I have started to hate the term “identify as”

Annoys me too. I'm no radical and quite happy for men to have female names and wear dresses, whatever but I draw the line at identifying. I am a women, end of, I have two X chromosomes. I wasn't assigned either, just am.

As I say I don't have issues with those who desire to dress up or have surgery even, I can't begin to understand why anyone wants surgery but as I said, their life, just don't say I identify it was assigned.

It feels like a progression of the growing focus on individualism in the UK . As a nation there is a culture of ‘me’ - my needs, my identity, my wants etc.

Im in my 60s and identity has been something that has taken on an identity of its own. I’m not a black and white thinker but I can’t understand how you identify as something. You are or you aren’t something . I don’t identify as a 63 year old, white, straight, Jewish, disabled female. These are all facts. I can change religious affiliations and decide to go to worship at a Buddhist temple, but it doesn’t alter what I identify as. It feels very self-Important and self-indulgent to be drawing attention to what you want others to accept you as.

I could identify with a packet of crisps doesn't mean people have to address me as Walkers

I had interesting conversations with disability rights activiss in the early 00s over whether 'a disabled person' or a 'person with disabilities' was better - the former implying that the person had been disabled by an ableist society, the latter putting the 'person' before the 'disabilities'. And other perspectives that for example the word 'crip' should be reclaimed.

I can see how the use of the term is intended to help in some ways. Some people may have experienced dv, for example, but whether or not they choose to 'identify' as a 'victim' is an attempt to offer them a modicum of control of the experience, or at least the idea that they are able to exercise control over how they perceive it.

Having a term applied to you if you don't want it, as in that instance, does seem unfair.

But it depends not so much on the term as the motivations behind it and context. The word 'victim' isn't the problem in itself, it's attitudes towards victims and arguably the initial offense that created a victim that are the problem.

I suppose it's an attempt to right wrongs by the use of language.

Language is used as a tool, therefore the idea is that we can use it deliberately and consciously to try and effect change.

Feminism has a history of being involved in this. Perhaps sometimes it's somewhat effective, or has an effect.

What Infuriates is that if you are a disabled person and are, say, a deaf person or a wheelchair user, then all the identifies clouds over real needs. My DD doesn’t identify as anything, she is and has to flag up v real areas where she does basic things v differently. She is v careful about what language she uses and it is noticeably direct and uses I statements. It is useful that being asked ahead what she needs is now standard most of the time but I always wonder what all the identifying as people do when asked the same question. Meanwhile as ever it is lesbians who vanish under the banner of queer.

I work in engineering and thankfully this kind of nonsense (pronouns in emails, rainbow lanyards, my lived experience, queer theory, awareness days, I identify as) has been largely absent.

Post modernistic theories of the self are very much part and parcel of our social media culture/age. Social media demands we assume personas, use avatars, make public statements about ourselves - by which we can be identified by people who don't really know us.

On-line we can create a character of our choosing, or express aspects of ourselves we usually keep more hidden. I think this also has something to do with the explosion in mental health issues that people, especially younger people, are now facing. Being in the actual world confronts us with our unvarnished self - and that can make us feel very fragile and very vulnerable. We are at the mercy of other people's perception of us. So people adopt roles and performances to hide behind.

I imagine that is partly why cos-play is now so popular - it enables people to continue to inhabit imaginary, on-line worlds taken from gaming, from anime, science fiction and fantasy and so on.

"Identifying as" something, suggests that you are not that thing. It is suggestive of a performance or a role. If you have empathy or fellow feeling with someone or something you say you " identify with" them or with that thing.

'Identifying as' comes straight from post modernistic theories of the self - whereby all behaviour is a social performance that we enact.

Being gay or lesbian has also been co-opted in the service of trans ideology/ the politics of manufactured identity - so now people who are same sex attracted say they " Identify as queer".

"Isn't that just another way of saying that identity is co-created between who you are (your individual personality & characteristics) and when/where you're living in terms of what society values?"

Social norms are co-created in society (e.g what constitutes kindness, rudeness, femininity etc.) and this changes over time. Individuals make self-judgements and judgments about others relating to these norms. I might think I am very feminine, others might not, despite us both judging against the same social norms. I think both are entitled to their own judgment and neither should have to accept, or pretend to accept, the others. To me, this is liberalism. Being considered conservative for this is frustrating, I think it is very illiberal to have to affirm others self perception, but if I practice what I preach, others can hold the view that I should affirm, I'll just disagree!

