"Young women are constantly warned of the dangers of the manosphere.... The cult of 'toxic masculinity' is now so overcooked as to be limp..."

"... and meaningless, and, crucially, it entirely misses one key thing: feminine men can be just as 'toxic' as bodybuilders. It is Gen Z’s shallow sexual politics, which privilege 'looking' progressive over deeply felt values, that have landed us here. If the feminisation of culture has succeeded, it is because posing as effete gains men access to the women they want to sleep with. Cultural capital has deserted roided-up meatheads and landed in the lap of the moustachioed, mulletted lothario who professes to be a harmless feminist and who wields just enough knowledge about Judith Butler to talk a blushing sociology major into bed.... When visibly masculine men are maligned as potential abusers, women choose the wolf in vintage clothing. But this is all based on false assumptions: performative matcha is one more way that ill-intentioned loverboys can game our sexual politics’ daft stereotypes, joining tried-and-tested tactics like professing to be left-wing, painting one’s nails and listening to Phoebe Bridgers. You are just as likely to be shagged and bagged by a matcha drinker as a craft beer enthusiast, or indeed, a plain old lager fan...."

Writes Poppy Sowerby, quoted in "Ladies, if you see a man with a matcha latte — run/Male poseurs have abandoned macho and embraced matcha. Is it just another ploy to seduce women?" (London Times).

I haven't used my "performative (the word)" tag in a while. Here's the post where I created it, back in 2022 about a NYT piece titled, "Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise." I said:

"In the wake of Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the gender and sexuality scholar Asa Seresin picked up on a feeling in the air..."

"... and put a name to it: 'heteropessimism.' ... Mr. Seresin argued that heteropessimism was defined by 'performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.' By 'performative,' Mr. Seresin meant that though many women freely admitted that being attracted to men was at best a bummer and at worst a form of masochism, few acted on their beliefs. While expressing a sincere hopelessness, women’s disavowals seemed to be mostly gestural, like a sardonic Etsy mug."

Writes Marie Solis, in "Men? Maybe Not. The election made clear that America’s gender divide is stark. What’s a heterosexual woman to do?" (NYT).

That's a long article, but I chose that excerpt because I have a tag "performative (the word)." Here's the post — from June 11, 2022 — where I created the tag. Interestingly, it was about a David Axelrod piece asking "Should Biden Run in 2024?" Axelrod wrote, "Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves... And part of the reason he doesn’t is performative." I said:

"I have never met a nonbinary person who thinks that they/them pronouns are somehow exclusive to nonbinary or trans people."

"They are a way to opt out of the gender binary in third-person reference, and people may choose to do that for many reasons—gender-based, political, philosophical, even religious. One uses the pronouns someone requests because it is the courteous thing to do. It does not stop being the courteous thing to do because one disagrees with the person's reason for requesting them (at least so long as the request is made in good faith rather than as political trolling)."

Says a commenter to the NYT Ethicist column, "My Relative Isn’t Trans or Nonbinary But Wants to Use ‘They/Them’ Pronouns. The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on allyship and forms of solidarity" (NYT).

The Ethicist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, took a different position: "Using pronouns properly is a matter of not misgendering people. It isn’t part of a general policy of calling people whatever they want to be called.... [Y]our relative evidently identifies as cisgender and is motivated simply by allyship.... As the N.A.A.C.P. activist Rachel Dolezal notoriously failed to grasp, solidarity with a group does not grant you membership within it. Many will find the notion that you support people by appropriating their markers of identity to be passing strange."

"Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2023 is authentic.... A high-volume lookup most years, authentic saw a substantial increase in 2023..."

"... driven by stories and conversations about AI, celebrity culture, identity, and social media.... Although clearly a desirable quality, authentic is hard to define and subject to debate—two reasons it sends many people to the dictionary."

Announces Merriam-Webster.

They call attention to a headline I hadn't noticed and don't feel I even need to understand: "Three Ways To Tap Into Taylor Swift’s Authenticity And Build An Eras-Like Workplace."

