# identify as



## JungKim

Oxford Dictionary has this definition of the verb 'identify':


> 1.2 identify as [no object] Assign (a particular characteristic or categorization) to oneself; describe oneself as belonging to (a particular category or group)
> _‘she identifies as a feminist’
> ‘3.2% of the men identified as gay or bisexual’_


Is it possible to use the same verb in the same meaning as a transitive verb by having a reflexive pronoun as its object, as shown below?
_she identifies *herself *as a feminist_
_3.2% of the men identified *themselves* as gay or bisexual_


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## suzi br

I don't know if your grammatical labelling is accurate, it probably is, you are better at that than I am.

I can tell you that your actual sentences are fine.


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## JungKim

suzi br said:


> I can tell you that your actual sentences are fine.


Thanks.
Do both versions sound equally natural to you?


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## suzi br

Yes.


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## Glenfarclas

JungKim said:


> Is it possible to use the same verb in the same meaning as a transitive verb by having a reflexive pronoun as its object, as shown below?
> _she identifies *herself *as a feminist_



Not in this context, no.

I can't tell whether I'm disagreeing with Suzi or not, but "She identifies as a lesbian" cannot be replaced with "She identifies herself as a lesbian."  Sorry.


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## suzi br

Glenfarclas said:


> Not in this context, no.
> 
> I can't tell whether I'm disagreeing with Suzi or not, but "She identifies as a lesbian" cannot be replaced with "She identifies herself as a lesbian."  Sorry.




Well it wouldn't be used in the same contexts, but the OP asked it could be "same verb and same meaning", which doesn't have to be the same context.

Do you detect a different meaning in the notion of "She identifies as a feminist" and "She identifies herself as a feminist"? (I'm reverting to feminist since that was in the OP).


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## JungKim

Glenfarclas said:


> Not in this context, no.
> 
> I can't tell whether I'm disagreeing with Suzi or not, but "She identifies as a lesbian" cannot be replaced with "She identifies herself as a lesbian."  Sorry.



Do you mean the version with a reflexive pronoun is not a well-formed sentence or simply that it's well-formed but it means something else?


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## Glenfarclas

suzi br said:


> Do you detect a different meaning in the notion of "She identifies as a feminist" and "She identifies herself as a feminist"? (I'm reverting to feminist since that was in the OP).



Very different.  You can "identify as" something without ever breathing a word of it to another soul, but to "identify _yourself_ as" that thing has to do with what you tell other people.  To take a different example, I might "identify myself as a bank employee" in order to commit a robbery, but if I "identified as a bank employee" (without being one), that would be at best passing strange and at worst evidence of insanity.


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## suzi br

Glenfarclas said:


> Very different.  You can "identify as" something without ever breathing a word of it to another soul, but to "identify _yourself_ as" that thing has to do with what you tell other people.  To take a different example, I might "identify myself as a bank employee" in order to commit a robbery, but if I "identified as a bank employee" (without being one), that would be at best passing strange and at worst evidence of insanity.



OK - I know what you mean. But I don't think the meaning of the verb changes in the two cases. To me it is about classification and taxonomy. Your bank-robber thing is a red-herring.

Lets stick with people determining what group they belong to. When we "identify" bird species we say that's a sparrow, that's a wren etc. They have patterns of size and shape etc that allow us to identify their species.

When it comes to human categories like feminst / gay it is more a matter of self-identification.   You can hardly BE a feminist or a bisexual without in some way choosing that label for yourself.  I suppose there are some people who espouse the ideals of these things without accepting the labels, but that is a type of self-defined dentity too.

So if someone identifies as a feminist that person has chosen to be a member of that species (whether he tells anyone else or not.)  He therefore indentifies himself as a feminst --that seems to me the very meaning of the business of "identify" in these human social groups.


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## Thomas Tompion

I'm not clear I know what it means to say *I identify as a country parson*, whether I am or am not a country parson.  It's not something I could ever say, nor have I heard anyone say anything like it, as I remember.  There is no entry in the British National  Corpus for *I identify as...*

I don't think the verb is happily used intransitively.  I'm entirely familiar with constructions like* I identified him as a country parson* - I discovered that he is a country parson.

Consistent with this is the fact that I'm familiar with the reflexive use -* I identified myself as a country parson* - I made clear that I am a country parson.

