Definition.

This is how we are seen and understood by other people. We are put into boxes and defined. For many of us, these definitions are not the ones we would give to ourselves; in fact, for any oppressed group of peoples this is not the case. The powerful are those who are given the right to define themselves, although rarely do they present themselves truthfully.

The rest of us? We are assigned values and stereotypes. We are given a framework and set of tools to work with, and if we choose to reject them (consciously or not), to expand outside the definition we are given by others, we become dangerous. If the box doesn’t fit, then obviously it is our fault for not fitting, and we must be molded to it, remade in the image of our enforced definition.

In order for anyone to be free to be themselves and be content, they must have the right to define themselves. Not as what-we-are-not, not as the oppressed, the absence of privilege. Not as the Other, the unknown, the minority. We need to be able to define ourself as what-we-are, by what is there, the attributes we both celebrate and despise, but, most of all, the attributes we actually possess — as we perceive them. And if we can succeed in doing this, even if only in our own space, by purposefully rejecting others’ images of who we should be, we change the world just a little bit, each time we speak, and breathe, and simply live, because we are.

That is what this blog is all about.