That article came out a month ago in Forbes, which tells us: "Swift’s events brim with energy, carried by the thunderous voices – some melodious, others less in tune – of thousands: the opposite of how work feels today. According to recent data, 60% of employees are emotionally detached, and one in five is miserable."

Why would anyone want the workplace to feel like a pop concert? Why would the answer involve the concept of "authenticity"?

Take Hannah Shirley, a 23-year-old tech worker who recently went viral for pointing out that her job was “like a full-time acting gig.” She tik-toked one consequence of this: feeling “drained — especially mentally, sometimes even physically — from the character that …we play at work.”...

A Taylor Swift lyric is quoted: “Did you hear my covert narcissism I disguise as altruism? Like some kind of congressman?”

Forbes goes on:

What happens during an Eras event that makes it so engaging? There is realness, empathy, kindness, listening, a narrative (or journey-like) space big enough for all to partake and feel whole with oneself and others. The whole experience is devoid of pretension. Take this recipe and break it into three precepts – avoid alienation, increase authentic living and balance external pressure – and you have a roadmap for creating an Eras-like workplace culture....

I don't see how merger with a huge crowd is a feeling that you could — or would want — to take into the workplace. Even if I did, I wouldn't think of it as "authenticity." 

***

I've written about the word "authentic" many times on this blog. A few examples.... (and the first thing I see, strangely enough, has Taylor Swift in it):

On March 20, 2010, I quoted John Hinderaker saying "Much as Bob Dylan was the most authentic spokesman for his generation, Taylor Swift is the most authentic spokesman for hers." I say: "that's a trick assertion, since Bob Dylan was never about authenticity." I quoted Sean Wilentz:

During the first half of the concert, after singing "Gates of Eden," Dylan got into a little riff about how the song shouldn't scare anybody, that it was only Halloween, and that he had his Bob Dylan mask on. "I'm masquerading!" he joked, elongating the second word into a laugh. The joke was serious. Bob Dylan, né Zimmerman, brilliantly cultivated his celebrity, but he was really an artist and entertainer, a man behind a mask, a great entertainer, maybe, but basically just that—someone who threw words together, astounding as they were. The burden of being something else — a guru, a political theorist, "the voice of a generation," as he facetiously put it in an interview a few years ago — was too much to ask of anyone.

On June 17, 2015, I talked about a Slate writer's advice to Hillary Clinton that she should "offer voters her authentic, geeky self. I said "We've been seeing the word 'authentic' a lot lately — what with Caitlyn Jenner and Rachel Dolezal. There's this idea we seem to like that everyone has a real identity inside and that if we've got an inconsistent outward presentation of ourselves it would be wonderful for the inner being to cast off that phony shell. But 'authenticity' can be another phony shell...."

On December 19, 2017, I wrote about Facebook's purported goal of "authentic engagement." I said:

Facebook wants you to engage... with Facebook. They want the direct interface with the authentic person, not for some other operation to leverage itself through Facebook. And it makes sense to say that the exclusion of these interposers makes the experience better for the authentic people who use Facebook.... 

On a more metaphysical level: What is authentic anymore? What is the authentic/artificial distinction that Facebook claims — authentically/artificially — to be the police of? Is there an authentic authentic/artificial distinction or is the authentic/artificial distinction artificial?

AND: I'm reading a book that I think has a lot to say about the authentic/artificial distinction. You can tell by the title: "Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself" (Subtitle: "A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace"). But the word "authentic" never appears in the book, and the word "artificial" only appears in the context of "artificial spit" ("it’s called Zero-Lube. It’s an actual pharmaceutical product").

