Identity

Everyone has identities, some they are proud of and others they aren’t. Identities may represent who you are and where you come from. People hide their identities so they do not have to face social comments. Throughout history people have hid their identity so that they would not have gotten shamed, beaten, given less right and even murdered. Over a third of LGBTQ people hide their identity at work out of fear of discrimination.

 

Kenji Yoshino, an Asian American civil rights lawyer who is an open homosexual writes as article “The new Civil Rights”. He talks about how the law does not protect us from some things that are important. In his article he talks about covering. He defines it as “to tone down a disfavored identity to fit into the mainstream” (Preface). Many of those who know that the civil rights do not protect them cover themselves from who they really are. People use covering as a way to hide your sexuality, ethnicity when changing name, disabilities, etc. Many of those who cover their identity do it to avoid judgments and harmful comments. In the article Yoshino mentions D.W. Winniscott, who explains what True self and False self are. True Self is the self that gives and individual the feeling of being real. When False Self is an individual the feeling of being unreal. One positive function of the false self gives is that one who is false to self is aware of their boundaries. Winnicott explains how “in the healthy individual, the False Self is reduced to a “polite and mannered social attitude,” a tool available to the fully realized True Self.” In my opinion I believe that your true self will help cover who your false self really is.

 

Later in the article Yoshino defines liberty paradigm as ” to protect the authentic self” and equality paradigm as “essentializing the identities it protects”. As he describes in the article that he believes that liberty paradigm will protect our true self. Liberty protects who we are and who we want to be. However, equality identifies us as what gender we are. One example that supports that is that if you’re a woman you need to wear makeup as it is an “essential” part of being a woman. He believes that “woman was given the liberty right to elaborate her own gender identity in ways that did not impinge on her job performance, she would be protected from demands to be either more ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’.” (paragraph 32).

 

One group in society that has to hide their true self is those who are transgender. In the article, it does not talk about this, but it is something that people face a problem with every day. They have to hide who they are from the people around them to feel accepted. They use a way of ‘covering’ to hide from who they really are. Many of those who are transgender cannot get a job people will judge and stereotype them. I believe that no matter your gender identification or your sexuality, you should always have rights that support you.