Thanks for re-submitting your comment, peaceworrier. So very sorry about such a blunder. Something to do with how the site system works. I'll know for next time!

Thanks also for talking about some of your story. It's an honour to hear something about how you've been formed.

It is a hugely difficult question to work with - who claims our view of identity?

I think that the difficulties are that it's a question that leads to open and contested/contestable answers. Our responses are moulded by our identity formation, so I guess it becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg question. We're social animals, so something of our identity is formed by the social environment; but we're also individual persons, so something of our identity is formed out of the degree of personal responsibility (if that's the right word here?! control, maybe?) we've exerted over our responses to the social environment.

It does seem to me that as we get older and gain more experience of life, we are more able to reflect on how we've been formed and shaped by our context (family, school, neighbourhood, economic factors, etc, etc). Things like education and wealth are key factors in our ability to reflect, and often it seems to me that they can be instrumental in bringing about 'lucid' moments when our perspective changes or progresses or whatever (such as reading a particular book, taking a particular course, meeting a particular person/group of persons, etc).

I guess one of the questions to ask is how, as persons in community, can 'we' actively foster an environment that treasures, as you put it, what it is to be a woman, to be a man, to be intersex, to be old, to be a child, to be an immigrant, to be... What are the strategies needed to be a community of liberation, both internally and externally - one that goes beyond equality, and enables persons to be who they want to be? Is there something about 'seeking in Christ,' as you say, that enhances that collective liberative process...?

Personally, I believe there is. There are important things about the way Jesus seemed to interact with persons, whether women or men, that profoundly challenged the patriarchal norms of his day. There are of course also places where he seemed to accept those norms too readily (such as having only men in his inner group). Nonetheless, I find following in the footsteps of Jesus envisioning on this issue.