On March 9, 2018, I blogged about something Nancy Pelosi said about "RuPaul's Drag Race." According to The Hollywood Reporter, she "suggested that politicians could learn a thing or two from Ru's girls: 'Authenticity. Taking pride in who you are. Knowing your power....'" Reading the comments on my post, I added:

Everyone jumps on that word "authenticity." "I mean, I'm all for people doing what they want -- except for misusing words like 'authenticity'" (fivewheels); "Authenticity? A man dressed as an over-the-top woman is authentic?" (Annie C); and the inevitable "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means" (Ignorance is Bliss). Yeah? Well, when a person putting on a show is in costume and makeup, you could say he's an authentic showperson. And, anyway, what makes you think you're so authentic? 

My mind drifted back to this 1967 song by Jake Holmes, "Genuine Imitation Life": 

chameleons changing colors while a crocodile cries
people rubbing elbows but never touching eyes
taking off their masks revealing still another guise
genuine imitation life
people buying happiness and manufactured fun
everybody doing everybody done
people count on people who can only count to one
genuine imitation life

"The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue."

Said David Axelrod, with a distinctively clever way to state the numerical fact, quoted in "Should Biden Run in 2024? Democratic Whispers of ‘No’ Start to Rise. In interviews, dozens of frustrated Democratic officials, members of Congress and voters expressed doubts about the president’s ability to rescue his reeling party and take the fight to Republicans" (NYT). 

Another quote from Axelrod: "Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves for steering the country through the worst of the pandemic, passing historic legislation, pulling the NATO alliance together against Russian aggression and restoring decency and decorum to the White House. And part of the reason he doesn’t is performative. He looks his age and isn’t as agile in front of a camera as he once was, and this has fed a narrative about competence that isn’t rooted in reality."

I should make a tag for "performative." It's a buzz word these days, I believe, and I'd like to keep track of it. 

I feel lured into talking about Hilaria Baldwin, but what do I want to say? What did I say about Rachel Dolezal... and is this the same... or worse... or better?

I thought I could get away with dropping this one seemingly juicy sentence from The Washington Examiner....

But while, say, the New York Times decided that Hilaria's cosplaying as a Latina stereotype was off-limits — even as they wrote growing profiles of her as well, including uncritically her "slight Spanish accent" — the paper of record has celebrated children having their college admissions revoked for a video of them singing the N-word along to a song when they were 15 as a "reckoning." 

I found that because it has Rachel Dolezal in the headline ("Alec Baldwin's wife became Hollywood's Rachel Dolezal because of our sniveling, bootlicking press"). 

But come on — "they wrote growing profiles." Presumably, that should be "glowing profiles," Hilaria Baldwin has posted many selfies where she's standing sideways to display her pregnant belly. But no, that's not something the NYT can write. Here's the glowing profile in the Times, from back in 2014: "Hilaria Baldwin Holds Her Center" ("Her voice betrays a slight Spanish accent, remains of a childhood split between Boston and Spain").

I wonder how many people are faking accents... and why (and when) we feel a person acquires a pleasing air about them because of that. Oh! Just by chance, last night I watched an episode of "Friends" where the Friends were extremely irritated by a woman who'd acquired a fake English accent:

 

Interestingly enough, that's the episode with blackface...

...

That episode — "The One With Ross's Tan" — has more thematic unity than I originally thought!

Well, clearly, blackface is a very specific problem that has been isolated, and everyone has been warned about it, so violations are harshly judged. The same is true of the "n-word," though the presence of lots of recorded music with the word creates confusion for young people who might not understand that this is the ONE thing you don't sing along with. 

But accents... accents are different. You can do fake accents... can't you? I've seen people pick up a New York accent or a Southern accent... to try to fit in or to be thought well of. Many actors do accents and get special acclaim. Meryl Streep, etc. etc.

So must Hilaria Baldwin be denounced because she's doing what she's doing while being a highly privileged person? Or are accents different from skin darkening? 

ADDED: As for the article where the NYT "celebrated children having their college admissions revoked for a video of them singing the N-word along to a song when they were 15 as a 'reckoning,'" here it is: "A Racial Slur, a Viral Video, and a Reckoning/A white high school student withdrew from her chosen college after a three-second video caused an uproar online. The classmate who shared it publicly has no regrets." Excerpt:

"I hope to live long enough to see future historians pose the very serious question: What *was* wokeness?"

