Identity and Social Construction

Identity and Social Construction

In reading this last chapter, the story in the beginning of the chapter really stood out to me. It was about two men: Denny and Joel and their struggles as a gay couple; specifically, how their marriage license application was repeatedly denied due to the law in their state. This couple would go to the courthouse every Valentine’s day to apply for a license and each time it was denied. The story goes on to explain how they ran into heterosexual couple at the courthouse one year and how this couple’s license was approved. The two couples had very different views on the matter. Joel didn’t believe the heterosexual couple could relate to how it feels to be denied, which resulted in Joel being hurt and offended by the couple, even though the couple was trying to be supportive in the way they spoke about equal marriage rights.

            This story very much hit hard to home for me. My sister is bisexual. Before dating her current boyfriend, she was in a long-term relationship with a woman she loved very much. They dated for just over 4 years. My sister had been working at a Christian bookstore/coffee shop for the 3 years prior to this relationship. She was very well-liked, was a hard-worker and had been promoted at her job several times. The owner of the bookstore, however, found out that my sister was lesbian. My sister was fired almost immediately after she was given an ultimatum: break-up with your girlfriend or lose your job. They blatantly told her she was being let go because they did not support her moral choices and didn’t believe she was “being a good Christian.” To this day, it still crushes me to think back on this story. It upsets me to my core. Up until that point, my sister was very actively involved in her church. She had a strong faith and community within the church, including all her co-workers at the bookstore/coffee shop. From that day on, she quit going to church. Her faith dissolved.

In both stories, the one from the book and the story about my sister: both parties had a part of their identity questioned. As discussed in class: identity is the totality of a person’s self attributes at a given moment in time. For my sister, her identity at the time was very much rooted in being gay and being a Christian. Unfortunately, one part of her identity was not socially accepted. The book also discusses the idea of social construction. This states that our world is socially constructed through our perceptions, actions and behavior. We construct the norms in our society through how we behave. This is a product of our communication and how we communicate. In this case, the socially constructed norm was that you can’t be gay and be Christian. My sister would obviously disagree with this because her perception/vantage point is one where her cultural experience framed her opinion on the matter to be more open-minded and accepting. My sister’s boss’s perception was one where their socially constructed culture/reality did not support homosexual relationships. My sister and her boss had different perceptions, which made it easy for each of them to misunderstand where the other was coming from. It’s unfortunate how things ended, though I’m proud of my sister for staying true to herself and her identity as a lesbian.