What is identity?

What do we mean when we talk about identity and how do we know what aspects are intrinsically tied to it? 

We can talk about physical traits, behavior, ideas, ethnicity, gender, experiences, career and social roles. Who a person is can encompass all of them and includes both a personal sense of self and how we are perceived by others. 

How much we are attached to each can vary. For example someone may feel a strong affinity for their Italian ancestry and celebrate its cultural heritage while another person with the same ethnicity may feel completely detached from them. 

We can think of a myriad of examples that measure what is ostensibly a sense of attachment or belonging along with their varying strengths. 

In this era where identity is so often discussed (we speak often of identity politics for example), people want to plant their stake using traits which feel like home to them. 

What people are drawn to is adopted as a key part of what defines them. 

Interestingly, conservatives have used this found sense of self as fodder for criticism because finding uniqueness and especially diversity is antithetical to them. They want to boil things down to a simpler set of possibilities. 

A black, feminist, lesbian professor who is a climate change advocate has too many unappetizing variables for them. It is too DEI and they want it whittled down to remove pride in identification with things they have distaste for.

Conservatives might prefer to simply call her a misguided soul and leave it at that.

God bless their simple little minds.