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Weekend freedom question: What do you “self-identify” as for fun and profit?

I don’t really care, and I suspect most of you don’t really care, how people “self-identify.” Boys who feel more like girls? Girls who feel more like boys? Men who feel like puppy dogs? White women who think they’re black? People who want to have themselves made over to resemble serpents or cats? Fine. Dandy. Don’t care. Vive la difference! and all that. It’s a big, diverse world, and there’s room for all, as long as they’re peaceable. If people want to get surgery or have tattoos or cross-dress or whatever pleases them, more power to them as long as they don’t foist the bill on hapless taxpayers.

I even have my own long-ago experience in the “self-identifying” area. As I suspect many of us do.

But oh my, we have now gone at such dizzying speed from a healthy (and overdue) acceptance of people’s differences to endless whining that we must accept anyone and everyone’s “self-identification” as our biological, social, and legal reality. We’re asked — nay, demanded — to accept what is subjective at best and demonstrably untrue at worst and to live with the consequences. If we don’t, then woe betide us throwbacks and bigots. Because increasingly both law and social pressure are on the side of the “self-identified.”

Never mind that they may change their self-identifications tomorrow. Never mind that the entire business becomes more outlandish the more it is indulged.

So. This week’s freedom question is strictly for laughs, even if they are rather bitter and cynical laughs: What would you self-identify as in order to get some useful benefit for yourself in this crazy politicized world?

Bear Bussjaeger already went on record saying he’d self-identify as a too-big-to-fail bank so he could get lots of money. My first inclination when faced with all this nonsense is to self-identify as a houseplant — the benefit being never to have to waste brainpower on other people’s noisy demands for attention and special privileges.

But hey, self-identification is today’s big thing. So what will you be when you come out of your closet and self-identify as something other than you appear?

22 Comments

  1. MamaLiberty
    MamaLiberty May 28, 2016 12:12 pm

    I’ve spent a lifetime striving for reality. 🙂 What you see is what you get. Now, I have plenty of different roles: mother (eldest is now 50 years old, but I’m still his mother), grandmother, nurse, writer, webmaster, gardener, gunslinger, teacher, curmudgeon and partial hermit… and lots of little ones.

    Don’t want to be anything else, just better at those things I am.

    But, naturally, I don’t really care much who accepts me in those roles, or not. I even wrote something about the PC nonsense:
    Not My Problem. http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/?p=5108

    But if I could speculate on your question, I think I’d like to “self identify” as a tall, thin, beautiful red head with lots of money. I kinda doubt anyone’s going to buy that. LOL

  2. Joel
    Joel May 28, 2016 12:24 pm

    ‘to get some benefit for myself in this crazy politicized world?’ Easy one.

    Strictly for that purpose, not because it’s what I really want to be or anything, I shall henceforth self-identify as a black gay woman tenured professor of black gay woman studies. Who’s 1/4 Cherokee. And, what the hell, rich.

    Actually, I was thinking that what every man secretly wants to self-identify as – but few do – is a guy who works at a profession where friends who come to visit look around and say, “Woah! Cool!”

  3. Jake
    Jake May 28, 2016 12:32 pm

    I self-identify as a combo of ‘Jack Reacher’ and Chris Kyle, whereas in reality I’m more like the character Clint Eastwood played in ‘Gran Torino.’ In other words, get off my lawn!

  4. Pat
    Pat May 28, 2016 1:37 pm

    Well, as a kid at play I “self-identified” as a sort of Native American Wonder Woman in the old west (with a necklace of jet and turquoise that turned the bad guys to dust). Nowadays I’d be happy to be a small orchardist on a 5-acre farm, with a farmstand and market nearby to sell apples and herbs. (It’d still be nice to have that necklace; I’d take it to Washington, DC and flash it around once a year.)

  5. MJR
    MJR May 28, 2016 1:47 pm

    If I was going to “self identify” my first inclination would be to say that I’m “just a guy.” As near to normal a person as one can be with all the failings that everybody else has. Old enough to understand this and make allowances for it. Young enough not to really care too much about it or what others may say about it.

    However having written the above I would also like to self identify as Lazarus Long the ultimate been there, done that dude.

  6. jed
    jed May 28, 2016 1:48 pm

    Buckaroo Banzai

    To really game the system for personal benefit, I’d have to self-identify as an ethically-bereft politician. But I have no stomach for that. Considering the success of certain internet intrepeneurs, that’d be a good choice, and far more tolerable.

  7. Keith
    Keith May 28, 2016 1:51 pm

    I like Pat’s self identity, that would make a great superhero. 🙂 Most people who self identify as something don’t do it for the benefits. If they did they would self identify as a straight white man, we (that’s how I self identify) get maximum benefits with none of the effort. As for the fantasy part of this, I would self identify as the afore mentioned SWM, who is born into a rich family. Anything after that is gravy, WOOT!

