I have started to hate the term “identify as”

[TheletterZ]

“Identify as” is completely meaningless and is starting to really annoy me.

i don’t identify as a a white middle-aged straight woman with brown (ok greyish) hair and eyes. I simply AM those things. They are facts that are real and unchangable. (Well apart from the age thing and that only changes in 1 direction)

I can dye my hair but as I have to keep doing it, it just underlines the fact my hair is brown/grey.

“Identify as”implies choice. I didn’t choose my sexuality, it just is. No one does. My sister didn’t claim to be a lesbian (with all the prejudice that goes with that) she simply is one. No choice is involved.

There is a clip on twitter from Elliot Page saying ‘30% of young people identify as LGBTQ+’ which shows how ridiculous the statement is. From my limited understanding LGB is around 5-10% of a population. So who are the other 20%? People who just claim to be part of the ‘community’ to feel special.

Sorry for the rant, I use my name on twitter and as a teacher I have to keep my views quiet and bite my tongue.

No proof but I suppose if I went out and about with you for long enough your attraction to both sexes might be observable. LG &B don't expect to invade the safe spaces of the opposite sex. That's a bit different from the expectation of entitlement that seems to be the case for many trans individuals.

Just returned from work. It is reassuring that it isn’t just me that finds the term annoying.

The examples with disability are incredibly annoying, and it does imply choice. No-one* just identifies that they have a disability, they actually have one.

*no-one sane - I know there are some with very sad fetishes and/or delusions.

One question on my son's secondary school (academy) parent survey asked "How do you identify....male, female, other etc"

I ticked other and told them I didn't identify as female, I am female and that biological sex cannot be changed. I will see if it is changed next year.

I'd hate to be the cause of an exploding brain. They don't go around saying "I am a positionality, you are a positionality" and so on. But a question like "Does this cater for all positionalities?" or saying "These positionalities should be prioritised/ included/ demarginalised".

AHH thank you, that's very helpful.

This is a big thing with ND conditions. I feel (as Mum to autistic ds) conflicted by it in a way I don’t with other ‘indentify as’ statements. Part of me thinks you can’t identify as autistic or having ADHD anymore than you can identify as someone with diabetes but the waiting times for assessment is so long across the country I can see why people say it.

I do like your suggestion of saying I have x traits.

Sorry for derail just something I think about a fair amount!

But otherwise, yes “identify as…” makes my teeth itch!

Here's a parable:
When I was very little [checks anonymity of username, as this is an awful confession] there was an orphanage near where we lived - yes they still had orphanages then. There was a lovely playground - brightly-coloured swings, slides, roundabouts, all sorts. I used to watch the children playing on them and felt madly jealous - I didn't have swings, slides etc in our little garden. I even expressed my jealousy to my mother - 'how come THEY have all those lovely things and I don't? 'Snot faaaiiirrr'
She of course explained to me that they were in fact very unfortunate little children because they had no mammies and daddies - I remained unconvinced.

In other words, I perceived an effort to mitigate the negative situation of a disadvantaged social group as entitlements that I was being unfairly denied.
I'd have happily identified as an orphan to have a go on those swings.

When I see people 'identifying as' queer or disabled or whatever, I think of my 4-year-old self and that playground...

Because to close the loop that all this "monitoring" creates, you have to "do something" the other end. Otherwise it would be revealed as the total fucking waste of time it is.

Social identity theory suggests that part of our identity (sense of self) is formed by our sense of belonging to certain social groups. The idea being that humans are social beings and not only want to belong to a group, they want this belonging to make them feel good about themselves as a result of this membership. The theory highlights the tendency to hold beliefs about the attributes of people in each group (including ourselves).

The theory highlights why people might be heavily invested in policing/ maintaining clear boundaries about the defining features of membership to the group. We need to feel we belong and want the groups we belong to reinforce to ourselves and others that we are the 'type of person' who belongs in this group.

The shift from 'I am a ........' to 'I identify as ......' give much less room for objection and policing of boundaries. You can easily challenge membership based on objective criteria relating to characteristics (observable ones anyway) but not subjective experience.

The question that arises is what relevance does someone's identity have to any given situation. Actually, the same can be said for objective characteristics. This is context dependent.

A lot of the irritation of the highlighting of identity arises when the given identity is of no relevance to the context and probably of no interest to the person this is being shared with. When shared in this context, it is usually a subtext for communicating something else- which the listener has to try and work out.

The strangest "identify as" I've seen is an "asexual" female who campaigns on "asexual" rights". If course I wondered "what rights do you already not have?".

Do you know what? I feel more than a little disappointed in this thread.
Has the word "identified" been bandied about and used in the wrong context by people who don't truly understand the meaning? Absolutely, that has been happening since time immemorial. Humans have always wanted to jump on societal bandwagons, unfortunately it's how we are.
But that really doesn't give anyone the right to decide because someone says they "identify" as something to decide that they are a liar or just following a trend. Some people might be but you can at least wait to make that decision after they have finished speaking.
For a lot of people in our world being able to tell us how they identify can make the world a little easier for them to navigate. Someone who tells you they identify as male, though to you they look female, perhaps do them the common courtesy of believing them. You have no idea of the person your eyes are beholding. If they tell you they are a unicorn then take that with a pinch of salt.
You can hate the word all you want but keep your snap judgements and lazy thinking to yourselves.
Also, when my wheelchair bound mother was asked of she identified as disabled they meant whether she identified with the word. She didn't, she preferred "differently abled" not everyone's cup of tea but fuck it, it was no ones choice but hers what's words made her feel more like herself. Same thing here.