Whether you can identify yourself as something that you are not is a moot point.  You can certainly try to do this; I'm not clear that you can actually do it.  For me it's like knowing and remembering, it carries a testimonial of truth.

PS.  The British Corpus has three cases of *he identifies as*, all with antecedent objects - _Jones reserves his highest praise for lateral thinkers - one of whom *he* *identifies* *as* the new Prime Minister Bob Hawke_.

I don't know on what the 'Oxford Living Dictionary' is basing its definition.  I see that it is a dictionary of American English, so AE members are more likely to be familiar with that usage.


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## JungKim

Thomas Tompion said:


> I don't know on what the 'Oxford Living Dictionary' is basing its definition.  I see that it is a dictionary of American English, so AE members are more likely to be familiar with that usage.



It's not just in a dictionary of AmE. There's the same entry in the version not marked as "US".


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## JungKim

And here's some of the recent (2006 through 2008) usage of "identify as" as in the Oxford Living Dictionary.


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## Thomas Tompion

JungKim said:


> It's not just in a dictionary of AmE. There's the same entry in the version not marked as "US".


It must be very difficult for you, JungKim: your dictionary may reflect what the young and trendy are saying, and you ask questions of old and fusty people - in my case - who don't always like the ways the young and trendy are pushing the language.

Nevertheless, I may help you by pointing out that many people - I don't think I'm out on a limb again - dislike the use you are asking about.  The fact that it's not to be found in the corpuses is also significant.


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## RedwoodGrove

Glenfarclas said:


> Not in this context, no.
> 
> I can't tell whether I'm disagreeing with Suzi or not, but "She identifies as a lesbian" cannot be replaced with "She identifies herself as a lesbian."  Sorry.


The point is it has become a set phrase.

cross-posted

I identify as a white male. S. K. identifies as a collective of people.

Edited to avoid naming actual people.


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## RedwoodGrove

Was that on a different thread? < --- > I can't deal with modern technology.



< --- > Text abbreviation removed.  Cagey, moderator


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## Thomas Tompion

RedwoodGrove said:


> The point is it has become a set phrase.
> 
> [...]


The verb may be used this way in AE, but not yet in the BE I'm familiar with.

I wouldn't call the way a verb is used 'a set phrase'.


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## Thomas Tompion

RedwoodGrove said:


> The point is it has become a set phrase.
> [...] Sandra Kornblum identifies as a collective of people.


Very strange 'set phrase'.

What does it mean?


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## suzi br

I assume Redwood's comment about Sandra Kornblum is meant to be "funny" in some way -  it is not designed to be helpful to the OP, or me, I have no idea who he talking about. 

Back on the topic of the original question.
"to identify as" or "to identify yourself as .. " has nothing to do with bank robbers and country parsons it has to do with things like your ideology or sexuality, as the two examples in the OP illustrate. 

This appears to be a fairly new usage, since the self-identified "old and fusty" do not like it 

It seems pretty routine to me, but then I move in lesbian-feminist crowds so I have been using this phrasing for decades myself and didn't realise it was going to upset people a few years older than me!


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## suzi br

According to the OED:
*d. intr. With as. To consider or describe oneself as belonging to a particular category or group of people.*
1975  R. Green in _Arch. Sexual Behavior_ *4* 339  If designated female and raised as female, the child will identify as female.
1987  H. I. Safa in L. Mullings _Cities U.S._ xi. 261  They identified as working class and came out of a classic working-class tradition.
1998  _Stud. Amer. Indian Lit._ *10* 22  As is consistent with his alternative gender identity, James William identifies as female.

------------------
So it gained currency in the 1970's and the very definition here includes the notion of "describing oneself" as I pointed out at #9 is a key part of the meaning.


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## Thomas Tompion

suzi br said:


> *d. intr. With as. To consider or describe oneself as belonging to a particular category or group of people.*





suzi br said:


> "to identify as" or "to identify yourself as .. " has nothing to do with bank robbers and country parsons it has to do with things like your ideology or sexuality, as the two examples in the OP illustrate.


I sense confusion here.

Is the remark about bank robbers and country parsons to be taken as meaning that you cannot identify yourself as a country parson?  If it is, then I don't agree.  If you tell the police, say, that you are a country parson, you are identifying yourself as a country parson.  That seems to me an entirely normal usage.

