What do people mean by “identify as”?

But my problem when trying to answer these forms is that I don't feel like anything inside. I don't feel like a woman. Equally I don't feel like a man. I don't feel like anything, because I have no idea what feeling like a woman or a man or anything else would feel like. So how the hell I am supposed to answer the question about what I identify as? I am a woman, because I am a woman. But that's not what those questions are asking hence I am stuck with how to respond.
You are stuck because the question assumes that you subscribe to Gender ID. Where are the boxes for the Gender Critical? We are all allowed to have our protected belief systems.

That reminds me of getting my toddler son yo eat a sandwich by pretending it was cake.
He soon worked it out.

Scene: a kitchen-dining room, somewhere in the UK.

We see a toddler in a high-chair. Before her sits a plate of puréed broccoli. Her mum spoons it up, while saying in sing-song tones, "you want to have dinner, don't you? Now you want to eat your favourite veggie medley. Open up for the broccoli aeroplane! You always love this!"

Doesn't work so well on adults.

Same. I've always thought of myself as a person of the biologically female variety when it's relevant to refer to biology. Eg when I bore a child I became more aware of my female biology.

Most of the time it's utterly irrelevant for me.

It’s a tricky phrase…but roll with it. If you are asked on a form what gender you associate with or identify as, they aren’t asking what you biologically are, just what you feel inside. If you are biologically female and happen to have boobs and no penis, then you just say female and don’t sweat it. It means that your internal organs have no bearing on the question...

...If you feel like you are a woman and have boobs and no penis, that was meant to say

Strikes me that the only people who go around "feeling like a woman" are men. Why should women "roll with" ticking a box that is meaningless to our own experience.

We identify what our gender is inside
But I don't identify as a gender inside. Until the last year or so, I have literally never in my almost 50 years alive given a single thought to what gender I am. It's not something that has entered my mind. I've know since childhood that I am female, I have had no need to in any way consider what gender I am. Now I have questions galore about it on surveys, forms at work, questionnaires I feel forced to think about it and I have no idea what gender I am because I don't identify as anything, and don't even understand what it means, and these questions don't seem to allow for that. They list female or woman as options but never "none".

People can say what they like. They just can't expect anyone else to believe it. Or go along with it. Or make others jump through hoops with language they have decided on without the consent of anyone else. Ajd understand most normal people don't believe it and those that do are merely using trans people fir their own entertainment. They'd validate them til they permanently altered themselves just for a laugh. Their followers are not their friends.

If you are asked on a form what gender you associate with or identify as, they aren’t asking what you biologically are, just what you feel inside. If you are biologically female and happen to have boobs and no penis, then you just say female and don’t sweat it. It means that your internal organs have no bearing on the question.

But my problem when trying to answer these forms is that I don't feel like anything inside. I don't feel like a woman. Equally I don't feel like a man. I don't feel like anything, because I have no idea what feeling like a woman or a man or anything else would feel like. So how the hell I am supposed to answer the question about what I identify as? I am a woman, because I am a woman. But that's not what those questions are asking hence I am stuck with how to respond.

It means 'I'm not but I wish i was.'

If you are whatever it is you are supposed to be no need to identify is there?

I think the most plausible way to think of it I've seen is something like, "One of my parents is black and one white, but I identify as black rather than mixed race" (or vice versa.)

It makes the most sense in terms of these kinds of connections that are not so objective in their definitions. Another example might be whether a citizen of Scotland identifies as Scottish, British, European, or some combination, maybe then also related to ethnic identification, and how much weight they give each of those things. Not their legal status, which is usually pretty objective, but their sense of who they are, what makes them the kind of person they are, where their duties and responsibilities lie.

It doesn't really map well onto gender.

*If you feel like you are a woman and have boobs and no penis, that was meant to say 😂

This is a bizarre turn of events. Let’s just ask @Whatwouldscullydo - do you want people to say ‘I am pretending to be female’ or not?

I don’t understand the jibe about the kids and vegetables.

I have used this phrase before, although it also feels clunky to me. I’m genderfluid so, while I’m biologically female, I guess sometimes I identify as more female and sometimes more male and occasionally as neither particularly. I also identify as a bisexual (though there are a few transfemales out there that make me wonder if I’m more poly 😂). Then I identify as polyamorous because life is too flipping short not to try all the sweets in the selection box. And identify as a primal submissive as that’s how I approach sex (as in the act not the genitalia).

I think it comes down to identity, which is where the word comes from. We all identify as many things - from the weightier and unchangeable things above to chocaholic or pineapple-on-pizza-hater. We identify what our gender is inside (whether or not our bodies ended up aligning with that), what our likes and dislikes are, what our sexuality is, what our life choices are. They’re just labels to describe WHAT we are.

The problem seems to come when we instead use them to define WHO we are. Then we stop identifying these things inside us and draw lines to separate us from those that are not.

It’s a tricky phrase…but roll with it. If you are asked on a form what gender you associate with or identify as, they aren’t asking what you biologically are, just what you feel inside. If you are biologically female and happen to have boobs and no penis, then you just say female and don’t sweat it. It means that your internal organs have no bearing on the question. If the NHS111 website asks you what sex you were at birth, then you go with the internal organs as it will have a bearing on the medical advice they need to give.

For me, that’s a flipping minefield of a question as it changes on a coin toss but no-one ever has that on a form 😂

Yes, I have read that.

If you cannot tell the difference between her comment and your arrogance, then you have spent too long trying to manipulate small kids into eating their vegetables.

Give it a rest, or possibly stop hanging around with TRAs. There is another one on this forum who is fond of telling MNers what they want.

Scully is not your toddler and can tell you what she thinks for herself.

In order to get a GRC you have to convince various professionals.
There is no such process with "I identify as ..". You (and you alone) say the magic words and it comes true (In some people's belief systems).

It was here. I’m not pretending to be psychic, it was part of a conversation.

I cannot see anywhere where Scully was grating enough to tell other posters what they wanted.

I think this next-level strawmanning was all you.

You're not psychic. Deal with it.

Its no ones fault that a concept falls apart when people refuse to lie or believe in something. I dont need to object to any concept.. i.merely need to know what words mean and refuse to pretend otherwise.

That's the fault of a precarious ideology that even so called experts cannot define.or agree on. Not an individual persons " objection"

It means they believe they are X inside and would like to be treated as such.

I meant it, kind of, I was repeating what the poster said on a previous post.

Why can’t he feel it? Maybe he feels something completely different that you and I can’t feel?