selenicseas

The identities a person starts life with are not chosen freely by the person in question, but chosen instead by an authority. A parent decides its child's religion (or lack thereof), gender, sexual orientation, culture, and ethnicity. The autonomy of the child is not taken into question, because it is property rather than a person, and property is not sapient and cannot make its own decisions. The parent may or may not realize it is engaging in authoritarian practices, but, of course, ignorance is no excuse for harm or violence – it's only ever an explanation.

As one ages, identities are called into question. Why practice a religion simply because your parents or extended family do so? Why conform to a culture simply because you were raised in it? Why continue doing anythingsimply because it was chosen for you when you were too young to remember?

You may end up choosing a different gender or religion than the one that was decided for you. Or you might not. Late on, you may also decide to change that previously chosen gender or religion because you find you do not currently have anything in common with it. Or, again, you might not.

Like periodically examining your beliefs, you should also periodically examine your identities – not just once or twice in your life. No, the requisite quarter-life crisis and mid-life crisis aren’t enough, in my opinion. You should be having crises every couple year or so. Or perhaps not – if you're critically examining yourself every other year, you're probably cutting short anything that isn’t worthwhile before you buy into the sunk-cost fallacy too much.

This practice is...well, I can't say I've seen it be well-accepted by identitarian groups. They tend to cling quite tightly to their people and do not like to let them go. Both majority and minority identity groups do this, and for what I suspect are different reasons. Majority groups are typically the power-holding class, and every person who leaves that group weakens its ability to continue holding power and delegitimizes it as an authority. Meanwhile, minority groups typically do not hold power, and every person who leaves that minority group lessens their ability to defend themselves from and delegitimizes their existence in the eye of the majority.

Your relationships to authority and power via your own identities is something you ought to keep in mind. How do or don't you benefit from them? What communities or resources are you allowed access to that others are not? Are you allowed a particular social status due to the identity? Don't pick an identity because it allows you certain privileges (whether they be social, economic, or political), but don't do it because you want to feel like an underdog, either.