Self, Persona, Identity, Community

Sometimes, the hardest thing for me to remember is..is what I look like to others.  I feel young, usually innocent, but when I walk into a store or pass someone on the street, I can see them tense up and move away.

I remember this happening when I was still young--maybe fourteen or fifteen--I was paying hide-n-seek in my neighborhood and a neighborhood who I'd seen a million times started yelling at us and called the cops.  I stood there say, "hey, it's me. me Todd."  but that made little difference.

In gender and queer theory, a writer commented that people are trained to react to gender in different ways (not that we can't be out-trained) (Sedgwick?) .  When a sexually (rather gender-not sex) amorphous person is in a normal social setting the ambiguity of that person's gender might confuse those with whom she/ he is interacting.  This, of course, is based on the stereotype of gender and gendered behavior.

So when I walk on the sidewalk in a predominantly upscale New Orleans neighborhood and people have a tendency to move away from me....who am I?

I may have a persona--a social role, but do I have a static identity?  I dare say no.  But I spend a lot of time thinking about it or being told that my identity is subpar.....dangerous, generous, kind, impatient...almost as if my identity and persona were the same thing.