3 Pieces for Rethinking Identity Politics
Mental health, neurodivergence, orientation, and the path ahead
This is something of a composite response to
‘s recent post, 3 Ideas for Rethinking Neurodiversity. It’s also the final installment in a series on sexual orientation, and whether we still need it today. Previous essays can be found here:Part 1 - Is Sexual Orientation Obsolete?
Part 2 - Straight Talk About Being Gay
Part 3 - Queer Folk Don’t Need Orientation
I’m not the first to notice that mental health diagnoses are being treated like personality tests.
addresses this overlap in What Makes Self-Knowledge So Shareable? where she explores the urge to know and be known in these particular typified ways. She touches on existential philosophy, which maintains that there is no individual self, that instead we make ourselves. Tara acknowledges that tools for self-knowledge like personality frameworks and mental health diagnoses can sometimes help in the work of becoming, but that they are insufficient and also sometimes get in the way.Others go further:
, in her memoir Cured, makes a strong case against using diagnostic language outside a medical setting at all. She points out that such language was only ever meant to be used between clinicians, and does not actually signify anything physically distinct about a person’s brain. The implications for identity are huge: contrary to popular belief, mental disorders are not biochemical imbalances or necessarily lifelong sentences. They are simply shorthand for an array of symptoms and their causes and treatments.The only thing I’d add to Tara’s piece is to say that orientation, especially in niche online spaces, has also become a kind of personality test, with the same arbitrariness and cult following. There are now way too many sexual orientations to count, even just sticking to decade-old Tumblr standards. Many of these orientations describe experiences most people have, most of which have nothing to do with gendered attraction and more to do with sexual inhibitions.
Spending enough time in these spaces gives the impression that all this navel-gazing is actually a way to avoid genuine self-reflection. Using hyper-specific labels for every conceivable experience of desire can actually brush away the complexity, flattening what’s real behind a pin in a bio. This results in more people staying in the closet longer, and fewer alternatives to the sex-negativity of purity culture.
To give folks the benefit of the doubt, I’m sure there are many who are just doing their best with what they have. In that case, finding identity in community is a stronger bet. You won’t find yourself in yourself. We are defined in relation to others. It speaks to the paucity of our social fabric that so many young folks feel online communities or aesthetics are where they most belong. Not because those avenues are inherently inappropriate or insufficient, but because it implies our analog networks and structures can’t even compare to digital ones.
Online life should be a luxury, a cherry on top. Instead it’s too often a refuge and respite from a life that’s otherwise suffocating or isolating.
Traditions of queer found family do help address this need. Gay identity first developed after the industrial revolution created new urban environments, and queer folks have been caring for each other since always. Those networks are now under vicious attack from fascists, cheered on by conservatives. We need more than categorization schemes to defend and expand them.
One helpful approach could be to hold our identities lightly. I’m gay for political reasons, not because I think we’re a different species. It’s also good to remember the context of our identities, how and when they formed, and to be willing to cross their boundaries for strategic purposes. This will both fortify our sense of self, connect us to a past and a people, and help immunize us against forces that are trying to control and erase us.
One problem of using politics as an identity marker is that it encourages people to strive for an impossible ideal, judging themselves and others for falling short. This is purity culture. Another problem is that performing a political identity becomes a goal in itself, whereas Joshua claims the label “leftist” because he wants a better world. He reminds us that politics is about what we do, not who we are — or rather, who we are is defined by what we do.
The political realm explicitly weaponizes identity in order to maintain the status quo. Rulers distract and divide their subjects with carefully packaged messages about identity. In this context, it becomes even more important to transcend social barriers in order to enact political change.
So how do we do this?
Tara McMullin’s piece 3 Ideas for Rethinking Neurodiversity can apply to queer identity as well. She writes about the history of neurodivergence as an explicitly political movement, her first idea being “Neurodiversity is a political movement.” I think this is vital for queer folks as well, not just to remember but to articulate. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that mental health activism and gay rights were one and the same. Homosexuality was only removed as a mental disorder in the DSM in 1973, and only after targeted direct action campaigns, not out of the benevolence of mental health practitioners. Nowadays, Pride parades are often commercial advertisements as much as they are commemorations of our history.
Tara differentiates between “normal” and “common,” and, quoting from Jodie Hare’s book Autism Is Not a Disease, says the neurodivergent movement “asks us to unpack our society's desire to define a 'normal' brain against one that functions differently." The same can be said for those who desire queer liberation: rejecting the idea of “normal” calls into question the whole gay/straight apparatus. History reminds us that such distinctions were meaningless until a couple centuries ago. Queerness, while never normative, has always been common. And there have been times and places in which same-gender desire was not queer at all.
Tara’s second idea is that “Productivity shouldn’t be the bar for inclusion.” This cuts against the capitalist imperative to work, produce, and contribute endlessly without rest. In the context of queer identity, this challenges the homophobic idea that people must reproduce themselves in nuclear families in order to be valid members of society.
Her third idea is to “Question the commodification of neurodiversity.” She pulls another quote from Jodie Hare:
"This process of making neurodivergence 'marketable' can lead to a form of hyper-individualism that rejects the true tenets of neurodiversity and fails to advocate for those who have the least proximity to power, or whose politics reject the imperatives of capital."
The same could be repeated verbatim for queer folks. This is a powerful challenge to rainbow capitalism and pinkwashing, such as we’ve seen plastered over the Israeli genocide in Palestine. Such vile appropriation of gay identity for the justification of imperial violence is only possible in a world where gayness has become metabolized into a marketable demographic; unthreatening, predictable, easy to manipulate. Thankfully, the genocide in Gaza has served as a wake-up call to many queer folks who refuse to be used to justify war crimes. May this momentum build.
I didn’t intentionally time this essay to come out days before the election; it’s just when I happened to finish it. Nevertheless, we’re at a moment in American history where the legal standing queer folks have won for ourselves over the half century since Stonewall is at risk of being completely overturned. Trans people are first on the list of “the enemies within,” but we can’t pretend the fascists will stop there.
Now more than ever, it’s vital to understand ourselves not as isolated individuals or as a group set apart, but as people living under an occupying force, faced with the threat of expulsion and extermination. The banks and companies who plaster rainbows over their merch every June won’t lift a finger to protect us. Now more than ever, it’s vital to remember just how powerful we are when we act together. We keep ourselves safe, because “we” can extend to anyone connected via ties of loyalty and love.
I’ve written this series more or less for a fellow queer audience. But lastly, let me directly address my straight readers:
I don’t usually encourage people to vote. As an anarchist, I generally believe voting as it is currently structured is one of the biggest obstacles to making our own decisions together.
But this time I actually think making sure Harris wins the election will make a difference. For anyone keeping up, it’s clear what another Trump administration would mean for us. Project 2025 is a witch-hunt, and we’re set for the pyre.
If you haven’t, please take this opportunity to consider that your queer family, friends, and neighbors are not all that different from yourself.
First they came for transgender people…
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As an anarchist f@g, I really appreciate this essay and these thoughts.
This in particular is well-said: "Many of these orientations describe experiences most people have, most of which have nothing to do with gendered attraction and more to do with sexual inhibitions."