My background is indeed in Psychology.... and yes, identity is a mix of unique characteristics and social roles. Telling me you're Brazilian doesn't help me understand anything about your identity other than you come from Brazil. If you make Brazilian an integral part of how you feel but i have no context for what that means then it is a meaningless way of us interacting. My understanding of Brazilian history is that it is essentially a melting pot - and i know from reading your previous story that you have Japanese heritage and you were seemingly raised Mormon. These two things are just as important as being able to directly point on a map where you fell out of a vagina. The word Brazilian doesn't give me the level of depth required to infer anything meaningful. Telling me you were raised Mormon and you have questioned it and have become disillusioned with it does..... you could call yourself 'ex-mormon' but that wouldn't mean anything to everyone either, they'd have to have a wider context.
To fully understand someone's identity, we have to take a holistic approach. You can work as an individual on which aspects you wish to focus on and declare integral to understanding, but we must be able to parse out which bits are relevant in furthering our understanding of each other. I think this is where identity politics gets things wrong, it essentially takes the most obvious examples of what constitutes identity (immutable characteristics) and insists on an exclusive focus on these. I would prefer a society which is able to move past this and begin conversations based on other things.
As an example, our conversation began with your insistence on my behaviour being typical of cis, white, heteronormative men everywhere. I've gently rebuffed this idea - and now we're talking about more detailed things, like Japanese heritage, the psychology of religion, psychology and Russian literature. These are an emergent property of a conversation that was gently but firmly refocussed from skin colour, gentials and who I like to smoosh those genitals together with. We have more commonality of perspective and emotional concordance because we're exploring identity without every really talking about it.
You're fun to engage with. Nothing to do with being Brazilian, nothing to do with having Japanese heritage, or Mormonism, but everything to do with the depth to which you have considered the psychological landscape internally and externally. I'm not going to force you to see the world the way I choose to - but I think it makes me a lot less angry. :o)
