A Bit of Identity Politics

The first few blog entries have been written without any qualifications, research, or referencing. Perhaps also with not all that much thinking. My aim is not to get bogged down in long justifications, explanations of counterarguments, or literary citations.

I am very aware that this leads to a simplistic, at times one-sided, often incomplete picture. I am sure that any readers of this blog (at least the ones I have shared it with) are intelligent enough to know that the big picture is always far more complicated, and full of different (often valid) views.

I do, however, want to clarify what I mean with "women" and "we". Ten years ago, when I was reading a lot of postmodern literature for my studies, I would have jumped at such simplification. There is an abundance of gender literature out there, as well as identity literature in general, arguing that identities are blurry and partly socially constructed. I agree with these arguments to some extent. As a "female" (social definition, not the biological definition of "woman"), I often feel that I have more in common with "males" than with other "females". And to take the postmodern argument one step further, I also partly agree that what makes me "female" is to a great extent socially imposed on me (the "other" defines the "us"...).

Bringing this all down to daily, practical life and my past posts: this all doesn't fit. Whatever I feel or however I subjectively try to position myself in the male-female world, I am, at the end of the day, a working mom surrounded by a lot of other part-time working moms and stay-at-home moms. Is this "identity" constructed through circumstances, i.e. our common situation?

More thoughts on this later.