Maybe you already know all this, but I'm just now working my way through it and it's helping me understand some aspects of the culture wars.
So...when I don't understand something, it gets under my skin and I tend to bang away at it until it starts to make sense. I need things to make sense.
I think this is because I'm autistic, and I suspect it can be very annoying to the people who love me, but:
If asked, most people my age (Gen X) or older will describe themselves (as I did above) by saying things like:
But if you ask a Millennial or member of Gen Z, you're more likely hear things like:
"I identify as a person with a disability."
So we changed how we express the same idea...So what?
It's much bigger than a shift in popular idiom, and understanding it sheds some light on the culture wars.
"I am [X]" = a statement of being.
This is essentialist. It's a statement of being. You are [X]. It's inherent, it's your nature, definitive, objective, fixed, noumenal - perhaps permanent and inescapable. It has nothing do with how you feel about [X] or how you wish to seen as [X], it's a rigid, objective fact.
"I identify as [X]" = a statement of perspective.
This is existentialist. It implies that [X] isn't innate to your being, but something you choose - and that choice is meaningful to you. It centers your relationship to [X], how you feel about [X].
It's a claim about self-perception and a recognition of membership or affinity that leaves room for complexity. It acknowledges that identity might be contextual, contestable, even changeable - while it also recognizes that someone else might not see you the same way. It's subjective and it's highly personal.
That's...kind of a huge difference - and the more you examine that difference the bigger it gets.
So...why did our identity language shift from essentialist to existentialist?
Person-First descriptive ethics
Therapeutic Self-Help Culture
The (In)visibility of Identity Online
The seeds of "identify as" were planted in universities in the late 20th century.
Thinkers like Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, or Stuart Hall challenged the notion that identity categories like gender, race, sexuality, or disability were biologically fixed or politically neutral.
Judith Butler's theory of gender performativity, for example, argued that gender isn't something you are, it's something you do - a set of behaviors, performances, and social scripts. The idea took off not just in academia but in pop culture. Soon, identity was widely seen as not something you inherited, but performed, resisted, or chose.
"Identifying as" emerged as a way of expressing this new, post-essentialist view of the self. You weren’t just born into an identity - you could name it, reshape it, and inhabit it in a self-aware way.
It's empowering and nuanced - and it shouldn't surprise us that it took off.
2. Person-First Descriptive Ethics
The same idea also found expression in person-first language, which introduced many to the ethics of description.
The disability and health communities of the 1990s and 2000s saw a push for "person-first" language. The goal was to emphasize humanity first, not diagnosis. In their thinking, their loved one isn't a cancerous person, but a person with cancer because the diagnosis doesn't define them.
The same well-intentioned folks insisted that I was not an autistic person, but a person with autism, telling me that this was more respectful because it didn't allow autism to define me.
"Thanks," I said. "I hate it."
I don't know about you, but most of the autistic people (not people with autism) I know have rejected this.
I don't think I'm a neurotypical person with an overlay of the illness of autism, or who is being acted upon by an outside force called autism. I think that being autistic is intrinsic, and not an illness.
Put another way: I believe that being autistic is an essentialist identity, that's the only acceptable way for me to talk about it...and that's how I prefer others speak about me in my presence.
But this general idea - that the way we use identity language shapes ethics, respect, and dignity? That stuck, and it's mostly a good thing to be conscious of the way that how we describe identities isn't value-neutral.
In this framework, "I identify as" is meant to be a respectful way to assert identity without reducing oneself to it. It can be especially useful for people with multiple, intersecting, or non-visible identities - and this aligns nicely with Kimberlé Crenshaw's original concept of intersectionality.
3. Therapeutic Self-Help Culture
Since the 1970s, American (and increasingly global) culture has been shaped by what sociologists call "therapeutic individualism." Self-discovery, self-expression, self-definition, and self-actualization have become central to how people understand their purpose. The self is no longer something you are - it's a lifelong project you're working on. That's what it means when someone called themselves "a work in progress."
This ethos was spread at first through self-help books and Oprah-era daytime TV, then moved to Instagram bios and HR workshops.
It blends seamlessly with "I identify as" because it centers subjectivity and affirms lived experience while allowing space for growth, self-redefinition, and personal evolution.
4. The (In)visibility of Identity Online
Social media didn't invent identity discourse, but it definitely popularized it.
We've all seen tags like #demisexual or #neurodivergent without thinking about the way they're announcements of identity.
These aren't tags defining a topic or interest - those would be be #demisexuality or #neurodivergence.
And it makes sense that we do this!
Many identities are not perceivable online unless explicitly announced, so we identify ourselves explicitly with the badges of the identities we wish to communicate, especially if we want to find our people.
