Identity Formation

I suppose I need to qualify my previous post. I do not wish to imply that I think identity is entirely the product of environment, without the body factoring in at all. I do think that society plays a very strong role in identity formation but I don't wish to come across as a Relativist. The best way to explain my perspective is that I see a certain level of cultural relativism at work across societies but I still maintain a belief in absolutes.

On the one hand you have to admit that social expectations are entirely arbitrary and that customs and taboos are not universal. On the other hand, you can establish universal standards for all cultures. If our standards' origins come from within the culture, we build our house on sinking sand. There's a bit of Heisenberg's Uncertainty when it comes to these things and we, as humans, cannot gain the cognitive distance required to set up universal law. But here is where my sociology ends and my theism takes over. It is exactly our recourse to an external arbiter--divine and natural law--that keeps the social scientific Christian free from true relativism.

Our identities may be the product of social forces acting on biological predilections, but all this means is that it's OUR responsibility to ensure that our society instills virtue rather than vice. If our society is corrupted, we are morally obligated to live counter-culturally and to resist. One of the ways we sin by omission is when we actively or passively participate in cultural elements that we know to be damaging. Thus we can't support abortion, an attack on the institution of marriage, etc. even indirectly. We are not afforded the luxury of saying that "we're gonna sit this one out." If we are not actively opposed to cultural sins (like the promotion of homosexuality or contraception) then we are collaborating. There is no such thing as apathy here--refusal to resist is active cooperation. it is one thing to love homosexuals and quite another to translate that love into burying our convictions for the sake of cultural peace.


To return to the question of gender, I stand by what I said: gender, as a sociological phenomenon, is arbitrarily defined by culture. It is, in this way, relative. But gender, in my mind, is not sexuality or sexual identity, per se. The difference between gender and sex is like the difference between meaning and truth. Meaning, as product of language and culture, can be a bit slippery and it defies the absolute. Truth, however, can be objectively defined. And just as meaning is a slippery, linguistic approximation of Truth, "gender" is a problematized representation of sex. There are two sexes but there are multiple genders. To bring semiotics into the mix, I believe in transcendental signifieds but acknowledge the limitations of signs. no matter how many words we invent to describe the gender alignments of our culture, there will only ever be two sexes.


As I say, we have many "genders" in our culture. This is because we are pulling away from the implications of a strictly male-female binary. We want other options. We want possibility. We swallow pluralism hand-over-fist until we vomit up new categories that are so far removed from the natural order that it's no wonder the ludic postmodernists have no recourse but insane laughter. The truth of the matter is that we are male and female--two complementary sexes. We cannot dismiss the biological truth of the matter--barring genetic aberration, we are either XX or XY. The laws of nature defy any other description.

In sum, I am descriptive when it comes to cultures and social networks. I am prescriptive when it comes to applying absolute standards. This is because these standards are rooted in a God who is untouched by culture (being, as He is, transcendent). I believe God made us communal by nature and I believe that one aspect of the Fall was that the social self became corrupted. We sin on both levels--the individual and the social--and thus we need to carefully monitor what we actively and passively support in our culture... whether that be in what we say, how we vote, what we wear, etc.