By Frances Mulcahy, MBBS (she/her)
Ask a three-year-old (neuro-typical) human ‘who are you?’ and commonly the answer is either their first name (Jill/John) or simply ‘me’. If presented with the subsequent enquiry, ‘but who is that?’, the answer will again be, ‘me’, or, ‘I am Jill/John’. For neuro-diverse humans, the development of an internal identity happens in a wide range of forms, at diverse ages and is expressed more idiosyncratically.
We carry our identity for our lifetime. It is challenged and frequently re-formed during adolescence, and it continuously develops thereafter. An identity’s reality and its relationship to an overarching existential experience is the source of much philosophical contention that I do not have the space to delve into - however, please feel free to research the topic more on your own. I will assert we each have an identity. That identity will have elements that are largely unconscious, until they are forced into awareness. There will be elements that are fully conscious personal values and passions. Some will wax and wane over time and some will be unchanging.
All the following ‘by way of example’ quotations are created for the purpose of this explanation and article, and do not reflect every person’s circumstances.
‘I was always unconsciously, a young woman until the very young salesperson called me ‘ma’am’ and while I am still a young woman, I am now aware that not everyone sees me that way.’
‘My passion for social justice remains a core to my sense of self. At the moment, acting on it is on the back-burner for a little while, as I am enjoying being a mother to my young child.’
‘It does not matter how busy I am, I will always ‘call out’ cruelty to animals. I would not be me if I was silent about that.’
In adult life, we use the term ‘agency’ to describe our ability to have thoughts and behaviours. These affirm our identity, assist in expressing it and make it real in the here and now. A solid and reality-based experience of agency supports a robust and resilient identity.
A privileged Australian woman might say:
‘My great sporting passion is female round ball football (soccer).
My family love hearing me talk about it. It is so validating to be encouraged to share’,
Or;
‘My family think soccer is a joke, and female sport is limited to tennis. I feel sad I can’t share such an important piece of me, that my agency has been diminished and my identity devalued.’
I attended the Meanjin/Brisbane International Working Women's Day Rally this year and to closely paraphrase the content of a First Nations Australian women’s speech:
‘I am a member of the sovereign peoples of this land and we have a connection to country that is unique. I am often treated with disrespect and scorn when I say such things. The majority culture often tells me my experience of me is not acceptable, and the way I think is wrong. I am deprived of agency.’ To quote her powerful words precisely, ‘I feel less than human in my own land’.
Our football lover feels her identity has been injured by her primary family. Our First Nations women experiences a dreadful assault on her identity. Her agency is removed – she has been made invisible. Her identity is stolen.
The integration of identity, agency and autonomy within a cultural milieu has been a work in process from a feminist perspective. A good deal of that progression can be seen in the historical evolution of feminist activism.
Autonomy, as a construct applied to humans, can be seen as a combination of ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’. ‘Freedom to’ encompasses a range of experiences in which the locus of control is mainly within the person. I am free to drink tea or coffee. The choice does presuppose the availability of both drinks but the ‘freedom to’ is experienced as an internal process. ‘Freedom from’ mainly relates to experience where the locus of control is external. Freedom from thirst requires that water be available. Freedom from assault relates to an external locus. Yes, I can probably achieve freedom from assault by never leaving my home, but that choice only has relevance because of an external danger.
The autonomy sought by first-wave feminism (1830-1930) was crucial and also quite basic. The freedom from being treated as the property of a man. The freedom to be a person in their own right, to identify as a woman, to have (limited) agency over their bodies. There has been feminist concern looking back at this improved autonomy, because it was expressed in terms of men and their experiences.
The autonomies that were first brought to focus by second-wave feminism (post-1945) were, broadly speaking, of a ‘personal’ type. These included freedom from inequality, freedom to have equal access to work, education and pay, and a range of additional personal autonomies. These personal autonomies were again expressed in terms of the standards of men. Many feminists have been quite reluctant to embrace autonomy as a feminist construct, because of its partially comparative nature, and because of associations with patriarchal ownership of a male version stereotype of autonomy – that hyper-masculine trope, a rugged outdoorsy over-rational self-made male person.