In the chaos of algorithmic culture, clarity and discoverability can be powerful. Saying "I identify as [X]" functions like a keyword and a homing signal - it helps others know where you stand and how you'd prefer others relate to you. Identities online become things we collect, badges we wear, and userboxes we display.
So...this is good, right?
Yeah, there's a lot of good in all of this!
Contrary to what seems like common Boomer belief, this shift hasn't happened because younger people are confused or fragile.
It's happened because many are trying (sometimes awkwardly, sometimes beautifully) to live more authentically in a world that doesn’t always know what to do with us.
What's not to love about that?
The rise of "I identify as" reflects:
Greater awareness of social context. It lets people signal that identity is complex, multifaceted, and sometimes contested.
More room for self-determination. For people who’ve had their identities imposed or denied, the phrase opens up space to reclaim power.
Increased inclusivity. It makes space for people who don’t fit neatly into categories—or who don’t want to be boxed in at all.
In this way, identity talk is evolving in the same way society is: It's messier, more fluid, and more responsive to people on the margins. That's not a flaw - that's progress.
So why the #$&% are you writing about it?!
Because it also comes with some tricky issues we're SO SHITTY AT TALKING ABOUT.
There are a lot of small issues, but I see two very large ones: the Erosion of Solidarity and the Structural Issues of Non-Negotiable Identities.
First, Hyper-individualism can cause erosion of solidarity.
The emphasis on personal identity - especially framed as self-identification - can sometimes fragment what used to be shared political or social struggles. If identity becomes purely subjective, then who gets to belong to a community? Who decides who speaks for whom?
In some leftist activist circles, identity has become a kind of credential or prerequisite for speaking, even when the speaker's experience may not reflect a wider group or come with actual expertise. At its worst, this can lead to what some critics call the "Oppression Olympics," where the politics of recognition replaces the politics of change.
The politics of change seek to influence policy and real world outcomes. The politics of recognition...are mostly about language.
As I look at the last 10-15 years in the US, I find myself asking these questions:
Have social liberals been more focused on the politics of change...or the politics of recognition?
How effective have we been at realizing positive social change through policy advancements? Have we made progress...or has our society regressed?
How have those of us who identify as social liberals/progressives potentially contributed to the regression by sacrificing the politics of change on the altar of the politics of recognition? Did we alienate people who otherwise could have been allies if we'd focused more on changing policy?
Language fatigue and cultural backlash are real and I think we underestimated them.
The second and more difficult issue is how Self-Labeling can create Structural Issues when colliding with Non-Negotiable Identities.
When everyone can "identify as" anything, the risk isn’t just confusion, but potentially a dilution of meaning - and I don't mean that as a emotional or social problem, but a practical one.
What if a person with no history, heritage, cultural connection, or community with peoples who are indigenous to North America says "I identify as Native American" ?
Is that valid self-definition...or is it appropriation?
This is especially thorny in categories of identity that are both social and material - like race, ethnicity, or disability. Identification without recognition can sometimes feel like role-play with real-world consequences.
And when it comes to race or ethnicity, sometimes it is role-play.
Does anyone else remember Rachel Dolezal identifying as a black woman and hiding for years that she...wasn't black?
CNN - Rachel Dolezal – fresh off of stepping down as head of the Spokane NAACP chapter over criticism that she’s portrayed herself as black, even though she was born white – stood by that self-assessment Tuesday, insisting, "I identify as black."
Dolezal would later call herself "trans-black" and still promotes the idea of transracialism.
This did not (and still does not) go over well with black folks.
George Washington University History professor Jessica Krug claimed first to be Algerian, then Afro-Puerto Rican. She was none of these and nobody appreciated having their ethnicity, their culture, their experience, and their identity used as someone else's costume.
In an interview, Figueroa said she did not know Krug personally. But she said discussions about Krug’s background were sparked in part by the recent revelation that late Cuban writer H. G. Carrillo was not actually Cuban at all, but rather born to a non-Latinx Black family in Detroit.
“I do know that she’s a very well-respected scholar who has done really incredible work, so this is not an issue about her not being a talented academic or good at her job,” Figueroa said. “But she did it all in this guise, building on the worst types of stereotypes, calling herself a hood academic, taking on accents and talking about specific kinds of trauma.”
These were scandals - and they would be if they happened today, too because transracial identities are not generally welcomed.
(Sure, there are RCTA people who aren't getting the help they need, but most people seem to loathe this behavior and call it race-faking. It's still not socially acceptable, despite Dolezal's best efforts.)
But if identity is exclusively a subjective and personal matter of choice...Why can't Dolezal identify as black?
