Jewish part of my identity and my ethnic looks due to this, I stand out more in the white community. I recall being on a course at the beginning of my therapist training and being accused of being racist - I feel shame for how I reacted to this. But acknowledging that of course I can be racist - this is where my learning began, and change happened. It can be liberating.
Demanding when being challenged why ‘everything has to be about the intersectional privilege that you are being challenged about’. This is often due to your personal discomfort about being accused of being discriminatory and therefore offensive.
Erasure or silencing the person challenging you, by starting an argument or twisting events to make things seem as if the other person is in the wrong. This is also a form of gaslighting the other person -it often makes the other person reactionary for a reason and is a form of discrimination. If we have felt a sense of erasure or silencing with our own identity rather than passing that on to another person or community group, we should be looking at opening a dialogue rather than shutting it down because of our discomfort. That allows for developing and growing.
As a queer and Jewish person, I often express my internalised antisemitism and homophobia by making a joking of the stereotypes that are unique to the expression of my identity. Or I gaslight myself as to whether I have a right to speak up when something I witness is not okay or wrong.
Crying, therefore moving away from being challenged and making it about ourselves.
Explaining how guilty, ashamed or sad you feel. Rather than taking accountability for what you are saying or even saying, ‘let me go away to check’ why the other person is challenging you. You are reactionary as you are feeling uncomfortable about what you are being challenged about. It is not the other persons’ responsibility to make your discomfort okay.
Remaining silent or silencing the person doing the challenging due to your identity vulnerability being exposed. An example of this in my own life is being asked to use my walking stick rather than my walking frame, because other people may ask too many questions. This is not my discomfort about being disabled, but it is hurtful - it does take away the safety and trust that I may have in that relationship.
Just changing or avoiding the subject, or not acknowledging being challenged. An example of this for me is being very open about my disability. In a short-term relationship I had the person I was dating had a large reaction to ‘Grace’ - the name I give my walking frame. This reaction made me feel ashamed of being disabled. It was not my shame but the projected shame of the person I was feeling on my disability. It was not my identity fragility.
Making a joke about what the person is saying or a particular community, by doing so undermining the person or community group you are talking about. This is not about the person challenging you making a big fuss about nothin and it is not political correctness - it is about your identity fragility i.e. why you need to make a joke about something at the expense of the other persons’ or community groups’ identity.
Not understanding or wanting to understand the additional systemic barriers a particular community face or wanting to listen to their lived experience.
Telling someone else that you read an article or a piece of research that you don’t have lived experience of and therefore, ‘I know what I’m talking about’. This is invalidating the other persons’ lived experience: it does not show you are truly interested, learning or open to developing an understanding of something outside your own lived experience. It also can be seen as gaslighting and therefore discriminatory.
Being lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) today is different to where we were twenty-five years ago. There is much more legislation and social policy that protects LGB people. There is better access to support where needed. Whereas for trans and non-binary there are still many more systemic barriers: how politically and the media talks about trans and non-binary people is where we were with the lesbian, gay or bisexual 25 years ago. As a queer person I have privilege but as a non-binary I have less.
As a male assigned at birth (AMAB) and white person, I have the privilege of cisgender passing. When I walk down the road and my non-binary gender not being noticed or being seen as non-binary. That is a privilege: it does not still protect me from the transphobia that I can experience in the conversation with the other, when I read a transphobic article about transgender people, or someone might treat me differently when they find out I am non-binary.
I was not named after a Chinese tea (although I always like a good Chai Latte). When people don’t realise I am Jewish and find out that I have a Hebrew name, and if my Jewish identity becomes a problem in any relationship, this talks to the other person’s identity fragility. It is not my responsibility to make their reaction to this okay.
These expressions of ‘identity fragility’ may not be intended to be offensive, but that does not make it okay when it happens or that we don’t take accountability if someone challenges us.
They can be seen as still harmful and sometimes highly toxic. ‘Identity fragility’ centres on your feelings and moves away from the other person’s lived experience of discrimination and their experience of walking in their shoes through the world. Mainly also this gets in the way of productive open-hearted conversations and prevents real learning.
People often have a reaction to word ‘privilege’; it would be weird not to. The Collins English Dictionary (2019) definition of privilege as:
A benefit or advantage granted only to certain people.
The opportunity to do something which gives you great satisfaction and which most people never have the chance to.
The power and advantages that come with great wealth or high social class.
Take a breath and think why before reacting. It is more indicative of own our sense of fragility and nothing to do with the person stating we have ‘privilege’ or to indeed check our privilege.
In the book “The Politics of Trauma” by Staci K Haines we are introduced to the idea of Somatics:
“Somatics understands both the individual and collective as a combination of biological, evolutionary, emotional, and psychological aspects, shaped by social and historical norms, and adaptive to a wide array of both resilient and oppressive forces. Somatics is the intentional change process by which we can embody transformation, individually and collectively. Embodied transformation is foundational change that shows our actions, ways of being, relating, and perceiving. It is transformation that sustains over time” (P.19, 2019).
Kimberley Krenshaw coined the term Intersectionality:
“The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and independent systems of discrimination or disadvantages”.
From this we can understand that being understood to have privilege is not a bad thing, and still in some areas you may not have privilege - but don’t use that to invalidate or silence someone’s else’s lived experience.
At the end of the day, these can often reinforce the individuals’ or community groups’ experience of discrimination. As research indicates, this can cause deep and lasting emotional, physical, social and mental health harm. Using the framework of intersectional identity lets us know that we are not all equal in society and as humans it is our responsibility to check where we have privilege, check our own reactions when being challenged about our privileges and to challenge why our responses may be considered as discriminatory.
I am also not a perfect human; who is? When making a mistake I take compassionate accountability about my identity vulnerabilities and must think about my own identity fragility, so I can hold myself to as much account as I do other people. I also need to think about the wider effects on me and my intersectional identity, my own experience of marginalisation, trauma and what I have internalised from our wider world, when challenged by some else’s challenge of my lived experience.