Who Are You... And Who Do You Wish To Be?

On what do we base our recognition of ourselves?

Gender and appearance: If I take you from hulking everyguy to restrainedly feminine, how does that change what personality traits and thoughts pop forth?

Social roles: What happens when I take those from you, not allowing you control or responsibility? When you don't have to account for, or explain, those dissonant urges that crash against the walls of your upright citizenship?

To one imminent subject: "You look up, into the mirror, and the sight of this... creature... completely disorients you. You raise a hand (it can't possibly be yours - is it?) to touch the face. The hours you have spent being stripped, encased, arranged, reduced, seem but a memory: Who are you now?"

Well?

My Identity Box, or Yours?

Patrick Califia takes aim at our attachment to labels: "Do we lose something when we polarize certain behaviors or desires and think of them as opposites? Well, of course!"

"... But humans are such tricky and complicated animals that every time we think we understand ourselves and have a way to describe it, we defeat our own wisdom, slip out of the boxes, and turn into something else."

Thank goodness for that.