Identify is a Transitive Verb

I identify birds. I identify insects. I identify plants.

Toxicodendron radicans. Poison ivy. Something I must avoid in the summer.

Until recently, identify was a transitive verb. The phrase “I identify as a woman” uses “identify” as an intransitive verb. In the prior sentence, “birds” is objective case relative to the verb, but here “woman” is not; it’s part of a prepositional phrase.

We never used to use it that way, and it isn’t clear what that construction’s actually doing. Read literally, it doesn’t mean what those who employ it think it means. Read literally, it means something like this: “As someone who is a woman, I identify… [something, perhaps birds].”

It doesn’t mean “I identify with women,” either, at least not anymore. Putting aside whether women are defined by behaviors with which one might find affinity, “I identify with women” implies that the speaker is not, himself, a woman. But “I identify as a woman” has come to mean, at least in the last decade, “I’m letting you know that I am a woman.”

I guess it’s shorthand for “I identify [myself to you] as a woman.”

My friend Nina once said “all identity is bullshit.” She was speaking generally, not about marginalized identities alone.

Food for thought. Note that identifying as something is only relevant when the claim runs counter to perception. It would be weird if I bothered to “identify” as a white person—I am a white person. That carries certain social and political implications whether I claim the identity or not.

I’d like to identify as an artist. My mom’s an artist and my grandpa was an artist. I took advanced art courses in school and placed in a couple of art fairs. In my twenties I was, by many measures, good at drawing and decent with oils. But I haven’t actually done much art in the last few decades. Not only have I failed to prove that I’m an artist in recent years, but I’ve become rusty, and the art I’ve done thus far is frozen at a particular stage of artistic development. One that certainly falls short of mastery.

If I identified [myself to you] as an artist, you would be well within your rights to disagree. “What have you done lately?” you might say. Or, “that art from your twenties isn’t that great.”

And maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s hubris for me to identify as an artist. Maybe, if I want artist cred, I should go to art school and put in some hours in front of the easel. No one’s required to buy or exhibit my art. No one’s required to call me an artist. No one’s required to think of me as an artist.

That is to say, who we are, in the significant sense, is determined by practical matters and is socially oriented. It is not purely a product of our own imaginations.

I’m not sure it’s healthy to care what people think of you—especially to the extent that you tell them what to think. I’m not sure it’s even cool, as in Fonzie cool, not as in “valid.” The concept of cool has been lost, though. It once meant hip or in style, as it sometimes does now, but the word choice wasn’t accidental. Cool is a synonym for not hot under the collar. Unflappable. Self-confident. Comfortable in one’s skin. Aloof in a way that comes of not needing anyone’s approval. A cool person was a person who gave no fucks.

We still have a concept of hip or in style, of course, but it’s no longer coolness. Somehow it’s nearly the opposite. It’s feeling triggered, announcing one’s real or imagined disorders, language policing, oversharing.

We can’t all be cool, but in my opinion, it’s worth striving for.

“Everything we buy is in the service of identity,” my friend Tegan once said.

I balked at first. Surely I bought that ikat ottoman because I love the artistry of handmade, hand dyed fabrics from Guatemala. Surely I wanted that kelly green dress because the silk is gorgeous and the color caught my eye. Plus I enjoy Dostoevsky’s books, I really do.

But she was right. You can appreciate things without buying them. You can own them without showing them off. I have to admit that I want people to see me as someone worldly, someone cosmopolitan, someone with good taste in fabrics, someone whose home is stocked with art and literature of importance.

I think it’s valuable to see the folly in that.