Theory and context –

Identity politics –

Identity politics, is politics based on a particular identity, such as :

• Race
• Nationality
• Sexual orientation
• Religion
• Gender
• Social background
• Social class

Culture wars –

In political science, a culture war is a type of cultural conflict between different social groups who struggle to politically impose their own ideology (beliefs, virtues, practices) upon their society.

An example of a culture war is the gamergate controversy.

Impact on society –

These stereotypes and identities had a very large impact on society because people assume people that have these differences are not normal, because everyone is not the same.

It also causes tunnel vision for some people depending on what they were told growing up was ‘the norm’.

An example of how this has had an impact on society would be the Black Lives Matter movement.

Positives and Negatives –

A positive of society grouping people with similarities is because if that particular group of people get targeted it could bring them together and closer as a group.

A negative of society grouping people with similarities is that they could spread hate toward people who do not have those similarities instead of supporting people for their differences.

Gender identity –

Gender identity could mean a variety of things depending on the person, however there are loads of stereotypical ideas of gender identity.

Masculine stereotypes –

Some male stereotypes include men are meant to be strong physically and mentally and not show weakness and make the money for their family. Men are also stereotypically not meant to show any emotion towards sadness and are perceived as angry and uncontrollable.

Feministic stereotypes –

On the other hand, woman are stereotypically perceived as submissive and ‘soft’, and overall weaker then a man – physically and emotionally. Woman are also stereotypically thought to be the ‘housewife’ as they would look after the children and the house while the husband would get the money.

Both men and woman have defied these stereotypes throughout the years as people have found what makes them feel comfortable whether that is the woman making the money and the man staying at home or something more adventurous such as clothes or how they show themselves. This is shown a lot through Claude Cahun’s photography work.

Cultural identity and loss of identity –

Cultural identity is a large focus in todays society, since people want to go back to their roots and find their cultural identity to become more in touch with it especially if they are generations detatched.

Staying in touch with your culture is very important to large groups of people. However some people have never felt out of touch with it since they may have been brought up around it in their households and such.

Different cultures have a lot of different views on certain things the average Caucasian person may not understand. It may be significantly more difficult for a person being brought up in a different cultured house to where they are living since they need to stay in touch with their culture to please the people in their household but also conform to normalities from wherever they are staying to please everyone else.

Social identity –

Social identity is where people feel the need to conform with the social groups around them to ‘fit in’. You see this a lot in schools across the world, where people change how they dress or their appearance to fit in to society’s norms.

People feel the need to change what makes them, them, to fit in or please everyone else and this has a massive impact on life throughout school for some people. In countries where this is considered normal, a lot of children have struggled with this and have found it difficult to figure out their identity until a later age.