There's another problem here, the suggestion that "to identify as" and "to identify yourself as .. " are identical.

To identify yourself as something is to state truthfully that one is that something.  This is not *To consider or describe oneself as belonging to a particular category or group of people *(the OED's definition of the intransitive usage with *as*).


Glenfarclas said:


> [...]"She identifies as a lesbian" cannot be replaced with "She identifies herself as a lesbian."  Sorry.


As you can see, I'm not the only one in this thread who has been distinguishing carefully between them.  After all, I've said I use the one and not the other.  And, unless I've misunderstood the definition and the usage of the intransitive form, it can be tacit - on the other hand, when you identify yourself, you make an explicit statement, surely?





suzi br said:


> So if someone identifies as a feminist that person has chosen to be a member of that species (whether he tells anyone else or not.)  He therefore indentifies himself as a feminst --that seems to me the very meaning of the business of "identify" in these human social groups.


I'm not certain about this last point.  If I identify as a feminist, does that really mean that I've made a choice?  Or, to take another example cited earlier, does one really choose one's sexuality?  Maybe you find that you have fallen into the habit of having sexual relations with both women and men.  In truth you ought to 'identify as bisexual' or could you 'identify as celibate' even though you are anything but?  If it really is a choice, then you might surely identify as something very different to what you are?

I don't get it.


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## RedwoodGrove

suzi br said:


> I assume Redwood's comment about S ... K ... is meant to be "funny" in some way -  it is not designed to be helpful to the OP, or me, I have no idea who he talking about.
> 
> Back on the topic of the original question.
> "to identify as" or "to identify yourself as .. " has nothing to do with bank robbers and country parsons it has to do with things like your ideology or sexuality, as the two examples in the OP illustrate.
> 
> This appears to be a fairly new usage, since the self-identified "old and fusty" do not like it
> 
> It seems pretty routine to me, but then I move in lesbian-feminist crowds so I have been using this phrasing for decades myself and didn't realise it was going to upset people a few years older than me!


I made up the name, which is probably a bad Idea since there is likely a Sandra Kornblum out there who could take offense.

However, there are a few individuals out there who do not want to be defined by gender and prefer to be called by the plural pronouns.

Every so often, I think I am making a point, but probably less often than most people.


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## Thomas Tompion

RedwoodGrove said:


> there is likely a Sandra Kornblum out there who could take offense.


There are quite a lot - I've looked them up - and they and their male relatives are strongly identifying as very angry indeed.


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## RedwoodGrove

Thomas Tompion said:


> There are quite a lot - I've looked them up - and they and their male relatives are strongly identifying as very angry indeed.


Really? Wow, they've already seen my post. Good thing I haven't provided my street address.


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## suzi br

I don't think there is any need to be confused.  There is the established meaning of someone having to "prove" their identity in some way - to the authorites for example and there is the newer sense which is "*indentify as*" which always has some ideolgical / political angle to it which has come to have currency since the 1970s. 




Thomas Tompion said:


> ....  don't always like the ways the young and trendy are pushing the language.
> 
> Nevertheless, I may help you by pointing out that many people - I don't think I'm out on a limb again - dislike the use you are asking about.  The fact that it's not to be found in the corpuses is also significant.



Thomas, you have expressed this opinion at the start of the thread. Now I can't help thinking that the rest of your post it aimed at showing how muddle-headed us young and trendy folk are (Thanks by the way, I have rather left-off being either of those).


So, you don't like it, but some of use use it and we use it in specific contexts like gender politics and sexuality etc. I am not going to waste any more time on justifying a perfectly well-established change in the language.  Language changes - simple as.  No need to be so nice** about it.

** choose your own defintion of "nice" - there have been many over the centuries!


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## Thomas Tompion

suzi br said:


> Now I can't help thinking that the rest of your post it aimed at showing how muddle-headed us young and trendy folk are.[...]


I'm sorry you didn't address the points I made.  I'm not having much success avoiding the obvious absurdities of this use.

I'm not the only one, it seems.  The world is full of white men who identify as Chinese women (source)

Or bears who identify as bears (source)

Or someone in their thirties who identifies as a senior citizen (source) (What's ideological / political about being a senior citizen?)