The Jessica “Jess La Bombera” Krug story is waaaaay crazier than Rachel Dolezal’s.

I hope to live long enough to see future historians pose the very serious question: What *was* wokeness? pic.twitter.com/HEQ2g4fEEH

— Thomas Chatterton Williams 🌍 🎧 (@thomaschattwill) September 4, 2020

In case you haven't seen the underlying story: "Professor Jessica Krug admits she lied about being black: ‘I cancel myself’" (NY Post):

“For the better part of my adult life, every move I’ve made, every relationship I’ve formed, has been rooted in the napalm toxic soil of lies,” Krug, 38, writes in a brief but life-shattering Medium post titled “The Truth, and the Anti-Black Violence of My Lies.”... “There is no parallel form of my adulthood connected to white people or a white community or an alternative white identity. I have lived this lie, fully, completely, with no exit plan or strategy,” Krug writes. “I have no identity outside of this. I have never developed one.... I am a coward... You should absolutely cancel me, and I absolutely cancel myself.... I don’t know what to build from here. I don’t know that it is possible to repair a single relationship I have with another person, living or dead, and I don’t believe I deserve the grace or kindness to do so."

More here: "Professor who lied about being black ripped ‘white New Yorkers’ in profanity-laced tirade" (NY Post). With video, showing her using an accent/speech style that must have seemed empowering to her when she was pulling off her assumed identity but is now so embarrassing:

"When Rachel Dolezal was unmasked as a white woman who misrepresented her racial and ethnic identity..."

"... in part to bolster her professional bona fides as a voice of the disenfranchised, she was penalized—heavily. She went from rising media star to late-night punchline, unemployable and impoverished. I don’t wish poverty on Warren, but I don’t understand how her only punishment for a similar fraud seems to be that she may become president."

From "Women of Color Shouldn’t Trust Elizabeth Warren/With affirmative action on the chopping block, we can’t afford to back a candidate whose fraud played into ugly stereotypes about programs to boost diversity and equality" by Keli Goff (The Daily Beast).

So... that's there. But I can't read the whole thing because it's got a $100/year paywall after the first few paragraphs. Who would pay $100 a year to get into the back pages of The Daily Beast?! That's more than The New Yorker (which is much, much better, has a fantastic archive, and sends you a paper copy in the mail).

"Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who posed as black, charged with welfare fraud."

WaPo reports.

The investigation into Dolezal began in March of last year when an investigator from the Washington Department of Social and Health Services learned she had written a book that had been published.... At this time, Dolezal had been reporting a monthly income of less than $500.... In total, between August 2015 and September 2017, Dolezal’s bank statements showed she had deposited nearly $84,000, documents said. Investigators believe the money came from her book, speaking engagements and selling art, soaps and handmade dolls....

"You've talked about how people have assumed you're African American even though you're white—do you get that a lot?"

"I didn't until I moved to New York. I think it was actually a pickup line once. But even now on some of my Instagram posts, people will ask, 'Are you black or white?'... The more we're open to talking about race, the better. A lot of white people shy away from discussing it, but we need to. I think a lot of us are just ignorant, and sometimes there's no other way to learn than by putting your own foot in your mouth."

Said Michelle Wolf, talking to Oprah.com, last January.

And here's Wolf on "The Daily Show" discussing the subject in the context of Rachel Dolezal (the white woman who controversially presented herself as black):

Of course, we've been talking about Michelle Wolf for the last day, because she was the comedian at the White House Correspondents' Dinner — that corrupt, inappropriate event. Some people are making a fuss that she said "fuck," talked about sex, and was mean to Sarah Huckabee Sanders who was sitting right there.

