Identity

The categories of white and woman feel similarly to me. They are categories that the outside world applies to me, not ones that I internally identify with. They are also categories where, to a large degree, my internal identity isn't relevant to how the world treats me.

Now, I want to be clear that not identifying with white in no way removes my white privilege or my responsibility to understand that privilege and think about the way it affects others. It also doesn't remove my responsibility to use my whiteness to push back on other white people. Not identifying as white doesn't make me not white, the complicated place of light skinned Jews notwithstanding. 

But also, unless I do way more work than I'm willing to do, my internal identity doesn't change the fact that most of the world is going to see me as a woman and treat me that way. That includes cis privilege and includes sexism. They're both part of that package. 

I do have identities around my ethnicity. I identify very strongly as an Ashkenazi Jew, and weakly with my Sicilian ancestry. But that doesn't really form any identity connection with white people who are outside those categories. 

I don't really have a gender identity, but I do have gender political affiliations. I caucus with either women or nonbinary people, depending on the circumstance. Mostly it depends on which one seems to need that support right now. I have some weak identity with the presentation of being butch. But overall, there isn't really some identity I can point to and say, no, I'm not a woman I'm this.