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No, It does not make sense to say that someone "has" a gender in that sense, because, as I said, gender is a set of norms, etc. You can conform to the set of norms assigned to your sex, or not, and based on gender norms, you can identify with your sex, the opposite sex, or in the case of those who identify as nonbinary, neither.
Identity is, by definition, an inner feeling. Whether a given identity should be recognized by others is a different question, but even ethnic identities are manufactured to some degree and are a function of beliefs/feelings. See, eg, the literature on the development of Scottish ethnic identity, and of course arguably almost no one identified as "Palestinian" pre-1948, but plenty of people do today.
“Arab”, “lawyer”, “millennial”, and “criminal” are identities; are those just inner feelings? If not, why not? Or are they not identities, per your definition? What are they then?
Those are categories. Whether someone identifies with one of those categories, and hence whether that is one of his identities, is a feeling. Eg I am a lawyer, but I don't particularly see that as part of my identity (as opposed to being a baseball fan. If I am on a dating app, I feel much greater affinity for someone who is a baseball fan than for someone who is a lawyer).
Identity = a belief about who you are, where you belong. So, yes,it is by definition a feeling.
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I realize that this is a popular claim on the left. I reject it, and this is one of the central points of debate between the woke left and everyone else. You do not get to assume your preferred conclusion and get away with it.
Certainly, everyone has a self-conception, which generally is highly colored by feelings. But everyone also has a social identity, which is separate. The claim on the left is that this social identity is subordinate to self-conception--that you have some right to dictate how you are perceived by others. You do not. You may, through your actions, influence how others see you--and everyone does this--but that identity is...socially constructed.
Honestly, identity doesn't mean anything at all. It's just used as a way to say 'X is very important', and then just ... claim it's important by virtue of being important (which is meaningless), instead of pointing to some other justification. And maybe that thing is important, but it has nothing to do with identity. Goes for here and when the far-right claims 'white identity' is important. Even if the 'white race' is very important, it wouldn't be about 'identity' (bantus also have that, if whites do), but something else like iq, temperament, whatever
And yet, it seems to be a point of considerable debate, which is why I was seeking to define some working definitions below. If you don't believe the debate has value...please don't participate?
I believe the debate over 'whether identity exists or not' is worthwhile, in a similar sense to how an atheist might, upon finding a catholic vs protestant debate, interject that 'god no real'. In terms of engaging in it, I did so at length elsewhere
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I think you are conflating two different things: 1) whether identity is an inner feeling; and 2) how others must respond to that identity. Although there are disputes between left and right re #2, I do not believe that #1 is a claim of the left; white identity is a thing, after all, and of course immigration issues are tied to claims about identity.
Your comment looks confused to me, and not particularly related to what I wrote.
A person has what might be termed a "true identity." This is an objective list of that person's qualities, experiences, associations, everything. Examples are hard because objective accuracy is hard.
He also has a "self-conception." This is his own perspective of his true identity, and usually is flawed in various aspects--perfect self-knowledge isn't really a thing people do well, though some self-conceptions are closer to truth than others.
He also has a "social identity." This is an aggregate of what other people think his qualities, experiences, associations, etc. are--it is literally a social construct. It can and does vary by context--my family have a particular view of me derived from years of personal interaction, but the posters on The Motte likely have a different view of me derived from the posts that I've written.
Nothing that I've written here has anything to do with "how others must respond." I am not conflating anything; I am distinguishing various aspects of what someone might mean when he's talking about a person's "identity."
Edit to add: It only occurred to me after posting, but there's a local term for what I'm doing here--"tabooing your words." In this case, I'm tabooing "identity" in order to tease apart the various mottes and baileys people use around the word. I am trying to rigorously define terms. If you don't like my definitions, propose your own.
