Opacity
What’s the difference between identifying as and being?
I’m not sure I know, myself. I don’t think I use the verb “identify as” very much. I guess I would use it if there were some kind of ambiguity or doubt or complication? Like, someone who grew up in the US but moved to the UK or vice versa – I could make sense of people saying, in that context, “I identify as [American/British] now because it’s been long enough” or alternatively “I still identify as [British/American] because it seems to be ineradicable.”
So “identify as” implies a certain level of will, of choice, of change or adoption or declaration, or else of failure to accomplish it. Yes? Whereas being doesn’t, by itself, although of course you can be things by choice – a fan, a practitioner, an adherent. But if you say “I’m a socialist” there’s no point in saying “I identify as a socialist” because the choice is already present in the word “socialist.”
There’s a little min-trend to complain about identity politics at the moment, so one might as well try to figure out what people mean by it. I did that several years ago while reading Amartya Sen’s Identity and Violence and Anthony Appiah’s The Ethics of Identity, but I’m not sure the conversation is talking about the same kind of identity now.
One thing I think we all know pretty well: there are some things we can’t “identify as” without also being them. I don’t get to “identify as” Sioux or Zulu or Japanese, because I’m not any of those things and it’s appropriation to pretend I am. Ontology determines what we can “identify as”…except when it doesn’t. The exact nature of the rules that determine that is somewhat opaque.
It also implies “I identify with this thing. To use your example, “I don’t just live in my adoptive country, I am proud of it, I have absorbed its culture and decided that being [British/American] is a part of who I am that I want other people to recognize.” If you weren’t fond of your second country, if your immigrant parents dragged you there but you missed the land of your birth, you wouldn’t identify as whatever (unless impelled to, when filling out a form, say.)
It’s an attempt at self-definition, isn’t it? Out of the amorphous totality of facts about ourselves, we pick and choose some that catch our fancy or flatter our egos or help us make sense of our lives. I identify as a cat person, as a Scottish-American, as green eyed (or are they hazel?) For some reason though I don’t particularly identify as frequently impatient or as somebody with a middle-aged paunch.
Growing up in Israel, it was very important what each of us identified as. And we were often asked to list our various identities in order of priority. What are we most? Are we more Israeli or more Jewish, or just humans? Do we identify with a specific ideology? Do we identify with a sub-ethnicity? The supporters of a sports team?
Ideally, to ‘identify’ would be no more than a conscious self-reporting of what we ARE.
Thus, I identify as male, right handed, Northern European in origin, sober alcoholic, registered Democrat etc. etc.
And gender minorities have a right to ‘identify’ themselves as such. With enormous resulting difficulties, since the language at hand still assumes biological specifics which are not a match. The language of identity has to expand to cover these instances, rather than the existing terms being colonized to accommodate unprecedented categories.
Same here. The question “Ariel, what do you identify as?”, put in the abstract and devoid of context, would leave me quite helpless. I really wouldn’t know how to answer.
What matters (imo) is salience. Lady Mondegreen’s remark that “we pick and choose some that catch our fancy or flatter our egos or help us make sense of our lives” contains some truths, but I don’t think it’s exhaustive. E.g. I would say that there were periods in my life when my primary self-identification was as a socially inept trainwreck :) No, I do not think that “identifying as” has to be positive; imo it has more to do with what is salient to you, about you, for whatever reasons.
The phrase “we can’t identify as” used in the quote is ambiguous.
Does it mean “we can’t *correctly* identify as…”? If so, then I would say that we can NEVER “identify as” someone/something without being someone/something – no exceptions, Sioux or not Sioux. After all, that’s exactly what “correctly” means.
On the other hand, if “we can’t identify as…” means something like “we can’t have a proper sort of feeling”, then … c’mon, in this sense as a 6 year old I identified as a Sioux every second day (the other days were reserved for feeling like an Apache).
