Kusamehewa

Identity Diversity

The range of options we have in choosing and defining our individual identities is rapidly expanding. Until recently it seemed natural to assume that a person was cis gendered, heterosexual, neurotypical and mentally healthy. Does that describe most of us? Are labels useful? Is 'intergender semibisexual' a joke? While these labels may seem confusing, superfluous, unhelpful and even ridiculous to those of us who are totally comfortable in the gender we were assigned at birth, there are, and have always been, those who do not feel comfortable, who do not feel 'right', who do not feel that we fit within the group we have been assigned. The experience of many of us in the past has been one of trying to conform, wanting to fit in, trying to get it right and not understanding why we feel so wrong. Now we are moving into an age where if the labels don't fit, we change the labels or make new labels. As we create new labels that fit us better we find that we are more able to fully become ourselves and express who we truly are. Some people don't like labels and we understand that. The best illustration of why we think they are important is this: we label ourself as 'autistic' and in doing so replace the labels of 'lazy, unreliable, over dramatic, pedantic, obsessive' etc that we have been given and have given ourselves for most of our life. This article is written to support the generative token of the same name which employs fxparams to enable minters to create a personalised artwork which represents some aspects of their identity. The hope is that enough people will mint the token so that the gallery becomes a visual representation of our diversity as a community. The options are intended to be broad and possibly challenging but are also inevitably limited. Most glaring are the omissions of social, cultural and ethnic background as well as physical disabilities and illnesses which form such an essential part of a person's identity but which we chose not to attemt to reduced to symbols, colours and shapes. We decided to allow people to choose freely within the parameters of the artwork, combinations such as 'Cis Male Lesbian, Neurotypical and Autistic'.