At the beginning of his essay “Stones in my Pockets, Stones in my Heart,” Eli Clare writes, “Gender reaches into disability; disability wraps around class; class strains against abuse; abuse snarls into sexuality; sexuality folds on top of race… everything finally piling into a single human body.” Here, he sums up all the different facets of himself that not only make up his body but make up his identity, who he is as a person. I feel this passage highlights how aspects of everything Clare has been writing about in his book can extend not only to him, but to people in general, as he refers to “a single human body,” not specifically “my body,” leaving room for commonality. But there is also room to not see aspects of yourself in the minority groups he is referencing, as this phrase also implies that he is simultaneously not referring to everyone. So while we may be able to see parts of ourselves in the groups Clare discusses, we may not see all of them, and that’s okay.<\/p>\n
This theme of open possibilities extends to Eve Sedgewick’s Queer and Now, where much of Clare’s sentiments seem to be echoed. She emphasizes that queer people should talk about themselves in the first person, leaving room for individual identities to flourish but also to be able to find commonalities with your fellow human without the pressure of feeling like you must find these commonalities. These two texts highlight how important it is to find your own identity and individuality, welcoming and embracing all the facets of ourselves that make us who we are. They also encourage people to share their lives with others, to tell all the stories of their experiences\u2014the good, the bad, and everything in between. They also encourage, through our stories, for us to find and build communities rather than push people out because we don’t exactly align with them. Most importantly, they emphasize that it is okay to not be like everyone else, and that other people should see your uniqueness as okay and accept it and you for who you are.<\/p>\n
~written by SilverFlute<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the beginning of his essay “Stones in my Pockets, Stones in my Heart,” Eli Clare writes, “Gender reaches into disability; disability wraps around class; class strains against abuse; abuse snarls into sexuality; sexuality folds on top of race… everything finally piling into a single human body.” Here, he sums up all the different facets … Continue reading Eli Clare: Exploring Identity<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1718,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[346798],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2023-blog-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1718"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/everythinginbetween\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}