Equality in identities?

In all different cultures people have different ways of thinking about the world and the other people they live with. We all know that everyone has their own culture, their own identity, but how does that reflect on how people think of each other? Are we all equals?

In our identity, we have a lot of separate identities. Some of these are gender, sexual, age, racial/ethnic, religion and class identities. As we all compare our definitions of these, we find some interesting notions of what we think are the major and the minor identities.

Comparing gender identities, we found that most of us think that “Men” still have a bigger and more important state then “Women”, but we all seemed to forget one other gender, “Intersexual”. Seen that we all forgot about it, this is the minor gender identity in our culture. We all did know about this gender, so why did we forget it? Mainly because it is kept quiet. We are not taught about it in school and it does not come to us as something normal. It is a real problem though, because these “Intersexual” people become “Men” or “Women” at birth, by choice of their parents or the doctors. The procedure is immediately done and, when those babies grow up, they might feel like they should have been something else, maybe a man instead of a woman.

As for sexual identities, we agreed that there are three: “Heterosexual”, “Homosexual” and “Bisexual”. We also agreed that the major identity was the “Heterosexual” and the minor “Bisexual”. There is still this hierarchy about sexuality because it still does not come as normal, “it should not happen in the natural world” that, for example, two men become a couple. Also, I believe it is because the two minor sexualities still do not have the same rights as the major, in terms of marriage and adopting children. School is also an important method for to start accepting all sexualities.

I believe that in Portugal, in terms of age, the elderly are more respected than adults or children. Everyone has to respect the elderly because they have lived the most and are the most tired and need to be put first. Children, on the other hand, are seen as trouble makers and therefore disrespected by the rest. They are always the ones who did wrong. I don’t agree with this idea, I think it is a stereotype and a bad one. Not everyone is the same.

As we looked at the other identities, Caucasian is still the major identity, as opposed to Black or gypsies. The Catholic Church is still viewed as the biggest religion with the most followers, even though there are many others. Last, the richest people are the ones everyone looks up to, they are the ones who can do the most, as other class identities are minor in our culture.

In sum, what we think of people depends on how we see the different identities. They are stereotyped, and it will be hard to change that. Making an equal world in terms of identities is important. It will be hard, and maybe not even possible.