The demand for recognition in these latter cases is given
urgency by the supposed links between recognition and
identity, where this latter term designates something like a
person’s understanding of who they are, of their fundamental
defining characteristics as a human being. The thesis is
that our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence,
often by the misrecognition of others, and so a person
or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if
the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining
or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves.
Nonrecognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a
form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted,
and reduced mode of being.
Thus some feminists have argued that women in patriarchal
societies have been induced to adopt a depreciatory
image of themselves. They have internalized a picture of
their own inferiority, so that even when some of the objective
obstacles to their advancement fall away, they may be
incapable of taking advantage of the new opportunities. And