Imagine a 16-year-old Norwegian boy named Kjell Stenberg, the child of two old and respected Nordic families who raised their son as a good Lutheran, in church every Sunday.
Kjell does some reading, watches a lot of TikTok videos, and decides that he feels an affinity with the Jewish people. Kjell tells his parents that from now on, he identifies as a Jew.
Kjell doesn't contact a Rabbi, he doesn't begin studying, he doesn't attend services, and he has no intention of seeking conversion. He just...identifies as a Jew and does a passable Larry David impression.
No. Not by any definition. Identifying as a Jew doesn't make it so.
Our society finds identifying as another race or ethnicity wholly unacceptable because those are essentialist identities.
If racial/ethnic identities are not identities one can claim by identifying as...what other identities are off-limits in the same way?
If we agree that Rachel Dolezal can't identify as black and Kjell can't identify as Jewish...what stops assholes like Candace Owens from arguing that an AMAB person cannot identify as a woman?
Nothing. It turns out that's a really common rhetorical trick used against trans folks - I just hadn't seen it myself until recently. It's gross.
Candace is wrong and making a shitty analogy.
Transgenderism is fundamentally different from Dolezal's transracialism, and understanding that difference helps us clarify why Dolezal's transracialism is wrong.
Race is a social construct tied to lineage, history, and group identity often shaped by shared experiences of systemic oppression (e.g., the transatlantic slave trade, segregation, colonization). Dolezal inserted herself into a marginalized racial group without having any shared history or the consent of that group.
Gender is also a social construct, but one tied to individual identity, roles, and embodiment, and it varies across cultures in terms of expression and roles (e.g., hijra, Two-Spirit, fa'afafine). Being transgender is about aligning your gender identity with your lived sense of self.
Race/ethnicity are essentialist...and gender is existentialist.
We know that because we can see wide variance of social constructs around gender across time and geography. It's nearly impossible to argue, therefore, that gender is something other than existentialist.
...and this is at the core of the arguments from TERFs and people like Candace Owens.
In order to condemn trans folks, in order to claim transgenderism is as wrong as transracialism, they have to dishonestly redefine gender as both essentialist and binary - and we know beyond any possible doubt that it is neither.
This is what those arguments always come down to. This is their fundamental logical error.
So what's the most effective short response to someone who makes the Dolezal comparison in attacking trans people?
If I wear a doctor's coat and say "I identify as a surgeon," that doesn't make me qualified to do heart surgery - and I'll hurt people if I make the attempt. Rachel Dolezal didn't just 'identify as' - she lied, misrepresented, and appropriated for her own benefit.
Transgender people aren't stealing someone else's story - they're trying to live their own.
Race is about how society sees you, usually from birth. It's tied to ancestry, history, and how people treat you in the world. Rachel Dolezal wasn't treated as a Black person growing up. She didn't face anti-Black racism. She chose to perform Blackness later in life and benefited from the inauthentic, dishonest performance.
Trans people, on the other hand, don’t 'decide' to be another gender for clout.
They usually always knew who they were, even if their bodies didn't match. Many risk their jobs, families, safety, and lives to live as their real selves. That's not inauthentic performance - that's seeking authenticity - that's reconciling their essential identity.
So no - being trans and being Rachel Dolezal are not the same and pretending they are just shows Candace Owens and TERFs don't understand either one.
But that's easy for me to say, isn't it?
I'm looking at this through a linguistic/philosophical/sociological lens. I have have no lived experience to inform my thinking about this kind of identity issue. I've never been trans, I've never lived as a woman, my gender expression has always been sufficiently aligned with my anatomy and the social expectations of others.
Lived experience, though, can change one's views of what is or isn't essentialist.
Since I have no relevant lived experience, here's a story from a friend who does:
My friend Fran is one of the kindest, most broad-minded people I know. We used to wait tables together in the 90s and I once had the pleasure of tossing out an asshole restaurant patron who called her a "dyke."
Fran is good people and I adore her.
So Fran calls me and tells me she's having a meltdown.
At a community event, she'd met this really delightful young trans woman named Betty who had just recently started transitioning. They were laughing and enjoying getting to know each other until Betty told Fran that Betty identifies as a dyke.
Fran explained to me that she'd previously believed that lesbianism might be the most singularly female experience there is, something which could only belong to women and couldn't be taken from them.
It was, in her mind, essentialist. That identity was shaped by how society saw her for her entire life. It was tied to history and how people treated her. She felt that she and other lesbians had a shared history of systemic oppression.
