I need to work out for myself what identity is and what it isn’t.
It seems to be that there is a difference between identifying as something and being recognised as something. I identify as being British and also as being English. I am also a Londoner, but I don’t identify as one. I was born and brought up in London, and can trace my London ancestry back to the 18th century, but I don’t feel any sense of being a Londoner more than anyone else living in London, irrespective of where they were born and brought up. This probably has a lot to do with spending so much time out of the country myself. And in some way everyone is a stranger in London. Everyone is just passing through. Your friends are not the local community, they are dotted throughout the city. At least in my case.
So I have a British passport and I identify as British. I don’t have an English passport. My Englishness is not recognised or documented in any way, so far as I can tell. But I still identify as English. The UK government, as well as the governments of all the countries I have visited and lived in, recognise me as a British Citizen. But it does not, to my knowledge, recognise me as being English. When it comes to being a Londoner, I have a 60+ oyster card, as TFL see me as a Londoner, and this gives me most gratefully received rights, but I still don’t really see myself as one.
There are people who identify as British, and have lived here almost all their lives, such as many of the Windrush immigrants, but who the government have (often controversially) decided not to recognise as British. I have met people who identify as being British but who have never lived here. They are descended from British immigrants to their country of birth. The UK does not recognise their nationality, and they do not seek this recognition. They know it, and that’s enough for them. There are also people who have British passports along with one from the country of their birth, but do not see themselves as British. To them it’s the residence document, in practice, which makes their family life here possible.
Clearly, there’s a great difference between identifying as British and being a British Citizen. Between identifying as British and having it recognised. Identity is a personal value, while recognition is an administrative category. And gender identity is a personal value, and we are not really arguing about this. The important aspect administratively is the recognition, the administrative category. That’s the thing that affects other people. For practical purposes, “woman” should be seen as an administrative category. It doesn’t define how people identify and what they see themselves as. It’s how an organised community deals with issues arising from observed sex differences.
To say While traditional notions of sex and gender suggest a simple binary – if you are born with a penis, you are male and identify as a man and if you are born with a vagina, you are female and identify as a woman – the reality, gender experts say, is more complex., as the article reports, is to suggest that we are claiming that identity is mechanically created from sex differences. But this is not the point being made. Identity is not binary, but sex most definitely is. If people want an administrative category based on identity, then they need to define it in more sophisticated terms than just “be kind”!
But I don’t think that’s possible.