What do people mean by “identify as”?

[StillHappy]

The phrase is used a lot, but I can’t find any common definition of it.

It seems to be used to mean “I’d like to be”, or “I’d like to be treated as though I was”, but then some people also seem to use it to mean “all objective measures show I am not, but I really am, as I say I am.”

Is it any of these, none, or some mixture?

I’m a woman, but don’t think I identify as one. I can just see that I am from historic events (namely the children that I gave birth to.)

What is someone who appears not to be a woman asserting it claiming when they say they identify as one?

Is it a different class of claim to, let’s say, someone claiming to be a sensitive caring lover, who isn’t, or a woman identifying as the missing Russian princess, daughter of the last Tsar?

Is anyone who uses this language willing to flesh it out?

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.

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.

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.

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

Quite possibly, and he has no possible justification or reason for attributing that feeling to being female.

Genderfluid?

How do you know that?

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.

Why do you even need a label like gender fluid? Sounds like nonsense to me

But that doesn’t matter, he thinks he does! So again, a better use of time would be to leave him to it but focus on where those feelings start to infringe on the rights of others. You can’t police how people say they feel, you’ll go mad.

This isn't policing how someone feels though.

Its policing someones grip on reality
Because if they don't have one they need help. Not for those around them to shrug and say " maybe he does feel like a man"

To identify is a verb. You have to be actively doing something. Ie. Actively identifying, or aligning yourself with , in this case, a gender.

I don’t go around actively thinking, i’m a female gender, and force myself to wear pink, do the cooking, wear dresses etc. I ‘am’ a woman, not think I am.

Also, a week ago we were all cheering the Lionesses in the Woman euros. But football is traditionally a male gender activity, so were the Lionesses identifying as men in the Woman’s Euros…

Thinking about it, everyone is gender fluid. Both sexes wear trousers, cook, drive cars, go out to work, wear blue, etc

I identify as a genius.

A specific person? Or are you taking responsibility for all trans peoples’ reality?

I identify as someone who doesn't have MS. Isn't that how it works? Isn't that how you get to ignore biological reality.
Before anyone shouts at me, I'm thinking of that obnoxious writing prize thing where they said it was for people who self identify as disabled or with a chronic condition.

A wise psychiatrist once said to me that it’s never helpful to indulge or encourage delusional thinking - no matter how hard that may be for the person with the delusion.

I refuse to answer any of the ‘identify as’ questions, because I don’t buy in to gender ideology. I don’t care what others feel the need to declare they ‘identify’ as (spoiler: you’re neither interesting or special), my issue arises when I’m expected to validate them. I’ll use whatever name they choose to call themselves, and I’ll be polite and respectful as long as I get the same in return, but beyond that … No.

Sweet Jesus, all that identifying as sounds utterly exhausting! How do you have the time to live your life??

No amount of surgery or drugs can change a female to a male.

I CAN DRIVE CARS NOW?!?!

Why did nobody tell me, I thought I was destined to be pedestrigender for ever.

The problem here is that a great many men who believe that they feel like women will then start to act as though their feeling overrides reality.

I could decide that I identify as / feel British, but that’s not going to fly at border control.I could identify as / feel seventeen, but that doesn’t buy me entry to junior athletics.

If it was purely an internal thing no-one would care, but some people are trying to leverage this mistaken feeling, this category error, into a demand that the external, reality-based world accord them the same treatment as actual women.

It’s hard not to suspect if that’s the entire point sometimes. If a person is making an a-priori implausible claim, and then requiring that the world treats them differently because if it, would it not be rational to disregard the claim and instead act according to physical reality?

Theres no blood test , no brain scan , no proof gender identity even exists beyond a few spoken words.

vs millions of years of proof if biological reality.

Those who peddle gender are people who profit from gender ideology. "Training " charity funding, private drs and , pharmaceutical companies who profit from the creation of life long medical.patients. it seemingly also only seems to exist in rich Western countries or countries where being gay gets you killed.

Imagine the good some if these lobby groups could do if they went to countries that killed baby girls and made them realise they could be throwing boys on the trash heap. All the babies that could be saved.

Instead they spend their time trying to shut down womens spaces. Says all you need to know.

There’s a good analogue there with some anti-abortion campaigners in the US. If they truly believed that a fertilized egg was a human life they would focus all of their energy into research into miscarriages, which are responsible for at least an order of magnitude more “aborted” pregnancies.

It’s the same here, the observable truth is that trans activists put precisely zero effort into sex-selective abortions, or research into what gender identity is; it seems to be 90% around allowing males to self-ID into female spaces.

Didn't we used to call this "individual personality"?
And it meant anyone of either sex could have any interests they liked without anyone having to put a label on themselves, and place themselves into a restricting box?

Be any personality you want, I say. Dress however you want. Enjoy whatever interests engage you.

Just keep separate single-sex spaces where such spaces are important for the safety, dignity and privacy of the aforementioned two sexes. This is important. Because sex matters.

It’s a symptom not the root cause. The root cause of the phrase ‘I identify as’ being given the time of day by anyone at all, is a bizarre and solipsistic philosophy that feelings* should be held as far more important than facts.

*just men’s feelings though obviously

I cannot say I understand it, but I do prefer that people say “I identify as” rather than “I am” in these cases.

I saw a video of a trans woman explaining being trans to a woman with SEN on a YouTube channel. (SEN woman was interviewing the trans woman.). She said being trans means she wishes she was a woman. Seemed to strongly acknowledge that she is not actually a woman, but prefers to live as one. She also talked about the importance of being clear with medical professionals. Because her body has different needs and different problems than a woman’s body. Very reasonable, I thought. But later I read things indicating that the trans woman got woked out of her own organization - the one she founded to support the trans community. So it seems the reasonable voices are being silenced.