Patricia Williams Are We Talked About Storm's Identity Summary

Patricia Williams, the author of the essay Are We Worried About Storm’s Identity-or Our Own?, discusses the stereotypes related to gender and the controversial ideas that surround that subject. She begins by sharing a story of her son and a classmate. How they would perform an identical morning routine, but the teacher would describe them separately based on their gender roles. Which reminds her of an international controversy concerning a 5-month-old child, Storm Stockhold, and the parents’ decision to not reveal Storm’s identity. The public response that ensued was extremely negative, describing it as ‘creepy’ and ‘freakish’. However, the decision to keep the gender private is not a permanent decision. Which brings up the idea concerning human reactions to the unknown and identity. As a culture, we are not supposed to think of people’s differences. People, therefore, are constantly judging others and assigning identity to comfort themselves and keep order. Where Williams brings up a good point, that society should possibly accept the idea of being uncertain and open ourselves to the possibilities regarding liminality. …show more content…
I agree with Williams that "assigning identity is something we are always doing". We are constantly making judgments about people and things to comfort or defend ourselves based on biases and personal beliefs. “Where, however, there is ambiguity, a switch gets flipped. If race or ethnicity is at all indeterminate, the first question is “What are you?” When differences in identity are obvious we aren’t supposed to mention them. However, whenever there is uncertainty with characterizations such as gender people often become frustrated or