Thoughts on Community and Identity
Jun. 10th, 2018 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
child_of_the_airThis article by Ari Ne'eman on the intersection between his Jewish and autistic identities is pretty interesting to me as well. One of the most persistent bits of my identity has always been a feeling of being alone, of being an outsider, of not being human. A lot of this is almost certainly due to having a very socially isolated childhood, and due to the fact that my autism makes it harder for me to easily form connections with a lot of people.
While it's problematic for a white person to say they don't feel like they have a culture, I do feel like I was raised without a "community" or group identity in much of a meaningful way. My family didn't socially interact with neighbors and my parents didn't have friends. It wasn't until college--where I met a number of other autistic, queer, geeky people--that I actually got a chance to find something that felt like solace and community with people like me. But it also quickly taught me about the limits to such community.
Again and again, I found myself feeling really close to a group of people, only to find that they didn't feel that way about me, or that we had some fundamental disagreement that forced us apart, or even just that they had to move to another state or continent. This feeling of joy from being with "my people" is something that I yearn for, but also something I've learned that I can probably never have. Maybe I'm too choosy or too weird. But, even if it's ephemeral, I can't stop myself from running toward what feels like "home."
Religion seems to be the main way people solve this, but that doesn't seem like a viable option to me. Besides the reality that religious communities are going to be prone to the same problems I've found in other ones, I've found that the ones where I might best fit in socially and culturally--Unitarian Universalist, largely--don't have enough ritual to move me. And the religious rituals that do move me pose other problems: Catholicism I have deep theological and social/ethical issues with, and paganism--especially if you're not Wiccan--is not an easy place to find a community, or even anyone else to practice with.
Lately, I've spent a lot of time with people for who Judaism is where they get that feeling of community and group identity, and I'm occasionally a bit envious of it, perhaps because I know that it's something that could never be available to me, even though some components of it--the ritual design, and the presence of a lot of liberal and socialist, autistic people--appeal to me. Yes, I know that conversion is theoretically possible, but as a committed polytheist who has both deep personal trauma from and deep ethical discomfort with infant circumcision, it isn't really something that could ever work for me.
Religion seems to be the main way people solve this, but that doesn't seem like a viable option to me. Besides the reality that religious communities are going to be prone to the same problems I've found in other ones, I've found that the ones where I might best fit in socially and culturally--Unitarian Universalist, largely--don't have enough ritual to move me. And the religious rituals that do move me pose other problems: Catholicism I have deep theological and social/ethical issues with, and paganism--especially if you're not Wiccan--is not an easy place to find a community, or even anyone else to practice with.
Lately, I've spent a lot of time with people for who Judaism is where they get that feeling of community and group identity, and I'm occasionally a bit envious of it, perhaps because I know that it's something that could never be available to me, even though some components of it--the ritual design, and the presence of a lot of liberal and socialist, autistic people--appeal to me. Yes, I know that conversion is theoretically possible, but as a committed polytheist who has both deep personal trauma from and deep ethical discomfort with infant circumcision, it isn't really something that could ever work for me.
