In order to examine some of the issues that have arisen
here, I’d like to take a step back, achieve a little distance, and
look first at how this discourse of recognition and identity
came to seem familiar, or at least readily understandable, to
us. For it was not always so, and our ancestors of more than
a couple of centuries ago would have stared at us uncomprehendingly
if we had used these terms in their current sense.