Sick of everything being about identity

[CalmMooCowNibbles]

Everything seems to be about identity nowadays in Britain. Ethnicity, gender, religion. AIBU? or is anyone else feeling this way? Is this this just life now? Makes me want to run off to Greece and live out the rest of my days in some remote mountain

Mods and Rockers

I’m 52. I think we called it ‘labelling’ people, and it was generally seen as a bad thing.

I'm 51, and was certainly labelled when I was younger. Standoffish, weirdo, hysterical, immature....

(And, to a certain kind of man, simply "prey").

I much prefer my "official" label, now. Autistic.

But surely that’s not all there is you your identity?
White straight female? That’s it?
Identity is a noun. Identify is a verb.
So in addition to my own race, sexuality and gender, I have all the following in my identity-
Teacher. Business Professional. Mother. Friend. Godmother. Runner. Reader.
In the past I have also been daughter. Sister.
All part of my identity.

OP or I’d have quoted you. I don’t quote the OP 😊

Good point.
Youngsters used to define themselves via music genres and the associated fashions, from the 1950s right through to the early 1990s.
That seems to have died a death. Perhaps caused by the advent of streaming and millions of songs available, the death of mass TV music (Top of the Pops), the rise of computer gaming as an alternative way to spend money and time, and local music venues being pretty much taken over by middle-aged people performing 'tribute' acts, so no local youth live music scene.

So youngsters have latched on to gender-identity as a substitute way of defining their social groups and rebelling against parents? Seems a bit extreme.

Dr Who is a really good example of what OP is talking about

What your referring to with labels is stereotyping. Not identity. Everyone has an identity, made up of all sorts of things.

Stereotypes are harmful labels used to generalise a group of people.

A modern example would be "Karen" a Karen is, in the stereotype in simple terms a white middle aged opinionated busy body type person. When someone calls a person a Karen they are stereotyping that person on no other basis than the fact that they are female, white and opinionated.

Another stereotype is TERF. Assuming anyone who has concerns or gender critical opinions is automatically a hateful person.

They were just examples.

All the things you list, they are all things you are - in reality. You actually are them - you don’t ‘identify as’ them.

maybe that’s the key. What the difference between:

I am a woman
and
I identify as a woman

which of these is an identity?

Wow the range of conflicts has grown since I last looked at this threadz

Identity is complicated because it is where your subjective experience and objective reality collide.

Sex (and by extension gender), age, birthdate, eye colour and maybe height (?) are the only identifiable parts of a person that cannot be changed. Maybe ethnicity, but as that can be mixed I think it is different.

Being a trans woman is a societal expression of being a man, because only men can be transwomen. A TGW may identify some characteristics within themselves that they think don’t fit with their perception of what a man is/should be, they can’t identify with being a woman because they have no experience of it. Does that make sense?

A lot of the conflict that TG people and Non-binary people have to manage is when their internal subjective feelings smack up against objective reality. This will be distressing for many reasons (some of those reasons will even be related to high levels of narcissism) but this is part of the condition of being trans/non binary is learning to walk the world feeling different to how you are perceived by others.

Meanwhile while we're all divided into bickering identities the rich are rinsing us all.

Do people here not aspire to be rich?

DH is in the top tax bracket. He's driven and does aspire to earn more.

Agree, it is sucking the brains out people's heads. So self-obsessed and controlling.

Less people?

They didn't exactly have institutional backing though did they? You weren't accused of hate crime by schools/academia police for not acknowledging someone's identity as a Mod or a Rocker

Thicker culture.

Our media’s obsession with the USA and click bait.

Being from a place is a fact- making that fact your entire identity/ personality/ reason for being etc is identity, same with sex and race

this isnt completely true... , but even if it were it still poses the question of historical impact (especially as the time frames for climate impact are so compacted - 200 years ago feels like history to us, but is very recent in terms of global history)
Is it ok for colonial powers to undergo an industrial revolution using fossil fuels taken by force from other nations and now impose sanctions on countries using the very resources taken by force?? Its no so simple