Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen
“Its common today to talk about an individual’s ‘identity’ and mean the group or groups they either associate themselves with (i.e., take themselves to be members of) or that they are, ascriptively, taken by others to be associated with. People ‘identify as’ straight, gay, trans, black, Hispanic, Latino, Conservative, Christian, Jewish, etc. etc. etc. What is this really? On one influential account, from (I think) Kwame Appiah (see his The Ethics of Identity), to ‘identify with’ a group is to take reasons from that group as one’s own reasons. This strikes me as a plausible way to understand the term. If Joe identifies as Hispanic, he would take reasons common to other Hispanic people as his own. Ascriptively, I gather, others would assume — rightly or wrongly — that Joe has such reasons. All of that seems entirely plausible. I also think it is (if accurate) unfortunate.” (03/23/26)
https://prosociallibertarians.substack.com/p/identifying-with-politics-and-life