I can't help thinking that spanking is a solid way to discipline children, and this is terribly barbaric to all of my non-Chinese friends (as well as to my Chinese friends whose parents really did physically abuse them).
I could qualify this by imposing all kinds of reasoned conditions upon the act, or saying that spanking is certainly not the only way to discipline children, and of course, I'd never hit a child who wasn't biologically mine, and I'm never having my own, so there.
But I still have to explain that view, even though it will never matter to me because I will never be a biological parent. So I can only take the perspective of one who has been spanked.
In Taiwan, I wouldn't have to explain anything, and that would be my cultural normativity working for me. It is not a privilege - it is just invisible because it is the status quo.
Here, my experience with spanking and being hit works against me. My dad kicked seven kinds of shit out of me on about three occasions.
Some of my friends would call that shocking child abuse and express urges to hurt my dad (and have expressed that, believing that it would show support for me... how does hating my father make me see you in a positive light? It does not).
And while it is questionable as to whether I truly deserved a few beatdowns or not, physical violence is a language that I know and understand, and I LIKE that I am fluent in it. I don't externalize that, but I get it.
Barbaric, right?
I remember Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech, in which he says that he can "no more disown" the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's insane opinions than he "can disown the Black community." He also says that he "can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of Black men who passed her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."
I cannot disown what some might perceive as brutality in me because it is real, and it is a part of not only my experience as a human, but a part of me and my sense of who I am. For the record, I do think that getting the shit kicked out of me by my father taught me to be strong. I am grateful for that, although I do not think that he had to do it quite as severely as he did.
I also know that much of my "unchosen" (inherent? inherited?) identity isn't about my cultural identity- my neurotic need to control the actions of others, for example, isn't necessarily a function of my Asian-ness - it is a combination of my father's anxious personality and engineering background (my dad is REALLY NICE, by the way - this doesn't paint him in the best light because I am focusing on one aspect of his identity at the expense of the rest of him, which is ultimately a grave sin - defining by one character trait in order to deify or demonize - so inhumane), and my mother's high expectations for staying on top of my shit. My desire for wisdom is certainly rooted in my Christian upbringing.
I would like to be someone who chooses who I am. This reminds me of the Renee Montoya character in Greg Rucka's GCPD comics. She chooses who she is in the face of massive pressure from that which is most important to her - her family, her work, her girlfriend. Ultimately, I think that the process of defining self comes from negotiating the culture that we find ourselves in, the culture that we create, and the culture that is imposed upon us. I think that just as you and I have our share of privilege, we also have our share of agency and maybe more than our fair share of self-awareness, which makes self-definition more fun. I am also using the term "self-definition," which is too self-centered. Obviously, we are defined as well - by the people we love, by strangers, by our enemies.
So I think that everyone SHOULD get to choose identity, and pull identity from wherever one would like. But I also acknowledge that for many, this is a privilege and a luxury.
I'm a little lost in what I have written, but I fucking love identity because it is so complex and interdependent. It is one of the building blocks of our humanity; it is mutable, and it is essential. I'm also a huge fan of Descartes, and his statement on identity is a nice summation of my thoughts: "I think, therefore I am." That is also how I define myself, by the way.
