Week 9

“Yet is also reflects something else that is important here: the acknowledgment that our identity requires recognition by others.” (59)

I find this statement challenging. I don’t want to agree with it. I would love to say that who I am shouldn’t matter to or need to be seen by anyone else to be valid, and I think in a sense a do believe that. At the same time, however, I feel like we seek validity from others because we want to be confirmed in who we’ve chosen to be. I also feel that such a bad thing to seek recognition of one’s self from others. We want ourselves and our experiences to be seen and heard and when those things are not recognized, we feel small and that we possibly aren’t even worth the recognition of others.

I also feel like people in minority groups must be recognized by society as a whole because that is the only way that social reform can happen. There are multiple examples of this in American history: The Civil Rights movement, the Women’s Rights movement, more recently the LGBTQ+ movement. People from all of these minority groups had to force their experiences and identities to be heard and only then did social as well as political reform start to happen. Currently, we are seeing it with the transgender community. People of this minority are being terribly labeled as groomers and pedophiles by people who refuse to recognize the trans community. They are being ostracized and discriminated against by laws that were signed into office with the last year. However, they, along with the rest of the LGBTQ+ community and allies, are fighting back with pride in their identity, forcing themselves to be recognized by ignorant people and it’s great! I feel that this is the only way for the trans community to treated equally just as it was the only way for minority groups historical movements in the past to be treated equally.