Up to now I've been quite reverential about this use, but many people are having a great deal of fun with it, and that's clearly a good thing.  Much better than getting their kicks from narcotics or alcohol.

I'm glad it's crossed the Atlantic.


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## Keith Bradford

Well, I see a difference, speaking as one who* identifies as *transgender (= *I see myself as a member of* the transgendered group) and also who have publicly *identied myself as* transgender several times on television (= I have *told other people* that I'm a member of that group).  It's a difference between the psychological meaning (identify) and the social meaning (identify oneself).

But neither of the two terms is ungrammatical in this year of grace 2016.  They both increased in popularity in the 1970s (unsurprising!) and have now levelled off a little, with *identify as* three times more common (four times more common in British English) than *identify myself as*.  Google Ngram Viewer

Of course, ngram results are out of context, but that proportion seems not unreasonable.  More people know who they are than will admit it to others.


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## Thomas Tompion

Keith Bradford said:


> More people know who they are than will admit it to others.


Thank you for this, Keith.

I'm still a little unclear on the use of 'identifies as'.

We were told earlier that identifying as something was a choice.  Yet you talk of it as of acknowledgement of something which is the case - one can't know (the word you used above) something which is not the case.  Therefore, as I understand your post, when you identify as transgender, you admit to yourself that you are transgender: it's the label you are happy privately to give yourself, recognising properties you see in yourself.

But this is hardly a choice, because, if the label does not happily attach itself to you, if you did not happily see in yourself the relevant characteristics, you could surely not give yourself this label.  You couldn't identify as transgender, if you were not, to use your word, transgendered.

Clearly the public admission can be a choice for some people; they can choose to keep things to themselves, or to admit them publicly.  But I don't see how one might choose to admit to oneself that one is part of a group with characteristics one does not share.


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## suzi br

Keith


Thomas Tompion said:


> Thank you for this, Keith.
> 
> I'm still a little unclear on the use of 'identifies as'.
> 
> We were told earlier that identifying as something was a choice.  Yet you talk of it as of acknowledgement of something which is the case - one can't know (the word you used above) of something which is not the case.  Therefore, as I understand your post, when you identify as transgender, you admit to yourself that you are transgender: it's the label you are happy privately to give yourself, recognising properties you see in yourself ..
> 
> Clearly the public admission can be a choice for some people; they can choose to keep things to themselves, or to admit them publicly.  But I don't see how one might choose to admit to oneself that one is part of a group with characteristics one does not share.



I don't think Keith or I are saying that. My post about "choice" at #9 doesn't say people who are not gay "choose" to be gay. It says people who are gay can choose to hide it. 
 Many people might BE the "thing" (gay  in my case, or transgender in Keith's case) but choose NOT to proclaim it, either to themselves or anyone else.

Indentifying as x or y is linked to the idea of "coming out". Both phrases acknowledge the challenges involved in being open about such matters. It is sometimes easier, or safer, to stay hidden.

I was 34 and had been married  to a man for 12 years before I honestly identified myself as a lesbian.  I heard only recently that a man who identified as gay when I knew him has finally started to transition and he identifies as a woman. He must be in his 50s now. Maybe the public example of people like Keith who have been on  telly to identify themselves as transgender in public gave my old mate the confidence to face his own identity.

The "choice" is about adopting and proclaiming the label not about "being" gay /trans/ etc. 


The other case in the OP is about identifying as a feminist. That is obviously a choice. An interesting thing about feminism is the number of young women who espouse equality for women but resist being identified as feminists. The word  itself has accumulated some negative connotations which leads to that situation. I could say these women ARE feminists because they share the principles. But they choose not to identify as such.


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## Thomas Tompion

suzi br said:


> You can hardly BE a feminist or a bisexual without in some way choosing that label for yourself.


I don't see that the choice of the label in any way affects what you are.

Your sentence implies that it's absurd to say that one is a bisexual without knowing it.  Yet the world is full of people who discover sexual tastes in themselves they never dreamed they had.

If you say that identifying as bisexual is an important part of being bisexual, then you are saying people who sleep with both sexes are not bisexual unless they consciously apply this label to themselves.

I found what Keith said about this entirely coherent.  It didn't suggest that you couldn't be transgendered unless you chose to identify as transgendered.


