Arlene Stein Quote

What all of this suggests is that we need a more complex understandingof identities. If we identify on the basis of race, class, sexuality, orgender alone we cannot make sense of the ways these identificationscombine and change over time. The used-to-be-working class nowprofessional woman, the woman of mixed racial parentage who appearswhite, the divorced mother who is now a lesbian, the former lesbian whois now straight, or the former lesbian who is now a man. Identities arealways in motion; they are mobile (Ferguson, 1993). This is particularlythe case for those who have been placed in identity categories that do notquite seem to fit; it is also true of many more of us, in varied ways. Justask our current President, whose own origin story, of which he has spokenand written eloquently, is exceedingly complex. We need, I believe, aconception of identities that embraces this complexity, that takes intoaccount temporality and also specificity.

Arlene Stein

What all of this suggests is that we need a more complex understandingof identities. If we identify on the basis of race, class, sexuality, orgender alone we cannot make sense of the ways these identificationscombine and change over time. The used-to-be-working class nowprofessional woman, the woman of mixed racial parentage who appearswhite, the divorced mother who is now a lesbian, the former lesbian whois now straight, or the former lesbian who is now a man. Identities arealways in motion; they are mobile (Ferguson, 1993). This is particularlythe case for those who have been placed in identity categories that do notquite seem to fit; it is also true of many more of us, in varied ways. Justask our current President, whose own origin story, of which he has spokenand written eloquently, is exceedingly complex. We need, I believe, aconception of identities that embraces this complexity, that takes intoaccount temporality and also specificity.

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About Arlene Stein

Arlene Stein is an American sociologist and author best known for her writing about sex and gender, the politics of identities, and collective memory. She is Distinguished professor of sociology at Rutgers University where she directs the Rutgers University Institute for Research on Women. Stein has also taught at the University of Essex and at the University of Oregon.