What? Is it part of your 'true identity', for instance, the value of the wavefunction (ik that's not really how that works) at each planck volume of your body - 65 liters times (planck's constant 1 / 1.616255×10⁻³⁵ m) ^ 3 (that's ... a lot of values, 10^100 float32s)! Except you specified 'assocations' - those have something to do with the outside world, so do we need to include, say, the volume of the earth, too? How do you distill all those atoms down into an 'objective list'? (the problem of knowledge-as-a-list-of-facts is extensively discussed by western philosophy, and is at any rate mostly nonsensical - which facts?). And - there isn't really anything else in the sense of 'qualities' or 'lists' ("materialism" is separate - if people have souls or experiences distinct from atoms somehow, it isn't a static list of associations and experiences). So I don't think this really means anything. Anyway, "true identity" here just seems to mean ... physically everything, every fact or idea that could possibly exist in the universe in total. If you're a physicist, and you're 20, and at age 40 you discover general relativity ... i guess that's part of your true identity? It's an association, after all.
Do they, though? Let's say you're about to eat a new kind of meat. You don't know, in one sense, that the meat is gonna taste good - yet in another sense, the potential to know it (i.e. the configuration of taste buds, experiences, etc to taste it) is already there. Is that part of your identity yet? And - does it even make sense to say that every association and quality is an 'identity'? I probably had some kind of cereal for breakfast 5723 days ago. Is that part of my identity? It is part of my 'experiences, associations'. This can't really be what we mean. Similarly, the fact that my 'perspective on' eating that cereal is 'flawed', in that I don't remember it - seems fine? And since an 'identity' covers ... every relation and association I have, is it an "imperfection in my self-conception" that I can't quite prove a particularly complicated theorem without looking in a textbook right now, despite doing it before? ... I don't think 'self-conception' or 'identity' really mean anything at all. Anything that are either of them are just complex relations people have to things that exist, that they're trying to understand or accomplish, and have precisely as much to do with a 'self' or 'identity' with what I had for breakfast today.
What exactly is aggregating them? If Joe thinks i'm an evil fascist nazi and Tom thinks i'm cute and valid, what precisely is my social identity?
In order to have any sort of productive conversation, it's important to have agreed-upon definitions of key terms. That was the point of what I wrote. You've stated repeatedly that you "don't think [various terms] really mean anything at all." In that case, we can't have a productive conversation.
That's ... not true at all.
How is a christian supposed to have a discussion with an atheist? One defines "God" to mean "The all-whole, loving being who created us and saves us from depravity." The other objects: "what? I don't agree with that".
So, I disagree that 'identity' and 'self' have any particular meaning or relevance in the first place, and am arguing for that. That has to be ... possible.
If the conversation is about "what is the nature of God?" then yes, there is no conversation to be had.
In this context, we are discussing the nuances of "identity." Breaking in on that conversation with the claim that "the central point of debate doesn't exist" is undermining conversation, not contributing.
Well, if I'm obviously wrong, or not making a coherent point, then it's not contributing, and that's plausible.
But ... there is no 'nature of god' in any literal sense, and any conversation about such would be greatly improved by such an interjection.
As an analogy: when I was younger I, like everyone else I knew, was against anti-black racism, prejudice, implicit bias, etc. In a conversation about how best to prevent police racism - an interjection that 'no, the police aren't racist' was useful!
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Well, then, I was referring more or less to what you call "self-identity," which others here seem to think does not exist. However, I don’t agree that it is helpful to say that people can be "wrong" about that. What group a given person identifies with is an empirical fact. How others should respond to that, including whether that identification is delusional, harmful, etc, is a different issue.
Best guess is you meant to say "self-conception"? Because "self-identity" is not one of the terms I laid out.
Got any links to support this? That's a pretty extreme claim.
"I think of myself as [x]" can be a true statement for any value of x. "I am [x]" may be true or false, in various cases. Generally speaking, when someone says, "I identify as [x]" they are playing motte and bailey between the two.
A comedian does not need to "identify as" funny. He's funny; it's his job; people give him money for it. A liar may be self-deceptive enough to think he's an honest man, but that doesn't change the underlying reality.
So, a person may think of himself as part of a particular group; that belief is an empirical fact. He may also be a part of that particular group; that is also an empirical fact. Those are two separate facts, however, no matter whether anyone thinks it is "helpful" to conflate them.
Yes, sorry I meant self-conception. Was rushing to movie.