Here's Chris Cillizza at CNN serving up "5 takeaways on Michelle Wolf's hugely controversial speech at the White House correspondents' dinner." I'm not going to read the whole thing because I presume he leads with his best material and the first "takeway" is very lame:

There are LOTS of way [sic] to go after Sanders. I personally think that she is overly antagonistic to the reporters who cover the White House and misleads on the regular [sic]. But to make fun of Sanders' makeup? ("I think she's very resourceful, like she burns facts and then she uses that ash to create a perfect smokey eye. Maybe she's born with it, maybe it's lies," said Wolf.) Like, really?

First, the word is "smoky." "Smokey" is the correct spelling only for the name of the U.S. Forest Service mascot, Smokey the Bear. [ADDED: And other proper names, like "Smokey and the Bandit."]

Second, Wolf didn't make fun of the makeup. In the joke, the makeup is not only good. It's perfect. The joke is that ugly things are going on behind the scenes and there's a contrast between that and the perfect exterior.

I would compare that joke to Jesus's denouncement of the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:25-28:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

ADDED: Bear/Wolf... I should have made something out of that. Also, I should made a show of connecting up the subject of the way Michelle Wolf  looks and the way Sarah Huckabee Sanders looks.

AND: Meade read this post and said, "I would have made a show of connecting Sarah Huckleberry Hound and Michelle Dancing With Wolves."

"If transgenderism is appropriate, then transracialism is appropriate./Transgenderism is appropriate./Therefore, transracialism is appropriate."

That's the argument Rebecca Tuvel believed she was making, but the reason feminist philosophers freaked out, Jim S. argues, is that Tuvel's modus ponens argument flips all too easily into this modus tollens argument:

If transgenderism is appropriate, then transracialism is appropriate.
Transracialism is not appropriate.
Therefore, transgenderism is not appropriate.

"The question is, why did so many scholars, especially feminists, express one sentiment behind closed doors and another out in the open? "

"In private messages, some people commiserated, expressed support, and apologized for what was happening and for not going public with their support," writes Vanderbilt philosophy professor Kelly Oliver, about the article “In Defense of Transracialism” written by Rebecca Tuvel and published in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy.

As one academic wrote to me in a private message, “sorry I’m not saying this publicly (I have no interest in battling the mean girls on Facebook) but fwiw it’s totally obvious to me that you haven’t been committing acts of violence against marginalized scholars.” Later, this same scholar wrote, again in private, saying Tuvel’s article is “a tight piece of philosophy” that makes clear that the position that “transgender is totally legit, [and] transracial is not—can only be justified using convoluted essentialist metaphysics. I will write to her privately and tell her so.” Others went further and supported Tuvel in private while actually attacking her in public. In private messages, these people apologized for what she must be going through, while in public they fanned the flames of hatred and bile on social media. The question is, why did so many scholars, especially feminists, express one sentiment behind closed doors and another out in the open? Why were so many others afraid to say anything in public?

MEANWHILE: In Alexandria, the real Hypatia did not face mean girls on Facebook, but mean men...



... who "tore off her clothing" and either ripped "her body in pieces" with "tiles" or "dragged her... through the streets of the city till she died."

Why name your journal after her if you don't have courage?

"This Is What a Modern-Day Witch Hunt Looks Like."

By Jesse Singal (in New York Magazine). This is a remarkably detailed analysis of an attack on Rebecca Tuvel, a philosopher who published "In Defense of Transracialism" in the feminist-philosophy journal Hypatia. Excerpt from Singal's article:

There has simply been an explosive amount of misinformation circulating online about what is and isn’t in Tuvel’s article, which few of her most vociferous critics appear to have even skimmed, based on their inability to accurately describe its contents. Because the right has seized on Rachel Dolezal as a target of gleeful ridicule, and as a means of making opportunistic arguments against the reality of the trans identity, a bunch of academics who really should know better are attributing to Tuvel arguments she never made, simply because she connected those two subjects in an academic article.

Read the whole thing. It makes me want to read all these other things Jesse Singal has written. Like, "Here’s (More) Evidence Testosterone Makes Men Dumber."