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## Keith Bradford

I think that the problem with labels is that they are a particular size, usually oblong, and sticky.  And so they almost never suit the person/package that they're attached to, and even if they do they can be uncomfortable to wear.  And yet without them we find ourselves in a universe which makes no sense because our minds, and certainly our speech, can't get a handle on it.

So a person who *is in practice* certainly heterosexual (i.e. has sex almost exclusively with people of the other sex) may *identify as* gay because they know in their heart of hearts that that is where they would prefer to be; they may* be identified as* gay because their neighbours once saw them coming out of a gay club; and may at some moment of crisis *identify themself* as gay by coming out of the closet.

Or, conversely, they may refuse to *identify as* gay and never dream of *identifying themselves* as gay, because social pressure, religion, habit, lack of awareness or the rigours of the law may prevent them.

(I'll withhold judgement on whether any of these matters are rulable by free will, or are predetermined by Fate, Freud or DNA.  My guess is that many psychosexual conditions are the result of hormonal imbalance in the womb, but that's a debate for a different forum.)


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## Keith Bradford

Thomas Tompion said:


> ... But this is hardly a choice, because, if the label does not happily attach itself to you, if you did not happily see in yourself the relevant characteristics, you could surely not give yourself this label.  You couldn't identify as transgender, if you were not, to use your word, transgendered...



True, but it doesn't quite work like that.  In my case, I didn't identify as "transgendered" from the age of 6 to the age of 60: I identified as _transvestite_.  Then, on a training course with others in my national organisation, I encountered transsexuals who had decided (for reasons I still don't fully approve of - there are such things as fads in nomenclature) to reject the word _transsexual _and identify themselves as _transgendered_.  At the same time, I was researching the vectors for identification of psychosexual conditions and I was in need of a word to describe the whole complex of not-quite-male-and-not-quite-female.  "_Transgendered_" seems to fit that bill rather better than "_queer_".

So from that time onwards I have identified (myself) as transgendered.  In fact, my understanding of myself hasn't greatly changed and I certainly haven't started yearning to change sex! But the vocabulary of the world around me has changed, and if a new and efficient tool comes on the market, why not use it to perform an old task?

This is a process that many people must find themselves in. For instance, when sociologists began to deal with women's issues, the word *gender *took on a new meaning that Latin grammarians never dreamed of.


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## suzi br

Thomas, you are ignoring the word "hardly" in my post at #9 and the surrounding text, of which that one sentence is only a part.

What my whole post implies is that these issues are enormously complex for individuals and the business of labelling yourself as something IS a choice.

I could have (easily)  written an essay about the complexities of sexual identity, but this is a thread about "*identify as"* and that was my focus and I am still trying to avoid topic-drift.


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## Thomas Tompion

Keith Bradford said:


> True, but it doesn't quite work like that.  In my case, I didn't identify as "transgendered" from the age of 6 to the age of 60: I identified as _transvestite_.  Then, on a training course with others in my national organisation, I encountered transsexuals who had decided (for reasons I still don't fully approve of - there are such things as fads in nomenclature) to reject the word _transsexual _and identify themselves as _transgendered_.  At the same time, I was researching the vectors for identification of psychosexual conditions and I was in need of a word to describe the whole complex of not-quite-male-and-not-quite-female.  "_Transgendered_" seems to fit that bill rather better than "_queer_".
> 
> So from that time onwards I have identified (myself) as transgendered.  In fact, my understanding of myself hasn't greatly changed and I certainly haven't started yearning to change sex! But the vocabulary of the world around me has changed, and if a new and efficient tool comes on the market, why not use it to perform an old task?
> 
> This is a process that many people must find themselves in. For instance, when sociologists began to deal with women's issues, the word *gender *took on a new meaning that Latin grammarians never dreamed of.


Very many thanks for this, Keith, and thank you for being so patient and so understanding of my difficulty in getting used to this expression.

I understand you to be saying that when you say you *identify as + adjective* (*identify as + noun *isn't the usual expression, though* identify oneself as + a noun* - _he identified himself to the police as a student_ (he told the police he was a student) - is a usual expression with another meaning), when you *identify as + adjective*, the adjective is an adjective which a group has come to apply to itself, so when the adjective preferred by the group changes over time, your identification changes too, although you yourself feel much the same.

So, although this identification is not public - you can choose to keep it hidden - it is not necessarily as private as *to see oneself* *as* (the formula with which I'd been equating *to identify as*).

If I'm right in this, one or two things strike me a slightly strange:

1.  If the group with the characteristic (gay, bisexual, trinitarian, etc) doesn't exist, you can't identify as gay, bisexual, or trinitarian.  Gussie Fink-Nottle was obsessed with newts, but he can't identify as obsessed with newts, because a group with this particular fascination doesn't exist, as far as I know.

2.  I'm interested in the apparent insistence on the adjective rather than the noun.  Why do people who use the word insist of avoiding identification *as a bisexual*, for instance?  That would seem to me such a natural thing to say, yet it appears to be unidiomatic.  I expect it does to quite a lot of people too, unfamiliar with the idiom, so examples of its use aren't necessarily true counterexamples.

3.  In your particular case I'm interested that you  take a past participle as the adjective, because that suggests that you have been the passive subject of a process which has somehow happened.  Maybe that's just the way the label has developed in the group, and in seeing in yourself many of the characteristics common to the group, that is the label which you have to give yourself _in camera_.


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## Keith Bradford

The case I've described in 31 may be an exception to everyday usage.

Certainly* identify as* and *see myself as* are not synonymous.  The first implies acceptance and espousal (e.g. "I identify as a left-wing intellectual") whereas the second can be very unwilling (e.g. 'I see myself as having been the victim of fraud by misrepresentation.").

Are you right in thinking that it's only possible to identify as an existing group?  Presumably someone had to be first?  Or did the pioneers merely *identify themselves* as individuals, first, and others later adopted the description?  A combination of your "_he identified himself to the police as a student_" followed by my experience in #31.

Adjectives and nouns: there is no such noun as "*a* transgender(ed)" so the case doesn't arise. By and large, I think transgendered people, gays, lesbian women and others prefer the adjective to the noun.  A gay man is likely to say "I am/see myself as/identify as... gay" rather that "*a* gay". (In fact, I think the usage "*a* gay" is an indicator of naivety or at least discomfort with the topic.)


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## Thomas Tompion

Thank you very much, Keith.  Most enlightening.


Keith Bradford said:


> (In fact, I think the usage "*a* gay" is an indicator of naivety or at least discomfort with the topic.)


Or just ingnorance of the idiom.


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## JungKim

Thomas Tompion said:


> I understand you to be saying that when you say you *identify as + adjective* (*identify as + noun *isn't the usual expression, though* identify oneself as + a noun* - _he identified himself to the police as a student_ (he told the police he was a student) - is a usual expression with another meaning), when you *identify as + adjective*, the adjective is an adjective which a group has come to apply to itself, so when the adjective preferred by the group changes over time, your identification changes too, although you yourself feel much the same.


Thomas Tompion, I wonder how much truth there is to that claim of yours, especially when one of the two dictionary examples shown in the OP has the construction "_*identify as + noun*_" (_she identifies *as a feminist*_) and that same example has been mentioned quite a few times throughout this thread without anyone objecting to the naturalness thereof. Even you yourself mentioned and discussed the very same example in post #20.

Or do you think that it would be more natural to make "feminist" an adjective and say _she identifies _*as feminist*?



Thomas Tompion said:


> 2.  I'm interested in the apparent insistence on the adjective rather than the noun.  Why do people who use the word insist of avoiding identification *as a bisexual*, for instance?  That would seem to me such a natural thing to say, yet it appears to be unidiomatic.  I expect it does to quite a lot of people too, unfamiliar with the idiom, so examples of its use aren't necessarily true counterexamples.





Keith Bradford said:


> A gay man is likely to say "I am/see myself as/identify as... gay" rather that "*a* gay". (In fact, I think the usage "*a* gay" is an indicator of naivety or at least discomfort with the topic.)



Is Keith suggesting that preferring "bisexual" and "gay" in the form of adjectives rather than nouns might be attributed to the usage of such individual words (bisexual, gay, etc), rather than to the particular construction (identify as) itself preferring the adjective forms?


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## Thomas Tompion

JungKim said:


> Thomas Tompion, I wonder how much truth there is to that claim of yours, especially when one of the two dictionary examples shown in the OP has the construction "_*identify as + noun*_" (_she identifies *as a feminist*_) and that same example has been mentioned quite a few times throughout this thread without anyone objecting to the naturalness thereof. Even you yourself mentioned and discussed the very same example in post #20.


Hello JungKim,
I didn't really mean to make a claim in that post.  I'm in no position to make claims about this form of words; it's unfamiliar to me.  There was a strong interrogative element in those sentences.  I was asking Keith, who is cogent and articulate and familiar with this idiom, what form it takes.

The fact that I used one of these expressions can in no way be taken as a certificate of authenticity.  I'm as much of a learner as you, JungKim, as far as this expression goes, probably more so, if I am any judge.


JungKim said:


> Or do you think that it would be more natural to make "feminist" an adjective and say _she identifies _*as feminist*?


My opinion, from my position of deep ignorance, has little worth in this field.  I asked Keith a similar question and he said this:


Keith Bradford said:


> Adjectives and nouns: there is no such noun as "*a* transgender(ed)" so the case doesn't arise. By and large, I think transgendered people, gays, lesbian women and others prefer the adjective to the noun. A gay man is likely to say "I am/see myself as/identify as... gay" rather that "*a* gay". (In fact, I think the usage "*a* gay" is an indicator of naivety or at least discomfort with the topic.)


JungKim, I live in rural France and don't read the sort of literature which uses this, relatively new, expression.  I wanted to know more about it, and this is why I asked questions in your thread.


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## velisarius

As far as use of the noun v. use of the adjective goes, this thread may be of interest because it discusses  other cases as well, e.g."I'm (a) Christian/Brit", so it seems to me a broader subject and not restricted to "gender politics".
he's a Christian / he's Christian - difference


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## Thomas Tompion

velisarius said:


> As far as use of the noun v. use of the adjective goes, this thread may be of interest because it discusses other cases as well, e.g."I'm (a) Christian/Brit", so it seems to me a broader subject and not restricted to "gender politics".
> he's a Christian / he's Christian - difference


You may well be right, Mrs V, but are you sure that 'identifies as' is a way of accepting a label which is exclusive to gender politics?

I've been off to the COCA (AE Corpus):

_Honore, who is African American and identifies as Creole, attended colored schools, paid his way through college, and enlisted in the Army in 1971 over his parents' protests._ *MAG*: Mother Jones (2015)

_In two out of three countries in the world, the majority of the population identifies as Christian_*. MAG*: The Christian Century (2012)

_His father's family is from Austria; his mother's is from Syria but identifies as Turkish_. *MAG*: Esquire (2014)

_And it's a job well done that Obama - who also identifies as center-left yet pragmatic - is recognizing by choosing to visit to El Salvador as his Central America stopover._ *NEWS*: Christian Science Monitor (2011)

I was interested to find that:

1.  Almost all the examples are post 2010 - the ngrams don't register anything.

2.  Apart from gender politics, there are examples related to ethnicity, colour, religious allegiance, nationality, and political alignment.  I expect it is leaching into other fields all the time, in the way that trendy new expressions do.


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## JungKim

Thomas Tompion said:


> I didn't really mean to make a claim in that post.  I'm in no position to make claims about this form of words; it's unfamiliar to me.



The reason why I took your statements to be your own claim was that the following particular statements in parentheses sounded (at least to me) like categorical statements, i.e., one form isn't the usual expression and another form is a usual expression. 


Thomas Tompion said:


> ... (*identify as + noun *isn't the usual expression, though* identify oneself as + a noun* - _he identified himself to the police as a student_ (he told the police he was a student) - is a usual expression with another meaning)...



Yes, there was some interrogative element in your statements but those interrogative statements were outside the parentheses, I think. Am I somehow mistaken about this?


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## Thomas Tompion

JungKim said:


> Yes, there was some interrogative element in your statements but those interrogative statements were outside the parentheses, I think. Am I somehow mistaken about this?


You seem to be asking if your conclusion was justified.  If it was, I'm sorry to have been misleading.

The important thing is that you should look at Keith's answers to my questions, and, perhaps, also at what the COCA (AE Corpus) can tell us (look at the end of post #39), if you wish to know how the expression is currently used.


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