11:02am March 8, 2012

Fixing things and identity

So last night I was talking to a friend about an experience with a relative. I don’t even want to get into it. Private, and traumatic, and uncomfortable even to think about long enough to write it.

And she told me something that explained what a lot of my instincts have been telling me for a long time.

See… I’ve been doing various disability rights work, including activism, for a long time. But I’ve always been uncomfortable when called on to describe myself as an activist. Sometimes I’ve done it, but it doesn’t sit right. Same with other words that mean the same thing.

Most people would think that means I’m somehow afraid of activism. But that’s not the case. It’s something else. It felt dangerous. Like the sort of thing that would actually cause harm. So if I did it at all, it was reluctantly and with a sense of unease. As if doing this was one or two steps away from something very wrong. And when my friend told me what she told me, the reasons popped into focus.

Apparently, if you make it a true part of your identity to fix something, then you’re bound to the thing you’re trying to fix. And so, often unconsciously, you realize you need that thing to exist in order for your identity to exist.

So at best you keep stopping before you fix the problem, and at worst you start doing things to perpetuate the problem. You also keep finding the problem where it doesn’t exist (or barely exists) and responding to it as if it’s really, intensely there. Or responding to real problems in counterproductive ways. Or actively sabotaging your attempts to fix things. Because if the problem goes away, then so does your identity.

This made so many things make sense. I told her about my reluctance, and she said it made perfect sense. It wasn’t just the word activism either. It was other words that amounted to the same thing. Anti-ableist and self-advocate and all that. It made the things too close to central for my comfort. If I did it at all, I’d get this icky sensation in my head. Especially when having to write “about me” stuff for blogs or conferences or whatever. It’s just words, in one sense, but it was the thought behind the words that was bugging me. A thought too close to identifying deeply as a fixer of the problem, rather than just working to fix the problem without all the identity baggage attached.

She told me I was much better off describing myself as an artist and cat lover than any of this other stuff. And that very much feels right in a way that identifying strongly with the role of problem-solver never will.

Notes: