Label Me

Itemizing My Core Identity

The question, "Who are you?" is very broad and not easy to answer. For some it's a challenge because they don't know themselves well enough to be able to posit a response. For me it's because I don't know where to begin. I am a lot of different people all wrapped up into one. The best way I could tackle the subject is to run through the primary facets of my core identity. They are roughly ranked here in ascending order from the most fundamental to the most topical

Stereotype Warning: This essay deals in large part with stereotypes. I understand that not all members of all groups adhere homogeneously to their associated stereotype, but by the same token, stereotypes exist because members of groups demonstrably share many traits in common. My perception of my own identity is often based on how I compare to the stereotypes of the group in which I identify. Nota bene...

#1 - Masculinity

I was assigned male at birth, and my gender identity aligns very well with that. I have never had any confusion in that regard. My entire life I've displayed traits far out on the masculine end of the spectrum. I am drawn to cars and motorcycles like a child is to candy and cake. My wardrobe consists almost entirely of blue jeans and t-shirts, no matter what the season. I have no disdain for gourmet food, but absolutely nothing pleases me more than a big plate of chicken and biscuits with gravy, or a simple grilled ham and cheese sandwich, either followed with a tall cold glass of milk. My house is a bastion of dust and germs, with enough clutter to make a fraternity boy take pause. Clothes shopping and dancing are as alien to me as snake-handling and sumo wrestling. I am terrible about birthdays and anniversaries, and look forward to Christmas with about the same enthusiasm that I have for tax day. I am, in every way, a typical male.

#2 - Ethnicity

I am a WASP. Not only am I white (some might say "pasty white"), my heritage on both sides is, indeed, Anglo Saxon, and I am a baptized and confirmed Episcopalian. I'm not a polished L.L. Bean socialite like many WASPs are, but my upbringing conditioned me to outwardly repress my feelings and sweep problems under the rug, so I still rank it very highly as a core identity. I am not necessarily proud of my race, but neither am I ashamed of it. I think that mankind can rise above the differences between the races, but that does not mean that those differences don't exist. Racial characteristics account for the most profound variations in anatomy beyond those of gender. I can never change my skin. Since it is with my skin that I meet the world, it is very important to the way I identify myself.

Race is only one half of ethnicity, however. The other component is culture. I am an American. I would say that I am proud to be an American. There are a lot of aspects of the American culture that I'm not terribly proud of, such as an inexplicable love of guns and violence, and a peculiar tendency towards Puritanism and bigotry. The U.S.A. has its share of faults, as any nation does, but I laud the fact that it was founded on a government of, by, and for the people, where individuals have the freedom to express themselves as they desire, and where opportunities exist for anyone to succeed in pursuing whatever path they choose.

I was born and raised in Northern New York State. Some few people do understand that New York State continues beyond the border of Manhattan Island, but most of them would still probably think of "upstate" New York as little more than Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany. My New York State extends even further North than that. I grew up near the point where Lake Ontario empties into the Saint Lawrence River. Not only was that a geographically interesting region, it was right on the Canadian border. From my earliest years I had constant influences to remind me that the U.S.A. was not the whole world, and that there were people in North America other than "Americans."

#3 - Handedness

I am left-handed. This may seem like a trivial matter to rank so highly on a list of core identities, but it has been a constant issue in my life and it will continue to be one until I die. From an early age I knew I was different from other kids. My teachers needed to provide special scissors for me to use in arts and crafts. They had a green, plastic coating around the finger holes so that they could be distinguished from "normal" scissors. When I learned to write I quickly found that the entire process was biased towards right-handed people. We read from left to right because it's convenient for right-handed people to write from left to right. It's a huge hassle for left-handed people to write that way. Not only is there no place to lean the heel of your writing hand, but you're dragging your fingers directly across the fresh ink, simultaneously smearing it and getting it all over you. Whenever I eat with a group of people, I need to be opportunistic and find a seat on a corner where I won't be bumping elbows with a "normal" person. And then, when I sit down, I have to re-arrange all the utensils and glassware, because they were laid out in a way that is convenient to right-handed people. These are but a few examples of the countless ways in which left-handed people are discriminated against in every aspect of daily life.

To be left-handed is to be in a minority. In this day and age, it's not that significant of a minority. I could bitch and moan until I turned blue, but I have to admit that the discrimination I suffer rarely, if ever, goes beyond annoying inconvenience. My civil rights are still secure as a left-handed person. But if I were unlucky enough to have been born in another time, it could have been a different story. There was a time when it was believed that left-handed people were sinister. The people of the time could not accept the fact that there could be people who, seemingly willingly, performed fundamental activities exactly the opposite of "normal" people, despite the inconvenience and disadvantages of this behavior. Left-handed people were persecuted as witches, incarcerated, and executed. If I had lived in a time like that, I would have had to exist in constant fear that someone might discover my secret, and I would have had the emotional burden of dealing with the fact that I knew my core identity to be that which society at large feared and hated.

