The term 'identify'

Jamungle · 2012-10-13T16:43:04+00:00

Oh you found another flaw in feminist terminology?

Color me surprised.

Fact is, feminists seemed to be dedicated to creating a weird, strange language that only women's studies majors understand so that nobody can debate with them. Regular people don't talk like this.

ErasmusMRA · 2012-10-13T13:06:15+00:00

I am a straight male. I lift weights, drink beer, and love women. All these things are a fundamental part of me, deep in the deepest reaches of my brain, as much a part of me as the color of my eyes.

So I get pissed off at the term 'identity'. Any thoughts on this?

Feminists do not believe in biological truths. They believe we're all born the same, 'neutral', and society conditions us into being male or female. They think it's a choice.

MR_Recursive_Ion · 2012-10-13T14:12:27+00:00

Saying you identify with a group only makes sense if you are not actually part of that group.

Ex.

I am a straight male but I partially identify with women because I don't like beer or enjoy watching sports.

rottingchrist · 2012-10-13T15:02:29+00:00

Why does it bother you what other people say? Is anyone stopping you from saying that you are a straight man?

Also, beer tastes like ass. I don't know why anyone drinks that stuff when there are tasty spirits around. And I thought Batman was ridiculous even when I was ten.

Lyonette · 2012-10-13T15:28:05+00:00

I don't know why you would care about this so much. There are people who identify as straight men that perhaps were not born straight men, or are not legally men. No biggie.

I lift weights, love beer, and love all people, man, woman, gay, straight, other, whatever. None of that "makes" someone a "straight male."

iongantas · 2012-10-13T16:27:16+00:00

I am similarly irritated by the use of "assigned", as in "assigned a gender".

2012-10-13T20:14:03+00:00

I've had a friend who was physically born with a female body since I was old enough to walk. His name is Sam. He's an awesome guy and I've never thought of him as a girl until my parents, who are close friends with his parents, told me that he was transgendered. "Oh." I replied at the age of 13. "Well, that explains why he has boobs". He was just so manly his whole life. We played video games, we would wrestle until one of us got hurt, take a break and do it again and when we got older, he showed me how to drive a snow-mobile and shoot a rifle. As a straight guy growing up with a straight male friend who just happened to have a female's body, I was never even remotely attracted to him. He's one of the first friends I've ever had and anytime anyone ever tries to say he's anything abnormal, they get a mouthful of fist, by him. He takes no shit. Transmen and transwomen are who they are on the inside, not what arbitrary body parts they have. Anyone who can't or won't understand that is beyond help and doesn't deserve to be a part of the wonderful lives that some people have.

Flobblem · 2012-10-13T15:39:44+00:00

Who you are is who you identify as, you just don't say the 'identify' part. Your identity is a straight male.

I don't know why this is a big issue, it is only another way of saying the same thing.

Phuzzums · 2012-10-13T17:39:57+00:00

Most of the uses of "identifying" as something comes from transgenders who identify as the opposite gender. The reason they say identify is because when they said "I am [the opposite gender]" people would get offended because they thought the person was "lying" about their gender because it didn't match their sex. They use "identify" as a euphemism for "to be" in an attempt to not offend people who don't understand gender dysphoria.

rightsbot · 2012-10-13T12:42:19+00:00

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IWantToRemainUnseen · 2012-10-13T15:55:55+00:00

Well you, and a lot of people like you, have a very firm understanding of themselves. But, some people do not. I think that's the whole purpose for someone stating what they identify themselves as: because rather than it being set in stone, it was ambiguous or they had to really research it. In some ways, it can be kinda silly or sad, but in other ways it can be the result of a large philosophical and interpersonal voyage.

zyk0s · 2012-10-13T21:50:57+00:00

So here's how it went: men married women, had sex with them, had children that they raised in families with a mother and a father. Men went to war, worked hard to produce goods and provide and protect their wives and kids. Women stayed at home, took care of the household, raised kids and helped make their husbands and kids happy. This model was universal, and accepted as The Way It Is. But after a while, people realized that some men liked other men, some women liked other women. Some men prefered to do women's work, some women to do men's work. Some men felt like they really were women, and vice versa. This of course goes against The Way It Is, and causes some problems. There's different ways to tackle those problems.

1) Say these people, by going against the established social norms, threaten the social fabric and serve as bad example. They can then be ridiculed/exiled/persecuted/killed.

2) Interpret this as evidence that the model people knew, The Way It Was is actually completely wrong, and that there is no such thing as generalities. You then proceed by calling everyone who fits the general model an oppressor.

3) You realize that nothing is absolute, life isn't perfect, and while we can see generalities and trends, we can't ignore outliers. Also realize that there's nothing wrong with being an outlier, but there isn't anything "right" about it either: it's just the way things are. The problem comes from determining how much you should accomodate a small percentage of the population when that make things harder, more costly, more time-consuming and less efficient.

Society has started at 1), it is now at 2). Hopefully, in time, we'll actually move to 3).

Falkner09 · 2012-10-13T23:31:35+00:00

I lift weights, drink beer, and love women.|

ok, only 1 of those things is related to being a heterosexual male. the other two are just stereotypes. I drink beer, and lift weights (well I used to, when I had time) and am attracted to men.

Anyway, the term "identify" is really more from the glbt community than feminism. it has a lot to do with the fact that some people are at times not sure what gender they're attracted to. for example, when I hit puberty, I knew that I was supposed to be attracted to girls, and desire fucking them because I was informed it was supposed to be great. I didn't have attraction to them at all, and in fact was often noticing how good guys looked. but it never occured to me that I was gay; not that I was in denial, i just did not understand that this is what attraction really is. around age 15, I accidentally stumbled onto some naked male pictures on the internet (it was new to me then) and got hard. REALLY hard. and I couldn't stop thinking about it. At first, I figured I was just aroused by anything sexual in general but before long, realized that yeah, I liked men. I then called myself bisexual.

thing is, I still wasn't into women. At all. I checked out porn with women from time to time, but never got into it. I couldn't even stay hard unless I ignored the female or switched to gay stuff. So, before long, I admitted I was gay, and always had been. the "attraction" that I felt to women before was not attraction at all. I just started out with the foregone conclusion that i'd be attracted to women, and so when I saw female bodies after puberty with either aversion or indifference, I didn't make the logical conclusion that I wasn't attracted to them, Because I had no frame of reference to say what attraction did or didn't feel like. So, I simply interpreted those feelings as what attraction actually felt like. And I was wrong.

This is how it happens for a lot of gay people. surveys show a huge portion start out believing they are bisexual, and then consider themselves homosexual. this is why the term "identify" has become popular, because people often believe they are one thing, when they really aren't. and it's like that for many transpeople too.

Title	The term 'identify'
Author	camelhorse
Upvotes	13
Comments	23
Date	October 13, 2012 12:23 PM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/11eu1h/the_term_identify/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/the-term-identify.1011455 https://theredarchive.com/post/1011455

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