When i was at the women manga conference in Manila organize by Japan Foundation few months a go i came across a conversation between 2 of my friends, She was talking about how she came from a Jehovah Witness family and how she is a free thinker herself and finding hard to fit in or how she kept it all to her self and another friend said something like, yeah its hard, "They will try their best to protect their "identity". That word stuck in my head until i few days ago i was presenting my work at Publika about "Gender Identity" and always figuring out how to tell people or society who's not familiar with the trans issues as simple as i can for example, "Sex is your hardware & Gender is your software, and some people born with both Sex & Gender aligned which they are called "cisgender people" or non-transgender people while for trans people they live their lives try to realigned their outer hardware to match their softwares..."
While compiling the work, i realize something that we actually or "intersectionally" since we were born into this world are also brought into many "solid identities" that was formed way before wether we like it or not, like "race", "religion", "traditions", "nationality", and then when we go through life we adopt to more identities like "geek", "nerds", "introvert","extrovert", "artist", "anarchist", "goth" "liberal", "humanist", "atheist", "punkrocker", "metalhead", "feminist, "genderqueer", "maknyah", "transpinay" etc, and keep creating a new one for ourselves as we navigate this world and our daily lives.
Some identity traditionally passed down and some adopt them without questioning it, and nowadays we create our identities within the reality we go through today.
When i was discovering myself earlier (before the internet age), the only term i knew exists was "transsexual" and then as times go by late 2008 onwards, the word change with the movement, more and more defined and the term transgender exists but its a word that encompasses others who don't fit to the traditional cisgender ones. And now simply transwoman or transgender woman and the awareness about being transgender or transwomen/transmen, is now is more clear and at the forefront to change many laws and policies to be more inclusive to this other part of human being or the reality itself that was once taboo or at the background of everyday life. Life itself is very fluid or like a river and we're just in a boat floating on it, crossing paths with each other, "intersectionalities", learning, experiencing life in this age and times....
So yeah, i wonder how many identities does one adopt and discard in one life...
#justathought
http://www.mmail.com.my/opinion/zurairi-ar/article/never-a-better-time-to-be-a-trans-ally
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