Defining people by one identity aspect fragments and weakens them

Evidence

As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live. My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 512

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the earlier ‘bag of skin’ self-model in the book; relevant to the reader’s interest in attention as world-constitution. — connects to: Others’ fixed labels of us are an unrealizable limit on our situation — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1283; One-dimensionality works by assimilating the subject into objective structures — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 38; Turning caring into a countable noun erases the human who performs it — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 538 (+3 more)