I'm not sure I understand the comedian reference; "funny" is an adjective. I don't see how one can "identify" as an adjective; one identifies, in the sense that we have been discussing it, as a member of a group.
Moreover, unlike funniness, which can at least in theory be objectively measured by a laugh-o-meter, or lies, which can also be objectively measured, identities are in fact often self-defined. Eg., national identity is generally seen as an "imagined community" of people who "a body of people who feel that they are a nation." So, that is the conception of identity that I am coming from. Given that, the idea that one can tell someone "your identity is wrong" (as opposed to, "I refuse to recognize your identity") seems quite suspect.
This is incorrect. I specifically stated a definition of true identity that includes both qualities and associations. In fact, the whole sex/gender discussion that sparked this is about both, since that concerns membership in a group that is defined by a quality.
Is Rachel Dolezal black? If I assume charity, that she was being honest about her own perspective (as opposed to lying in order to enable a grift), her self-conception includes "I am black" (quality) and "I am part of 'the black community'" (group/association). And yet, I can say with confidence that her first belief is wrong, and to the extent that the second belief depends on the first, it is also wrong.
Ok, then your concept. "self-conception," is not the same as "identity." Yes, people can conceive of themselves as smart, or funny, or a good person. But that is different than the concept of identity in terms like "gender identity" or "ethnic identity", which refer to group membership.
First, I think that those two claims are actually two ways of saying the same thing, unless you mean "I am part of the black community" in the much different sense that a person can be part of any community if he or she lives among them, etc. But that of course is not what we are talking about.
Second, when you say "I can say with confidence that her first belief is wrong," what you are actually saying that there is a commonly accepted definition of "black" in the US (very roughly, that you have at least one ancestor who was living in sub-Saharan Africa at some time in the relatively recent past) and she does not meet that definition.
And that brings me back to the same point I have made over and over: The different meanings of "sex", "gender" and "gender identity." There is a difference between Rachel Dolezal saying "I am black [under the US definition thereof] and "I identify as black [despite not being genetically black]." The term "wigger," after all, has been around a good 30 years. Obviously, she was making the former claim, but that just points out the irrelevance of her as an example. People making claims about gender identity are doing just that: making claims about gender identity, not about sex. If Rachel Dolezal said, "I am of the male sex" you could prove her wrong by pulling down her pants. But if she said, "I identify as the male gender," you can't, because, again, an identity is an internal belief.
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I think your definition of identity is coherent within your worldview, I just don’t think that’s the definition of identity that most people use.
Moreover, it does still break at some stages (at least regarding social ideas of when identities are “wrong”), for example with transracial people who strongly identify as another race, or with otherkin as discussed elsewhere in this thread.
Do people merely not accept that an otherkin believes that they are a porcupine, and why do people not accept it? Or is there some degree of “wrongness” in a human being believing that they are in fact a porcupine?
Yes, but my point is that the definition that most people use is not the one that is being used when when people who claim to be transgender talk about gender identity. Similarly, in the vernacular, the term "nation" is used as a synonym for "country" or "state." But in the social sciences, and in the world of politics, it means something very different. If there were news articles about the demands of the "Basque nation" or the "Kurdish nation" or the "Uyghur nation" for X, Y, or Z, and someone here wrote a post saying, "these people are liars; there is obviously no such thing as the "Kurdish nation" because the Basques all live in different countries," would you not write to note that when used in that context, "nation" means something other than what he thinks it means.
As discussed in my response to another user above, that is a claim about race, not about racial identity. To use your porcupine example, if you tell me that you believe you are a porcupine, of course I can point out to you that you are not, in fact, a porcupine. But it is equally obvious that what I cannot do is tell the person, no, you do not believe you are a porcupine.
As I have said several times, the question of how others respond to someone's identity is a completely different question to whether that identity exists. If I tell you that I identify as a porcupine, you are able to accept it or not. You are able to let me use the porcupine-only bathroom, or not. You are able to tell me that my identity is immoral, or not. Those responses might or might not be moral, and might or might not be sound policy, but those issues are completely independent of the fact that identity is a subjective belief.
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