As you can see [from the new study in Psychological Science], testosterone made the respondents significantly more likely to pick the answer that “felt” right but that wasn’t in fact correct. It didn’t seem to have an effect on their ability to solve arithmetic problems, which don’t have an answer that “feels” right and therefore don’t lend themselves to gut-impulse guessing.

Here's a Breitbart article about Jesse Singal: "Meet Precious Flower Jesse Singal: He Thinks You Are a ‘Hateful Idiot.’" It's really insanely intra-Breitbart:

[I]n response to Breitbart Tech editor Milo Yiannopoulos Tweeting out the article about Singal’s piece, Singal began to lose it. “Holy shit Breitbart responded to my beard blog post!!!!!!!!!!! These are some sensitive snowflakes,” Singal wrote....

That goes on and on about Singal going on and on.  Here's Singal's beard blog post (from 2015): "7 Breitbart Commenters Who Think Paul Ryan Might Be a Radical Muslim Because He Grew a Beard."

"I am beginning to wonder if it isn't blackness that Dolezal doesn't understand, but whiteness."

Because growing up poor, on a family farm in Montana, being homeschooled by fundamentalist Christian parents sounds whiter than this 'silver spoon' whiteness she claims to be rejecting."

"Caitlyn Jenner’s story came out almost simultaneously with mine in 2015, so there was kind of this comparison."

“What’s not similar is the stigma right now. There was stigma in the past for sure, and that still perpetuates... but there’s more stigma for race fluidity than gender fluidity right now, and I don’t think anybody would deny that."

Said Rachel Dolezal, talking to Salon and promoting her new book "In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World."

I can't tell from the clip at Salon, but I think the interviewer asked her to make this comparison. It's certainly a comparison that I've seen all along. When I click on my Rachel Dolezal tag, I see the transgender analogy from the very beginning. I wrote:

I found that story via Instapundit, who is making jokes like: "She's trans-black, don't shame her" and "She’s obviously transitioning, and we should support her choice." I'm simply noting that opportunity for humorous insight, not signing onto it myself. I want my distance from transgender jokes. But the analogy is significant and worth thinking about seriously.

As for trans-racialism, I think, to some extent, people do choose which race to identify with. It is, to some extent, a matter of personal expression and the general social convention is to allow people to simply say what race they are and not to question it. At what point is it ethically wrong? Presumably, it has something to do with whether you've taken some benefit that was designated for others, especially if that's the only reason you've chosen this identification.

"Houseys" — people who have housing but nevertheless "sleep out" sometimes like the homeless.

Who are these people... and do they deserve to be ticketed for "unauthorized camping"?

Some are activists for the homeless, trying to gain information and experience to help them with their advocacy. But some are (we're told) "Zen practitioners" who "organize meditative 'street retreats'":

Critics might object that “this is a kind of voyeurism or spiritual tourism,” said Sensei Joshin Byrnes, who lives in a New Mexico monastery. But the goal is in fact “to really change our own hearts and minds and the way we view people who we commonly think of as the other.”

Participants in his programs, the shortest of which last four days, are asked not to shower for a week beforehand and arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs, $1, a form of ID, and perhaps a blanket or trash bag for protection from the weather.

I have 5 things to say about this:

1. Should a city be able to criminalize "unauthorized camping"? If you think the answer is yes, would you make an exception for people who have nowhere to go?

2. People living on the streets impose burdens on the people who are managing to take care of themselves by maintaining housing. If you do have a house, you shouldn't choose to add to that burden. It's not a nice thing to do to the people who own or rent housing in the area, and it's making the truly homeless people seem more burdensome than they actually are.

3. The fact that you are concerned with the condition of your own heart and mind does not absolve you of the charge of "voyeurism and spiritual tourism." Thinking well of your own good intentions and religionish loftiness can make you even less sensitive than most people are to the impression they make on others. You can absorb yourself with the way you "view people who [you] commonly think of as the other" and lose track of how other people view you.

