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'Yep, I'm Gay': Understanding Agential Identity

2019; Michigan Publishing; Volume: 6; Issue: 20201214 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3998/ergo.12405314.0006.020

2330-4014

Robin Dembroff, Catharine Saint-Croix,

Gender, Feminism, and Media

What's important about 'coming out'?Why do we wear business suits or Star Trek pins?Part of the answer, we think, has to do with what we call agential identity.Social metaphysics has given us tools for understanding what it is to be socially positioned as a member of a particular group and what it means to self-identify with a group.But there is little exploration of the general relationship between selfidentity and social position.We take up this exploration, developing an account of agential identity-the self-identities we make available to others.Agential identities are the bridge between what we take ourselves to be and what others take us to be.Understanding agential identity not only fills an important gap in the literature, but also helps us explain politically important phenomena concerning discrimination, malicious identities, passing, and code-switching.These phenomena, we argue, cannot be understood solely in terms of self-identity or social position.I n April 1997, Ellen DeGeneres officially 'came out' in Time magazine, the cover boldly stating, with characteristic nonchalance, "Yep, I'm Gay".In one sense, DeGeneres's coming out was not informative: it was widely known that DeGeneres was gay.But in another sense, it was hugely informative.It communicated to the world that DeGeneres wanted this knowledge to move outside people's heads and beyond closed doors, and to impact how she was treated in her public life.