Outed

It’s a very significant thing to be able to choose how you identify as a person. Since the moment I’ve existed, I have been given the identity of “black” “African American” which lends itself to politically incorrect identifiers such as “nigger” or “negro”. Female has been tagged onto my existence as an identifier for almost just as long as I’ve been alive. I was designated citizenship in one country, I embody the mannerisms of a certain socio-economic upbringing, and I have adopted the cultural mannerisms of someone native to the northeastern region of the U.S.

So many identities have been rolled up and handed to me as a sort of cultural blueprint – my hetero-normative survival guide if you will – since the moment I commenced my existence. So the act of reclaiming the right to choose who or what one wants to be when and how they want to be it is a powerful act of autonomy.

A refusal to live a prepackaged existence. It’s a middle finger to the world, a declaration of an inner truth that may not be apparent at first glance. It’s a prize claimed by those who do the work of unraveling societal expectations, staring into the abyss of counter culture, and deciding to lay a path in an alternative direction, at a different elevation, made out of different materia, or simply one that travels in an alternate direction.

At its core, it’s a conscious choice.

Maybe you’re not just the umbrella term “African American” that serves to erase the cultural melding and dynamic relationships that resulted from the triangle trade of stolen bodies. Maybe you’re Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Chickasha or from some other land that makes the culture that feels like home different from and richer than the amorphous grouping that is “black”.

Maybe you’re not a cisgender, heterosexual female. Maybe you are a lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, a transgender male or female. Maybe you’re someone who neither likes or uses labels. Maybe you are still figuring out where you fit in.

Maybe your accent is different from where you’re from.

Maybe a smile masks a history of mental illness or a story of loss.

Maybe cosmetics hide a different truth.

A truth that’s hidden. A truth that lies within. A truth that is yours to disclose only if or when you feel like it.

Circumstance, stereotype, and social constructs dictate how people perceive us. Some spend so much time trying to alter or shift the way that they are viewed by the world in order to reclaim who they are, in order to re-identify, in order to create a new definition of their truth. A truth that our eyes, our ego, our baggage may not allow us to see at first glance, but a truth that still may lie before us clear as day. A truth that is quite obvious only if one is willing to listen.

The beauty of human rights and individual liberty is that my truth doesn’t have to be the same as your truth and we can spend hours agreeing or disagreeing about our truths until we either agree to disagree or find a common ground. One’s truth is their own until they decide to disclose it to another.

Sometimes the truth is worth shouting from the rooftops each and every social interaction that one is privy to, and sometimes one doesn’t have the energy to argue and fight against a prevailing stereotype. But just because there is no fight doesn’t mean that your assumption of what is true holds true with another.

The beauty of a truth is that within it, there lives the individual blueprint of how one human being sees the world; and it is each individual’s privilege to disclose their truth to another person or another group if they so choose. No one has the right to disclose how someone else chooses to identify xemself for it is the glory and freedom of each individual to choose to out xemself.