Identity Considered Harmful

An identity is a thing assembled by cops while they look for a perpetrator, and then pin on you in court. The creation of LGBT, thought at the time to be a masterstroke, has metastasized into demisexual/asexual/and the 57 terrible varieties; what was supposed to be booths in a restaurant turned out to be vines covering the floor of a dark forest with too many lost people in it.

We were likely better off before Magnus Hirschfeld, having just People, and then a few who engaged in “perverse” behavior, or sodomy or what have you. Yes, the criminalizing of some kinds of perversity was a giant pain, but we were free of the less concrete, but more widespread and dreadful, terror of identity.

My “identity” is so fragmented that it could never serve me as a key into a community. My identity is purely contingent: a driver’s license here, a job reference there. I’ve never really thought about my identity and that is for the best, I am sure. Milo Yiannopoulos said Feminism is Cancer. So is Identity.

p.s. Do black Americans have an identity? Yes, I think many of them do, and most would be better off without it. Almost all black Americans feel the need to identify (note: verb) with other black Americans for self-defense. This is sensible and patriotic (and sad, for me, but all too understandable), but once children in school denounce studying as “white” you very clearly have An Identity (noun), and identity turns out to be the bullies’ tool. I recommend to my fellow citizens that they maintain their group cohesion but firmly put down any “black identitarianism” among them.)

A distant mirror?

Doctor Zero at Hot Air forwards a challenging theory in Obama by proxy:

They dismiss Going Rogue as “ghost written” while ignoring the specter of Bill Ayers plodding through Obama’s books, a sputtering bomb clutched in its skeletal fingers. A few lines scribbled on Palin’s palm glow more brightly in their imaginations than terabytes of data flowing across the screen of Obama’s teleprompter. They accuse Palin of being a “divisive” and “polarizing” figure, while Obama launches Taxi Driver rants against evil insurance companies, cops acting stupidly, tonsil-stealing doctors, and everyone else who crosses his path.

I used to dismiss these contradictions as simply hypocrisy, but perhaps these people are angry at Palin because of her perceived similarities to Barack Obama, not in spite of them. They need someplace to ground the lightning of their frustration and disappointment, and they’re not allowed to be angry at Obama.

Or maybe it isn’t unconscious at all, it’s intentional: accuse the other guy of a history of lying just as you’re laying down your biggest whopper.