The release of the oral contraceptive pill in the early 1960s shifted the focus of autonomy, from personal autonomy to bodily autonomy. Freedom from male ownership of women’s reproductive capacity was rendered easier. Freedom to choose from a wider option of sexual expression. Freedom to express agency over medical treatment. While these freedoms acknowledged the need to escape patriarchal control, their expression was in terms of women as persons with their own bodily self-possession.
Feminist thought has generally evolved to a relational view of autonomy. Individuals and the decisions they make are understood within the context of relationships, and within complex social situations.
Intersectional feminism gives further emphasis to theories of autonomy that are content neutral. The content neutral approach to autonomy states that she who expresses agency will be influenced by intersecting factors, such as class, race, gender, and sexuality, and that the agent’s autonomy may not be judged by any view of an idealised good. The content of my autonomy is my own, and even if does not align with your view of either a right choice or even a so-called ‘good’ choice, it is my freedom to exercise self-rule, according to the content of my autonomy.
One of the main tensions and challenges for modern feminism is to integrate an inclusive view of identity, agency and autonomy – ‘how do I accommodate her style of living as a feminist – she shaves her legs, for goodness’ sake?’
For example, woman A identifies as a queer bisexual femme presenting human. Her pronouns are she/her/hers. She expresses agency in her work providing transactional physical intimacy (also known as sex work). She reports that she experiences autonomy in her work.
A feminist overview of sex work includes grave concern about the risks, coercion and violation of bodily autonomy. Sadly, these concerns, coupled with a privileged view of ‘normal’ power relationships can, and does, lead to some influential feminists taking the patronising position that sex work is always wrong because, in their view, it does not align with the best interest of woman A. Such a view is not representative of a content neutral view of autonomy.
There is no harm in seeking to identify structural misogyny and form a view of idealised right-rule. The challenge is to not impose right-rule on other women, as if it was a substitute for self-rule.
Supporting a person’s autonomy is actually quite simple. Just ask the following questions:
How does that person identify?
Are they requesting assistance with their personal agency?
Do they report being autonomous?
Thus; She identifies as Muslim; she requests no assistance with agency, which she expresses by wearing hijab, and she reports that she is autonomous. An intersectional feminist will support our Muslim sister’s right to choose her clothes.
There is a caveat to this view of content neutral autonomy. Fundamental to identity is bodily self-possession (something our three-year-old has grasped) and in situations where bodily self-possession is denied, there is no self-identity and no opportunity to form a self-view about autonomy. Slavery, torture and the depersonalisation that follows repeated physical and emotional abuse remove a person’s self-possession. These extreme situations remove identity. The pursuit of liberating people from these situations is not patronage.
Let us apply the concepts of identity, agency, and autonomy to a historical retrospective.
The two images are full page advertisements carried by the Australian Woman’s Weekly. The promotion for Marlboro was in 1983, while the one, for Alpine, was in 1982.
Both these brands were then owned by Phillip Morris International.
Ask yourself what do you see in these images?
Is there a clear inference to make about what constitutes socially advantageous behaviour? Does your current information base about the many serious health risks associated with smoking help form your view of ‘right-rule’? Does your view of ‘right-rule’ make it hard to find feminist support for the ‘self-rule’ choice to smoke shown in the images? Does your sensitivity to the inference that the female smoker is ‘making herself attractive to men’ make it hard to support her perfect right to autonomously choose to smoke?
To restate; The content neutral approach to autonomy states that she who expresses agency will be influenced by intersecting factors, such as class, race, gender and sexuality, and that the agent’s autonomy may not be judged by any view of an idealised good.
This is no simple process. Every day we are challenged to mind our privilege, mind our trauma, and mind our cultural presumptions.