Alright, the main question (I guess) is when – under what circumstances – mere “identifying as someone/something” provides in itself a sufficient condition for being this someone or something. That was the intent of the quoted passage, am I right? Ah, I would really love to see some uncontroversial positive examples, not just negative ones. We all know that it’s enough to identify as a woman in order to be one (snark). Are there any other examples like that?
I guess it is an attempt at self-definition, as Lady M says, but I think I tend to word that as “describe as” rather than “identify as.” Or if I do use “identify as” it’s in a self-mocking way – “I identify as an asshole” kind of thing.
That’s probably just because “identify as” is part of a touchy-feely pseudo-therapeutic kind of jargon that I’m allergic to, and that’s not particularly meaningful.
Or is it. Maybe it is. It’s the self-importance that I don’t like in the jargon. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to tease out here.
Yup, I get your point about the self-importance. Sorry, some of it is lost on me because English is not my first language. In Polish virtually no one says “I identify as…” and no matter how I try to translate the phrase, the result sounds artificial and sort of funny. Hence my temptation to take it at face value, to treat it neutrally, as just one more foreign idiom.
Pretty stupid of me, given the fact that I’ve already seen many times (at FtB and elsewhere) how the phrase is used for political purposes. Oh well.
Oh, don’t be sorry. That just helps illustrate my point. It’s a political idiom that’s being naturalized as just how we say that. It’s useful to know that elsewhere it’s no such thing.
Possibly overlong/TMI, but this might help me clarify some things about this issue that continue to puzzle me, and this is one of the few places people seem willing to discuss it.
I identify as a Jew. This identification is legitimate; my mother was a Jew, though she married a Catholic and was baptised on the same day I was. I was ‘raised Catholic’ and have had very little exposure to Jewish culture (we lived across the country from my mother’s family) and even less to Jewish religious practice—but the fact that I’m a Jew, and that being a Jew is part of my heritage, is salient to my personal identity and important to my sense of self.
Yet almost no one I interact with knows this about me. I have some ‘stereotypically Jewish’/Mediterranean features, and possibly a few ‘stereotypically Jewish’ mannerisms and speech patterns, but that’s not particularly noticeable. I have a non-Jewish name, and don’t engage in any behaviours that would identify me as Jewish. So it’s not something people would know about me unless I happened to mention it. While I don’t hide this fact about myself, it’s also not something I tend to bring up, so I don’t mention it very often. A few of my friends know; it’s probably come up in conversation with a few more who I’m sure have promptly forgotten it.
Being a Jew is part of who I am…and yet I don’t insist that other people acknowledge my Jewishness, or feel ‘erased’ if they don’t. I don’t demand recognition from other Jews, or expect to be unquestioningly welcomed at Jewish cultural or religious events. So…is someone’s identification something for themselves, or for other people? Is it possible to ‘identify as’ something without ‘requiring validation’ of that identity from others? Is ‘identifying as’ more about how other people respond to you than about who you feel yourself to be?
I think that we identify ourselves as one thing or another to people in order to assert that we have accurate information on the subject. I identify myself as a designer to people who express an interest in learning more about the elements of design. Sometimes I identify myself as a friend of a particular person, a member of a family, a belief system, but the truth of the matter is that I have always identified myself to myself as a people.
Identity politics is a tool designed to cut us off from one another. That’s what I think about that.
@guest #8
I think it can be either. As I said, I do think “identifying as” something is one way we make sense of our lives–I don’t think it’s JUST about flattering our egos or announcing our tribal allegiances. But when you think about it a lot of it is those things, because those are human things we all do, right? Which is a good reason to take our own and others’ expressed “identities” with, not disdain, but a grain (at least) of salt. As opposed to taking it super-seriously and building your politics on it.
That is a really thought provoking question. My best answer at this stage is “it depends”. In large part I think the answer is No. For me identification is a process that occurs introspectively. It is internal and has an existence that depends on nothing outside my head. Sure, people will perceive me in a certain way, and therefore identify me as certain things and in certain ways. But that is entirely external to me and is a result of their interpretations, biases and filters interacting with my observable behaviour and appearance. Not at all the same thing.
