Project:Policies specific to sexual identities

Introduction

Identities

See also: Project:Policies specific to identities

Broadly, an identity is a set of qualities that characterize a person (personal identity) or characterize a person's belonging to a particular group (social identities).

Social Identities

A social identity is a portion of an individual's self-concept that is based primarily on self-categorization within a particular group or combination of groups. These categorizations are often (but not always) assigned to individuals by factors outside of their direct control. The eight major social identities are sometimes referred to as the "Big 8", being:

1. ability
2. age
3. ethnicity
4. gender
5. race
6. religion
7. sexual orientation
8. socioeconomic status

These concepts may be split into separate qualifications based on the definition of a particular term versus the individual's self-identification as such. For example, a work may describe a person's race as African American, even if the term "African American" was not in wide use prior to the 1980s in the United States. In such scenarios, individuals may differentiate between "race" and "racial identity" (or "religion" and "religious identity", "sexual orientation" and "sexual (orientation) identity", "gender" and "gender identity", etc., etc.). In the context of lgbtDB, we occasionally make this separation insofar as it may be useful in select situations, but we avoid it as much as possible, preferring an individual's self-identification.