#4 - Sexual Orientation

It's actually not that easy to label my sexual orientation. It would be easiest to say I'm gay, but that doesn't really describe me accurately. When I first came out and entered the gay community, I found that I didn't have a lot in common with the gay population at large. It was difficult to reconcile my masculine ways with the characteristics of the people I was meeting. They typically shared gestures and gesticulations, nomenclature and ways of speaking, and pop culture affinities that did not come naturally to me. It took a long time for me to let my guard down and accept those aspects of gay culture, and to be comfortable being myself among them even though outwardly I didn't really fit in. I was generally accepted, because gay men always appreciate a masculine dude, but there was always a distance between us.

I lived that way for most of my life, but the older I got, and the more the community expanded into its LGBTQQIAA2S+ identity, the more I realized that none of it really described me. These are my people, and they always will be, and I will always stand up for queer rights, but I've gotten to the point that I no longer identify as gay. For a while I labeled myself as homosexual because it rather accurately represented my sexual proclivities. My attraction to the male form, and my desire to engage sexual activity with other men is the defining characteristic. Plus I enjoyed the jarring response I got when I referred to myself as a "homo." But the fact that I've had sex with women in the past, and I'm open to it in the future, contradicted that label.

When it got to the point that STIs were de-stigmatized and treated in a more clinical manner, the term "men who have sex with men" became somewhat of a standard. It's a label that accurately describes me, but doesn't have any cultural baggage. I still use the label of gay as a convenient shorthand, but if pressed I will say that I'm not gay. I don't act gay, I don't talk gay, and I don't embrace huge swaths of the gay culture. I am a man who has sex with men. That's about the long and short of it.

#5 - Artisthood

I knew since I was fairly young that I had an artistic aptitude. In early school years I discovered that I could draw and model objects better than most people in my class. In later school years I discovered that there were people who could draw and model objects an awful lot better than I could. It was later still that I discovered that being an artist isn't necessarily associated with one's ability to draw and model objects. Artists are people who naturally view the world in a way that is different from that of "normal" people. Artists march to the beat of a different drummer. Each artist is largely as different from every other artist as he or she is from society at large, but they share a bond of dissimilarity that serves to unify them.

Additionally, the artist has a compulsion to create. It is this compulsion, more than the actual practice of creating, that makes one an artist. Creativity comes in many, many forms, each as legitimate as any other. Having created is not, necessarily, prerequisite to being an artist, but surely anyone is an artist who can say, "I created this." I find the question of "Is this art?" to be a moot one. If an artist claims that something he created is art, there can be no dissuading him. I find the pertinent question to be, "Is this worthy of being discussed as art." If something is not worthy of being discussed at all, then no more worthy are its merits as being art.

I consider this web site to be my work of art. The photography and videos could be discussed in conventional terms as art, but I believe that the multimedia aspects of the web site itself are an integral part of the work. I feel that the autobiographical nature of the site is also part of the art. It is not the creation of the essays that constitutes art, but rather the process of exposing one's flesh and soul together that forms an artistic entity. The process of designing a web site, with its many pages and navigation between, is not unlike the art of architectural design, with its many rooms and navigation between. This web site does not merely contain works of art, it is itself an integrated artwork.

#6 - Solitude

I spent a huge portion of my life in search of a life partner. It's human nature to have a desire to pair off and share one's life with another. Beyond that, society puts a lot of pressure on people to find a mate. The problem is that I've never had a lot of success in that regard. I didn't meet a lot of eligible men, and on the rare occasions that I did I rarely found that they measured up to what I was looking for. Even when I did get involved with someone, there was always the nagging feeling that they might not really be right for me, and that someone better might come along. The few relationships I did have ranged from dismal failures to dumpster fires.

The truth of the matter is that I'm just not suited to being in a relationship with another person. Something about me is just not wired that way. I've always been somewhat of a loner. I'm very comfortable in my own company. For the longest time I rejected that aspect of my personality, but I finally came to learn that it's a feature not a bug. The revelation came in the last attempt I made at a relationship. Often when we were together I found myself feeling like I would be more comfortable if he were gone and I was by myself. It was then that I finally came to the conclusion that if I'd rather be by myself, then I should be by myself. It wasn't long before the relationship ended naturally, and after that I rejected the notion that I needed to seek out another. I decided that I didn't need to be paired up with someone else to be happy, and I abandoned any effort.

I'm not closed off to the idea that some day, somewhere, I might actually meet the kind of guy that I'm well suited to. If he is as independent as I am, and if we can mutually respect each other's need for solitude and yet still merge our lives in a capacity that we're both comfortable with, then that would be great. But it's no longer anything that I'm actively seeking. And I'm okay with that.

In summary, I identify myself as a white-bread, lefty, artsy-fartsy, lone-wolf fag yank.

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