That's a question I've thought about a lot, actually. There are very few social categories that I will put myself in without a caveat or a reservation of some kind. If you were to talk to me for any length of time, you'd probably feel confident classifying me as (variously and in no particular order), a feminist, an environmentalist, a socialist, a geek, and an intellectual. That's fine. I have no problem with other people thinking of me that way. However, there's only one word that I self-identify with in that sentence (geek). All the others are extremely complicated ideological positions that I cannot say I either wholly agree or disagree with.
For example, feminism, on the whole, has been an extremely positive movement in the world, but properly speaking, there are all kinds of feminisms, not just one. Therefore, to categorically call myself "a feminist" would imply that I agree with all forms of feminism, which I don't. There are some that are totally out to lunch, like the ones that claim that men can't be feminists, or that only lesbians can be (counter-productive hogwash, thank you very much). I feel the same way about socialism, environmentalism, and intellectualism. I like those things, on the whole, but I don't identify as an unequivocal member of those categories because my beliefs are more complicated than that, and a lot more selective.
On the opposite end of the scale, you'd never think, after talking to me, that I'd be a conservative (party or ideology) or a capitalist, for example, but there are, on rare occasions, things in those ideologies that I either like, or just don't disagree with. A hard-core socialist would object to the very idea of selling labour for money, but I don't think it's inherently destructive. It's merely an economic practise that ought to happen within the context of a series of laws designed to protect labourers (i.e., fucking people), and not corporations (which are not people, even though they have been fucking people for over a century now).
The thing that I think is inherently destructive is identifying categorically with a ideological or a social group with such blindness that you feel the need to agree with or even defend anything said by anybody who also self-identifies with that group. Even worse, if you self-identify in that way, other people can manoeuvre you into a position where you're veritably forced to defend anything said by anybody who identifies as a member of the same category, and if the person you're arguing with is particularly ignorant and/or sleazy, they can make you argue with their version of that ideology (commonly called a "strawman").
All that being said, I do identify as a "geek" because 99% percent of the time, things that you might say about a geek, as the word is generally defined, can accurately be said of me, and I very much find that geeky social circles are the ones I'm most comfortable circulating in.
And if you really want to read an essay, ask me about gender...
Posted by orion at February 7, 2007 10:27 PM