Most identities are relationships to power.

When I say I am transgender, I am not really describing my relationship to gender, I am describing my relationship to power. My relationship to gender is ever-changing, a flirtation, a bother, a passionate love-hate relationship, a questionmark. I know people who identity as cisgender who have a very similar relationship to gender. When I say I am transgender, my relationship to power is one of stigmatization, pathologization, sterilisation, dismissal, stereotypes, and the denial of basic human rights. I mean the impact of the power of cisnormativity on my life

This is true of other identity-words too, including the ones that describe when I am given power. When I say I am white, I am not really describing my relationship to race, I am describing my relationship to power. My physical skincolor is very similar to some people who are most certainly not considered white. My relationship to ethnicity is one of ignorance, guilt, hidden stories, complex mixed perpetrator-victim narratives and long silences. When I say I am white I describe my relationship to power when I am viewed as professional, respectable, classy, non-threatening, employable and worthy of saving if I should screw up. I mean the impact of the power of white supremacy on my life. 

Most identities are relationships to power. And as such they can be a strong bonding experience. They can be at the root of relationships of solidarity, of holding each other close in a cruel world, of pride, of family. But if we lose sight of their nature, not only do we lose sight of the nuance and complexity of our actual lives, we also lose our ability to see the other oppressed, who have more power than us in one way but less in others, as connected to us. If we understand oppressed identities as relationships to power, we see the thing that we all have in common: that our relationship to power is defined by a struggle to exist, a struggle for justice. And I can contribute to their struggle for justice or I can cling to my own power and ignore what we have in common.