Of course there is an element of my being able to alter that perception and applied identity by altering my appearance and/or behaviour. I could, and do, go further by making declarative statements about my beliefs, wants, needs etc which amplify the more passive projection of self. However, that still relies in large part on others interaction with this projection to achieve an outcome.
Because you can never truly control how people will see you, I think that self identity ultimately resides only within the self. To declare a self-identity externally, and to expect others to unquestioningly accept that identity, then requires them to be blind to every behaviour action or statement you make that contradicts or modifies the stated identity. there’s no future in such behaviour for any body.
/mind-dump
@Rob #11
I don’t know, Rob–isn’t that a bit naive? It’s true we can’t truly control how people will see us, but we try. We try very hard. For a social species, it’s probably a built-in thing.
I know it probably sounds like I’m being all cynical, but I’m really not. I’ve just read a lot of Frans de Waal’s primatology and I think our human need to try and control how we’re seen by others is innate and deeply rooted. It’s not just human, it’s apish. (de Waal wrote a book called Chimpanzee Politics, and it was actually about chimpanzees, and he wasn’t trying to be cutesy with the title. That stuff is a matter of life and death.)
But maybe it’s just me. I tend to hypervigilance, and I’ve had to become more self-aware, so maybe I’m projecting my own tendencies and assuming they’re universal.
Lady Mondegreen, I don’t disagree with you. It’s just complicated and interactive ;-)
That’s why I said my best answer is ‘it depends’ and I then went on to say ‘in large part no’, then rambled on with qualifiers.
I agree that for most of us there is an inbuilt urge to project our desired, usually conforming image. In its benign form that would be socially affirmative (I’m with you, you’re with me, we support each other). It could also be self preservation (I’m different, but will use camouflage to prevent you recognising that in case you harm me for being different). It could also be predatory. The psychopath who eats children, but everyone thought was a great guy.
The extent to which we project a socially conforming identity I think depends on a combination of how much we want to hide and how well we can act. If you are motivated to stand out from the crowd you can and in fact we see that in many instances. I think most of us opt to conform to within broadly acceptable standards most of our lives for social reasons, even if that runs counter to our inner sense of identity.
I think it’s a distinction worth making that inner and outer identity do not necessarily align and that we have markedly less control over our outer identity than most of us would wish, short of declarative behaviour which can carry great social risk.
I don’t see that as a naive view.
@Rob
I don’t think we have a substantive disagreement. I was trying to say that our inner sense of identity can’t exist “only” within the self. As social animals our sense of self can never be divorced from how others see us.
I wasn’t even thinking about the things we consciously hide from others (herp derp); more of the ways in which we strive to make ourselves acceptable or attractive without deliberate artifice. But those things are a big part of the puzzle!
(The “herp derp” is directed at myself; “those things” refers to conscious identity-projection as described by Rob. Apologies; I’m a bit drunk.)
Ah, the best kind of drunk. Enjoy!
I guess what I’m attempting to do is tease out the personal significance of ‘identifying as’ from the social mandate that other people must accept your ‘identification’ and act accordingly, an ongoing conversation on this blog. I think we’ve come to understand that ‘identifying as’ can be a copout (‘I identify as a woman, so I can’t have male privilege’) or a threat (‘I identify as a woman, so there will be consequences if you disagree with me’); now I’m tenuously adding to my understanding of this by acknowledging that (certainly in my own case) ‘identifying as’ can actually be a huge deal for someone personally without the necessity of tacking on the social mandate.
As always, context matters. Publically identifying as a member of a group can have serious political meaning if that group is feared or hated. In a place where Jews were systemically discriminated against, guest identifying as Jewish would have more than personal meaning. In a country beset by Islamism, identifying as an atheist or a liberal is an act of defiance and courage. Identifying as black even if you’re half (1/4, 1/8) white and could pass for white or “exotic” (“where are you from?”) is a political act in this country.
The Look-How-Oppressed-I-Am-Let-Me-Educate-You “identity politics” popular at Everyday Feminism and elsewhere is–something else.