Fran is in her 60s now, she'd been called a dyke as a pointed, vicious slur for decades. It had taken years of work to acclimate to the way some younger members of her community had reclaimed the word, but she did it because she understood the power of that reclamation and wanted to have solidarity with all of her community. Fran felt she had earned the right to reclaim that term because it had been weaponized against her. She didn't like it, but she could cope with it.
Now Fran was encountering a 20-year-old AMAB person whose life and gender expression had been that of a man until a month previous, identifying with a slur which was still embedded like a blade in Fran's heart.
Fran is adamantly in favor of trans rights and supporting trans people, but despite wanting to support Betty, she told me she felt hurt, attacked, and subverted. It felt to her like something essential about her identity had been appropriated by someone who didn't share it. Betty, Fran said, had started identifying as a dyke on the first day of starting to transition - but Betty had never experienced the hostility or specific kinds of oppression lesbians like Fran had endured for their entire lives.
Fran was upset, so I gave her the retort I'd give Candace Owens:
Betty identifying as a dyke isn't an attempt to steal Fran's story - Betty's just trying to live her own..!
Fran gave me a withering look.
Then why is she using my words?
Why is she appropriating my experience, my persecution, and my pain? Where does she get off using the word 'dyke' when she was a man last month?
Why is it so important that 'trans women are women'?
If they're trying to live their own story and not appropriate mine, shouldn't it be 'trans women are trans women'?
Is there nothing which can't be taken from me by someone who chooses to appropriate identities from me?
I've always been categorically dismissive of TERFs because they appeared hateful and the suggestion that they oppose trans rights because trans women are a threat to their safety always smelled like bullshit. It's a non-existent problem and trans women are far, far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Letting people use bathing/dressing/restroom facilities which match their gender expression harms nobody in any material sense, so their argument just seemed hateful, hysterical, dishonest, or some combination of those three things.
Fran made me reconsider. What if the way some of them feel about trans women is analogous to the way that black folks feel about Rachel Dolezal identifying as Black...and how I'd feel about Kjell Stenberg identifying as a Jew? What if they're driven by a terrible feeling that something precious, something tied to their lived experience and pain, is being taken from them and worn as a costume which doesn't respect their lived experience?
I think Fran's feelings are not only valid, but an inevitable result of a culture which is still navigating a transformation in how we talk about essentialist and existentialist identities.
This post isn't about trans rights. It's not about race, ethnicity, sex, gender, orientation or public policy- it's about the language of identity and trying to understand better how we can grapple with conflicting, non-negotiable identities in an increasingly post-essentialist world. It's about recognizing the shift taking place for what it is and the need to consider all the potential implications of that shift thoughtfully.
It's about looking for a way for Fran and Betty to both feel validated and respected. Fran missed a chance to have a conversation about it, and it seems like that's a commonly missed opportunity with everyone having strong opinions about what an identity word means to them...and little allowance for it to mean something else to someone else.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
I don't know. Thankfully, I'm not required to have a firm position on all things. I'm still reading about sex and gender studies, sociology, and linguistics to try to wrap my head around all the complex issues at play.
What I do know is that I don't want to throw the linguistic baby out with the rhetorical bathwater...because I think we're moving in a positive direction.
"I identify as" is part of a broader cultural project that aims to help people name themselves with more care, complexity, and honesty...and that's fantastic.
A renewed focus on community, not just selfhood.
Identity isn't just personal and subjective, because it's always relational. It's not just about how I see myself, but how I am seen - and how I show up for others. They're called "social constructs" instead of "personal beliefs" because they are created and sustained not by individuals, but socially - by networks of interconnected people.
Some humility in how we talk about belonging.
Not every identity claim needs to be treated as sacred, nor every misstep as heresy, cruelty, apathy, or bigotry. Change is hard, and we can help each other through it. (I find myself wishing Fran had been able to sit down and talk with Betty about Betty's experience and why that particular identity word was important to Betty.)
A recognition that language is a tool, not a destination.
The goal isn’t a perfected, permanent terminology - it's mutual understanding, dignity, and kindness.
As culture continues to evolve, we'll keep finding new ways to talk about ourselves and that's great- but I hope we don't mistake the talk for the work. The talk should serve the work- not the other way around.
Language shouldn't just express respect - it should connect people, building bridges through understanding which we then actually cross as we learn to appreciate the particularism of others as much as we value our own.
My teens, as they coach me in pronouns, genders and other linguistic changes which are still not intuitive to me, seem to think that they're at the end of linguistic history and that the language habits of their generation are permanent.
One day they'll be in their fifties and they'll feel a little out of touch, a little confused by how people in their teens and twenties talk about themselves.
If they're smart, they'll ask those younger folks to teach them the newest lexicon.
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (1990).
Charles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition"
Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap (2023)