4. When is it okay for people to pose as something they are not? Isn't dressing up as a homeless person and acting like them — when you could go home and take a shower and sleep in a bed — a kind of disreputable fakery? Isn't it like Rachel Dolezal taking on the appearance of a black person — not for mockery but out of empathy and concern for people who didn't choose this status? If it is, which way does that cut — pro- or anti- Dolezal?

5. Your imposition of yourself in an environment that is not your own changes that environment. This is a problem I have with travel that is aimed at seeing what people are like in some exotic place. You don't belong there, so it's different once it has you in it. Do you think you are improving it? Do you want to look at the impression you are making on this culture you are curious about?

"I’d stir the water from the hose into the earth … and make thin, soupy mud, which I would then rub on my hands, arms, feet, and legs."

"I would pretend to be a dark-skinned princess in the Sahara Desert or one of the Bantu women living in the Congo … imagining I was a different person living in a different place was one of the few ways … that I could escape the oppressive environment I was raised in."

"I live knowing that whatever my blackness means to me can be at odds with what it means to certain white observers, at any moment."

"So I live with two identities: mine and others’ perceptions of it. So much of blackness evolving has been limited to whiteness allowing it to evolve, without white people accepting that they are in the position of granting permission. Allowing. If that symbiotic dynamic is going to change, white people will need to become more conscious that they, too, can be perceived."

So writes Wesley Morris in a long New York Times Magazine article "The Year We ObsessedOver Identity" with the long subtle: "2015's headlines and cultural events have confronted us with the malleability of racial, gender, sexual and reputational lines. Who do we think we are?" The article has some topics that I've covered on this blog over the year — Rachel Dolezal, Atticus Finch — but the reason I wanted to blog this is that it ends talking about a book that I happened to notice for the first time yesterday, "Far From the Tree," by Andrew Solomon. Here's how Wesley Morris uses that book:

It could be that... it’s... in our natures to keep trying to change, to discover ourselves. In ‘‘Far From the Tree,’’ Andrew Solomon’s landmark 2012 book about parenting and how children differentiate themselves, he makes a distinction between vertical and horizontal identity. The former is defined by traits you share with your parents, through genes and norms; the latter is defined by traits and values you don’t share with them, sometimes because of genetic mutation, sometimes through the choice of a different social world. The emotional tension in the book’s scores of stories arises from the absence of love for or empathy toward someone with a pronounced or extreme horizontal identity — homosexuality or autism or severe disability. Solomon is writing about the struggle to overcome intolerance and estrangement, and to better understand disgust; about our comfort with fixed, established identity and our distress over its unfixed or unstable counterpart.

"I think she was a bit of a hero," said Rihanna about Rachel Dolezal...

"... because she kind of flipped on society a little bit. Is it such a horrible thing that she pretended to be black? Black is a great thing, and I think she legit changed people’s perspective a bit and woke people up.”

IN THE COMMENTS: Marty Keller said: "Name one."

For some reason that caused this song to play in my head: "You're only pretty as you feel/Only pretty as you feel inside..."

Vanity Fair on Rachel Dolezal: "Her cover’s blown, but that turned out not to matter. It was never a cover to her, anyway."

I know: Weren't Rachel Dolezal's 15 minutes of fame over? She's so last month!

But — you may remember — the discussion of Rachel Dolezal was abruptly cut short when another race-related news event suddenly, dramatically overwhelmed it and made it seem too stupidly trivial to talk about. That feeling  — that the Charleston massacre makes it wrong to talk about Rachel Dolezal — has worn off.

And, more importantly, Vanity Fair has put up a big article that plays right into the zone that we'd left unexplored, the concept that race, like gender, can be a matter of personal, inward identification:

Dolezal feels her outing was a big misunderstanding... Had she been able to explain her complicated childhood and sincere, long-time love for black culture to everyone before the blow up, all would have been forgiven.

“Again, I wish I could have had conversations with all kinds of people,” she says. “If I would have known this was going to happen, I could have said, ‘O.K., so this is the case. This is who I am, and I’m black and this is why.’”