I had long hair and it was political.
I do not remember when I first realised how annoying I found the phrase “identity politics”, and whether that preceded or was a consequence of realising how little I was represented — to say nothing of served — by the status quo, just how much I did not fit that particular description.
Late last year I stumbled into embracing play and by extension “an art practice” (a phrase that even now I cannot quite type or say out loud without feeling like an interloper). For nearly six months I dedicated time to playing with watercolours and acrylics and gel plates and collage and then I hit a wall of work travel and family travel and that very specific kind of exhaustion that comes from getting a reminder that check-in for your next flight is available while you’re still on the previous one.
The little desk with the sketchbooks and the coloured pencils is next to the larger desk with the work laptop and the work notebooks.
Sometimes when it is very early in the morning and I am dealing with some sort of demanding-but-not-unreasonable email I will look at the little desk and reach for the sketchbook and flip through its pages and remind myself that I can be both people, just not at the same time.
What I find annoying about the phrase “identity politics” is the assumption that some identities are political (derogatory), and some — guess which! — are neutral and objective and the aspirational default against which all deviations are measured (punished).
Right now a handful people who benefit from evangelising a technology that is built on the collective creativity and work of many millions of other people are giving interviews in which they say things like, “Some creative jobs maybe will go away, but maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place."
There have always been people who are extremely well served by a particularly narrow definition of whose rights should be acknowledged and protected, whose labour should be treated as worthy of respect and compensation, whose lives should matter.
The side of history we will be on is the side we are enabling with our choices today.
Attribution
I was blond and it was political. So was the difference between “blond” and “blonde.” I had long hair and it was political. I shaved my head and it was. That I didn’t know how to grieve when another person was killed in America was political, and it was political when America killed another person, who they were and what color and gender and who I am in relation. I couldn’t think about it for too long without feeling a helplessness like childhood. — from I Woke Up by Jameson Fitzpatrick