  8. Kent McManigal
    Kent McManigal May 28, 2016 6:05 pm

    I would self identify as a shape shifter, so I could get whatever benefit I thought I “deserved” (eww… that word!) that day.

    Today I want to be Neanderthal and squat in a cave roasting mammoth chunks on a stick over a fire. Wearing smelly skins with a nice stone-tipped spear next to me.

    Tomorrow, maybe something else.

  9. RustyGunner
    RustyGunner May 28, 2016 6:13 pm

    I identify as Charles Koch, and I want my damn ATM card NOW.

  10. Francisco Gruel
    Francisco Gruel May 28, 2016 6:46 pm

    Mr. Miyagi!

  11. LarryArnold
    LarryArnold May 28, 2016 7:47 pm

    I self-identify as the silver-tongued devil who can talk sense into SJWs and inspire them to abandon their safe spaces for the adventure of facing life’s challenges, converting them to “the glass is half full” people from their present negative “the glass is so bone dry I have to pi$$ in it” attitude.

    White male privilege ought to be good for something.

  12. Kevin Wilmeth
    Kevin Wilmeth May 28, 2016 10:36 pm

    Ooh, prurient fun!

    On one hand, I’d simply be honest. I self-identify as a peaceful anarchist, which means (ignore the irony of this being the political part) that now others have to MYOFB and stop using the State to get what you want. Natch!

    Alternatively, thinking pure cockapoo: I self-identify as Che. You worship me–look, I’m right there on your tee shirt–so empty your possessions into The Cause bucket and line up for your Lubyanka Breakfast. (Note that my self-identification as Che stops at the Bolivian border–where I then self-identify as Aladdin. Where’s that genie?)

    Finally, to be most true to what seems like the spirit of the exercise: I self-identify as a trust-fund academic and wildly influential musician…with an honorary membership in the Pink Pistols.

    (One could do this all day.)

  13. Unclezip
    Unclezip May 29, 2016 8:17 am

    I believe Dan Quail beat you to the house plant identification.

  14. b
    b May 29, 2016 9:07 am

    Keith: “they would self identify as a straight white man, we (that’s how I self identify) get maximum benefits with none of the effort”

    Hasn’t worked for me in the past 55 years.

  15. LibertyNews
    LibertyNews May 29, 2016 1:20 pm

    A pocket gopher.

  16. capn
    capn May 29, 2016 2:38 pm

    Is the job of a SWM, salty old seadog (who has swallowed the anchor) and surly curmudgeon already taken?
    That’s who I “self-identify” as these days.

    There was a period of rum swilling, boat sailing, skirt chasing “Sailor on Leave” action a while back but that person only comes out occasionally these days. ahem …

    Hmmm … I guess that I would be a Federal Reserve Bank Senior Officer with a “Too Big to Fail” card right here in my pocket. (pat, pat)
    Oh and make that a SWM Senior Bank Officer thank you so much.
    Grabbing for all of the low hanging fruit eh? … Huh? What? Who said that?

  17. capn
    capn May 29, 2016 2:47 pm

    Oh and on that Congresswoman berating the College Professor?

    Isn’t it amazing that they (folks with her self righteous belligerent attitude) cannot seem to see the beam in their own eye while they berate someone for the speck of dust in theirs. They must break all of the mirrors in their houses when they get elected to political office. Maybe?

  18. Fred
    Fred May 30, 2016 6:42 am

    I identify as part of a team that captures critters to be given a 3 day course in H-s natural law as explained by the Holy writ, Magna Carta, Locke, Jefferson, et al. At the end of the “voluntary” course the capture team would explain to them that their property will be taken against their will and their lively hood destroyed (turnabout is fair play) if they return to their evil ways of gathering power to themselves instead of ignoring free people and only harming those that seek to separate us from our freedom. Further explanation, with live examples, of what those that still maintain their unrepentant ways will receive, such as defenestration, lamposting, tar and feathers, and rails will be provided. Seeing their fellow species, in such states of being, my just turn them around.

    If only.

  19. Mr.shawn
    Mr.shawn May 31, 2016 4:38 am

    Oh this is an easy one.
    I identify as a senator, either party will do. (No real difference)

  20. ILTim
    ILTim May 31, 2016 6:52 am

    I identify as a tax-exempt religious organization whose mission is community betterment through the fundamental and long standing route of self-betterment.

  21. Historian
    Historian June 7, 2016 6:10 am

    Whenever I am asked to identify what group I idenify with, I don’t use any of the preprinted categroies, but check the ‘other’ box and write in either ” sapient mammalian”. Or ” human”.

    Depends on how bloodyminded I’m feeling…..

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