I've started to hear 'pretend to be' whenever someone says 'identify as'

Lots of very interesting insights on this thread, thank you.

On the point about identifying as having ADHD or a disability, I think for the purposes of employment forms this has always or for a very long time been self-ID, and no formal diagnosis was needed. I think (but someone more knowledgable may be able to confirm) this was so that an employer had notice in order to make reasonable adjustments, or anticipate any issues that may arise. I remember having a long chat with a colleague who was signed off with stress about whether or not she should have put on her new joiner form (or job application form, I can't remember which) that she had had anxiety in the past, whether it would have made any difference to our boss's expectations, and whether if enough people put 'mental health' on their forms any of the employer's processes would change. (We were both working in a high-pressure sector and being paid appropriately so my thoughts were, bluntly, if you can't take it, don't be here.)

So part of me wonders if the disability self-ID approach assisted in normalising all these other 'identify as' statements.

I agree.

If you identify as something then, by definition, you are not that thing.

If you are something, you simply are it.

So men could ‘identify’ as women as they are not women.

People starting to use ‘identify’ for things they objectively are just makes their meaning unclear. Like the ‘identify with ADHD’ example above.

Someone who tells you they identify as male, though to you they look female, perhaps do them the common courtesy of believing them

I may be able to believe they identify as male ( though in the one case I came across of this, even they kept forgetting they were not a woman, so I didn’t believe they really did identify as male) . I can’t believe they are male.

"For a lot of people in our world being able to tell us how they identify can make the world a little easier for them to navigate"

I don't think any reasonable person would object to the idea that people should be able to tell others how they identify. The issue arises in relation to what is subsequently expected from others in relation to the sharing of an identity.

'If they tell you they are a unicorn then take that with a pinch of salt.'

A pinch of salt LOL!

If they were a child having fun with their imagination, that is one thing.

If they were an adult and not taking the piss, but saying that because they truly believe it, I would wonder if they were having a psychotic break.

At least now we know, be courteous is the new be kind.

This poster can accuse me of lazy thinking, but they are wrong. Plus mammals still can't change sex, so however kind or courteous I am, I'm still not going to believe a blatant lie.

"So part of me wonders if the disability self-ID approach assisted in normalising all these other 'identify as' statements."

I think the 'identify as' turn reflects the rise of post modernist thinking. The idea that reality is created by thought (e.g autism wasn't discovered it was created at the point it was named and described) has really grown in popularity.

I think the rise in centring identity relation to disability and gender activism is to do with the wider context rather than either one being accountable for the other

If you identify as something then, by definition, you are not that thing.

Exactly. Everyone knows this and I am increasingly using it as a "joke" to make the point. Eg "This is a cupboard identifying as a meeting room", "yes please, I'm on a diet, but that biscuit identifies as a piece of lettuce".

No need to even talk about gender politics, I'm just using the phrase to make the point about how ridiculous it is.

Someone who tells you they identify as male, though to you they look female, perhaps do them the common courtesy of believing them.

Courtesy, in this case, is not contradicting them - unless they're in a situation where they're about to endanger themself or others. Eg, the transman with abdominal pains who wasn't aware of being pregnant, and because no medical staff felt able to ask the right questions, the baby died. Or the clearly male swimming official about to go into the girls' changing rooms at a swimming event. He was furious, but brava to the women who didn't just ditch all safeguarding because the man in question was wearing a dress.

Courtesy might include a certain amount of benignly playing along up to a point and no further; it certainly doesn't include believing a statement over your lying eyes.

"Exactly. Everyone knows this and I am increasingly using it as a "joke" to make the point. Eg "This is a cupboard identifying as a meeting room", "yes please, I'm on a diet, but that biscuit identifies as a piece of lettuce".

I think this taps into an interesting point, as well as the point that there is a difference between affirming, not challenging and challenging a person's espoused identity.

Different people hold different ideas about what is socially acceptable. For many, mocking people's belief about the significance of identity would be deemed to be unnecessarily unkind. For others, it's fair game. For some, side stepping someone's gender identity by using their name rather than their preferred pronouns is deemed the best way to handle things, for others it in unacceptable not to make a point of challenging the preferred pronoun use.

I think the majority of posts on AIBU tap into the above - people asking for others views on what they should do or should have done in a given situation. Rarely is there a consensus....often there are opposing camps with some people taking more moderate positions at either end.

The best description I ever saw was:

Identifies as = is not that thing and knows it, but really really wants to be, and has a sad about it.

Yes that's funny. Unfortunately this version also exists.

Identifies as = is not that thing and knows it, but really really wants to be as they have watched too much porn, and has a fetish about it.

Forget who wrote this, but IMO they nailed the implications.

Someone who tells you they identify as male, though to you they look female, perhaps do them the common courtesy of believing them. You have no idea of the person your eyes are beholding. If they tell you they are a unicorn then take that with a pinch of salt.

I have no problem believing that an obvious woman in front of me telling me she identifies as a man or a unicorn is being truthful to herself. If that's the way she identifies then that's the way she identifies.

She can identify until she's blue in the face (which works if she identifies as a Smurf I suppose) but it's not true in any meaningful sense is it?

She can identify as much as she likes, but if she tries to make other people collude with her new chosen identity and tells me that because she identifies as a man or a unicorn I must believe she is a man or a unicorn then that's when it becomes a problem.

And there is no difference whether it's man or unicorn, the woman identifying as a man or unicorn is mistaken if she actually believes it.

So I stand by what I previously said:

For me "identify as" alerts me to the fact that either a lie or absolute word salad is about to come out of the mouth of the person who said it.

Just because someone believes something about themselves doesn't mean it's the truth.