What Makes Us Who We Are What makes us who we are is the environment that we grow up in, our labels that we affiliate ourselves with and our social interactions. When it comes to identity, human beings are abstruse individuals, or in other words, hard to understand. What makes us human, what makes us who we are comes with an immeasurable amount of answers. We ourselves judge and are being judged, placing each other within the conjugal frames of society. We are put into molds and when we don’t fit the mold, we are labeled as different or weird. In some cases, people are dehumanized and that is when they no longer fit into the category of being human because they don’t follow social norms. However, we are not prototypes, we are not something
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In Judith Butler’s, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy”, Butler wrestles with the problem of dehumanization. She also makes a point about the “conjugal frames” of society and how it dehumanizes people on a larger Discourse, “On the level of discourse, certain live are not considered lives at all, they cannot be humanized; they fit no dominant frame for the human, and their dehumanization occurs first, at this level. This level then gives rise to a physical violence that in some sense delivers the message of dehumanization, which is already at work in the culture.” (120) I believe that this frame that we as people are forced to fit into is connected to how we identify ourselves and how others identify and perceive us. These conjugal frames are based off of labeling. When someone doesn’t fit in that box we label them as different. Not to say that everyone stereotypes others but we have a tendency based upon social construction to categorize everything. If someone doesn’t fit into that mold, then we make them fit in somewhere in order to identify them. Dehumanization often comes into effect here, when someone doesn’t fit a certain label they feel out of place and what makes it worse is that society in result will dehumanize the person because they are not like everyone else therefore they are not relevant to being human because they don’t fit social norms. For example, Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician. In the 1970’s being gay had this negative connotation. There were a lot of religious people who were not okay with him being gay. Many protested against him and because he was gay he was seen as less of a human being because he didn’t fit the mold of being a cisgender male. On the other hand, he wanted to be his authentic self and him identifying as gay helped many other people as well as teens come out of hiding. This lead to acceptance of
In Judith Butler’s, “Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy”, Butler wrestles with the problem of dehumanization. She also makes a point about the “conjugal frames” of society and how it dehumanizes people on a larger Discourse, “On the level of discourse, certain live are not considered lives at all, they cannot be humanized; they fit no dominant frame for the human, and their dehumanization occurs first, at this level. This level then gives rise to a physical violence that in some sense delivers the message of dehumanization, which is already at work in the culture.” (120) I believe that this frame that we as people are forced to fit into is connected to how we identify ourselves and how others identify and perceive us. These conjugal frames are based off of labeling. When someone doesn’t fit in that box we label them as different. Not to say that everyone stereotypes others but we have a tendency based upon social construction to categorize everything. If someone doesn’t fit into that mold, then we make them fit in somewhere in order to identify them. Dehumanization often comes into effect here, when someone doesn’t fit a certain label they feel out of place and what makes it worse is that society in result will dehumanize the person because they are not like everyone else therefore they are not relevant to being human because they don’t fit social norms. For example, Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician. In the 1970’s being gay had this negative connotation. There were a lot of religious people who were not okay with him being gay. Many protested against him and because he was gay he was seen as less of a human being because he didn’t fit the mold of being a cisgender male. On the other hand, he wanted to be his authentic self and him identifying as gay helped many other people as well as teens come out of hiding. This lead to acceptance of