To put it simply, it just means 'liar.'

When someone says that they identify as something that is not held up by material reality, they are simply a liar.

You want to be something but you don't meet the fundamental criteria to be able to say you are that thing

this sums it up for me. And I would say that in very many cases, it also means “and I demand you accept that I am what I want to be too, and grant me all the rights and privileges associated with the thing I want to be”

Thanks for this - I've just seen it. Yes, it may well be. But if that's the case, then identity must remain undefined as it's continually in a state of flux. How can you then use "identity" as a way of establishing someone's position in society in respect of rights and obligations? How can you reliably ascertain the "degree of oppression" that any individual suffers? Any law requires some kind of objective tool for identifying people.

This may be the root of the misunderstanding of "protected characteristics" which are routinely misinterpreted as identities in certain quarters.

Once something becomes generally comedic it’s over. That point has now thankfully passed as far as “identifying as” goes.

I’m not British but I’ve never been happier I chose to make my life in this country. Thanks to all those wonderfully difficult and argumentative women in this country we are so far ahead on this!

"I attended a neuro diversity webinar recently and one of the speakers introduced themselves by saying they identified as having ADHD"

Yes, this issues burns bright in ND circles.

I think it originated from the idea that autism and ADHD aren't 'disorders' but just reflect 'differences' that shouldn't be thought of as 'less than'. With this in mind, rather than autism and/or ADHD being something one has, or suffers from, it is simply something one is (I am autistic, rather than I have autism). There are some individuals who fundamentally disagree, and say that autism doesn't define them and they are a person for whom autism is a small and not defining part.

This debate was referred to as identity first or person first preferences. It was fierce, but at the time gender identity and trans activism came to the fore, the 'identity first' positioning was adopted by the ND activists and the 'person firsters' have been shunned for internalising ableism.

What are views on ostensibly white people who identify (at work) as black? Apparently if you challenge (or enquire politely) you could be accused of discrimination.

Agree. Normal is defined by your population.

It's 'what is going on in my feelings is more important than external, observed, measurable reality.' Fiction, in other words.

This. I mentally substitute with 'isn't, but wishes they were'.

Or worse, 'wants to compel everyone to pretend they are'.

Danni Minogue recently said in an interview that she “identifies as queer” even though she’s been in a relationship with a man for 10 year 🙄. I’m obviously missing something . . .

I think (and I may be wrong here as I am not a sociologist) that it is an example of reification. That is, it's a concept (positionality, which is not unrelated to the term "standpoint" of yore) which is being treated as a thing. You become a positionality, and your existence becomes defined by this. It may be that I'm wrong, and it only exists in the abstract and it's meant to be purely illustrative. But if this is the case, how are you supposed to derive real people's rights from it? More to the point, how are you to decide who has which positionality? The whole thing seems to lend itself to the kind of subjective waffle which underlies this whole ideology.

Maybe, if I'm wrong and there's some kind sociologist on FWR, they could come along and disabuse me?

Definitely. As far as I'm concerned, 'Identifies as x' inherently means 'Is not x'. If you actually are something, you have no need to identify as it, do you?

To identify as something now just means “I am not this thing, but I insist I am recognised as it.”

Deluded narcissistic thinking. A consumer mentality to identity.

The thing is with something like ADHD, no one is going to diagnose you with it unless you (or your parents) seek a diagnosis. Essentially everyone who is officially diagnosed with ADHD wants to be diagnosed with it because they see a positive diagnosis as something which provides an explanation for the difficulties they believe they have faced.

So I would assume that someone who says they identify as having ADHD has not been officially diagnosed with it.

Essentially, that's what "identify as" means, isn't it?

You want to be something but you don't meet the fundamental criteria to be able to say you are that thing.

i don’t identify as a a white middle-aged straight woman with brown (ok greyish) hair and eyes. I simply AM those things.

This is when it becomes offensive. It’s similar to the concept of gender identity, when believers stop using it to express something they feel and start applying it to everyone else.

Their “definition” of the word woman relies on it as a false concept, for example. A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman. As well as being circular it actually excludes women.