> is stupid; be proud of the decisions you took

Your views are your views. My examples were to give a hint of the identities that exist. Be aware that others do strongly disagree with you. Suppose my father had risked his life before I was born in order to save 25 people. I could be proud of his actions even though I had nothing to with it. If you do not call that feeling "pride", then do you have a better name? Or is your point that I should not have or express those feelings?

The gay pride parade in San Francisco, for example, is a celebration of the "the rebellion of LGBT patrons of the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village in response to a routine police raid on June 27, 1969." In general, it is in honor of the many people who fought for rights and recognition, and support for those who still face difficulties in being LGBT in more than the descriptive name you want it to be. Eg, see http://chrisstedman.religionnews.com/2014/11/04/gay-pride-at... and http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2014/11/01/peter-boghossia... .

I believe it is both reasonable and appropriate to feel pride in those cases, even though it was not the product of direct work by those who feel pride. I think you will find that your views are in the small minority. Australian Prime Minister Rudd was "absolutely proud" of the Australian involvement in Gallipoli campaign, which happened decades before he was born. Similarly, US President Reagan, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day said of those who died while he was living in California, 'We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.'

> Most of these don't denote identity, they are just descriptions

Yes, that's what I wrote.

I then followed it up with "identity comes into play when there are actions used to achieve what you consider to be a positive distinctiveness." I even gave an example of the difference between 'runner' as a description and 'runner' as part of an identity.

> E.g. if I know someone is a Muslim, I can reasonably assume that s/he will observe Ramadan

You have just described an example of identity.

People will often say that the newborn of two Muslim people is itself Muslim. That is a description.

When that child grows up, and voluntarily follows the rules around Ramadan, then ask that person "why are you fasting during the day?" The answer will be some variation of "I'm Muslim, and that's what we do".

That's both description and identity.

> Most of the above are fundamentally different from biological facts such as sex and race

Without loss of generality, I will assume that you were born biologically male. I agree, that is not identity, that is description.

Now you are an adult. Why do you not wear dresses, skirts, and other clothes that are typically worn only by women? For example, if you could get a nice blouse and skirt combination which fit you well, for only $80, how much more would you be willing to spend to get a shirt and slacks? And why?

We apply the name "transvestite" or "cross-dresser" for those people who dress in clothing that is typically used by the other gender. This can be purely descriptive. Perhaps you wear skirts because they are cheaper than slacks. Male train drivers in Stockholm wore skirts because the temperatures were too hot and the dress code allows skirts but not shorts. But if you ask a dress-wearing male why he is wearing a dress, and the answer is something like "I like the look", then that's positive and intrinsic distinctiveness, which is closer to what people mean by a transgender identity.

Or if you ask some men from the UK, apparently Stockholm men in general "dress like girls". http://www.thelocal.se/discuss/index.php?showtopic=18090

Part of your identity is what you wear. You likely do not wear dresses, even when there are advantages to doing so (lighter, easier to pack, cooler, cheaper, etc.). You likely never were put in the situation where you had to decide. Thus, you don't recognize that you have a straight-dresser identity because you've never thought of it. It's what you grew up with, so you think your choice is natural, when it's merely one of the culturally defined easiest choices.

Even inside the world of "male clothes" there are many identities. We see that in the phrase "must dress professionally", which is code for fitting into a certain cultural identity. If you ask someone in a suit why they wear a suit, "my job requires it" is more descriptive while "I am a manager" is more an expression of identity.

So you can see that a word can be used as a description, and can also be used as a form of identity.

The same holds with "male". It can be descriptive, but it's also used to describe identity. It used to be that males were secretaries, and males were nurses, so there's no intrinsic genetic basis for that choice. It wasn't until the Victorian era when that changed, as with Florence Nightingale's work to professionalize nursing roles for women. (Nightingale wrote ' In one sense, I do believe I am “like a man,” as Parthe says. But how? In having sympathy. ... Women crave for being loved, not for loving.' What a far cry from the current stereotype that women are all about nurturing and loving.)

If someone is a nurse because it was the only job that was available, then that's a more descriptive label. If a better paying job opens up tomorrow, that person might jump ship. But if the person answers "I am a nurse because I love caring for people in need" or "I come from a family of nurses and it felt like the best fit for me", then that's more an expression of identity.

Just like someone who is born female might want to wear "men's" clothing, someone born female might want to do things which are typically done by those born male. For example, a girl who enjoys getting dirty, climbs trees, plays with cars, and does other things which our culture associates with "boys" is sometimes called a "tomboy". This can be interpreted as purely descriptive, but it's not. As the girl gets older, that term gets increasingly used as a negative word meant to guide the girl into more gender appropriate roles. Some females will use "tomboy" as a form of identity, like this question at https://www.quora.com/My-husband-keeps-saying-that-I-am-not-... "My husband keeps saying that I am not a girl because I don't like girly things. I am a tomboy. I suck at emotions too. How do I explain him why I feel bad when he says that?" (Some of the answers in that are chock full of culturally coded gender stereotypes.) http://thefbomb.org/2013/06/tomboy-exceptionalism-im-not-lik... gives a different view on "Tomboy Exceptionalism."

As you say, "male" is a description that is applied to many people based on biological attributes. But "male" also means the set of cultural roles associated with being someone born a male. If someone born a female would prefer one of those typically male cultural roles, then that's often described as being a female who identifies as a man, or at least has a transgender identity.

> But he's still a man, biologically.

Exactly. Hence that has as little to do with one's identity as being right-handed or blue-eyed or straight-haired. But if you are born male, then you grew up in a culture which placed certain expectations on what it means to be a male in the culture, and you likely took one of those routes. It's easy to for you to identify as a man because the culture made that the easy option for you.

(We also have people who are straight-haired who curl their hair, and curly-haired people who straighten their hair. We have people whose hair is greying so they dye it to hide the grey, and people who dye their hair to try out a new look. All of them fall in the category of people who want to be different than how they were biologically born.)

BTW, race is not a "biological fact". It is first and foremost a social construct. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28human_categorization%2... .

Regarding your "geek" example, you regard it as an aspect of "natural tendencies and interests". This is an essentialist viewpoint. How do you know that you were born in that and only that way? A non-essentialist view is that as a child you had many different traits and propensities. The culture you grew up in supported some and rejected others, and so guided your development. In western cultures, it's generally more acceptable for males to be loners, and work on "hard" science, while females are expected to socialize and think that "math is hard - let's go shopping", or to go to college for an "MRS" degree.

If you as a baby were adopted into a different culture, you might well have ended up as a fisherman instead of a "geek", despite your beliefs in a natural tendency toward geekness.

Instead, you chose to take on the identity of a geek, including likely the clothing choices and attitudes. Nor is it a co-incidence that these 'natural tendencies' of yours happen to end up with you making similar choices to others. That's clear from looking at the history; geek styles change over time, and coherently. This is geek culture, and geek identity.

Another part of your identity as a geek is that you can tell who is a geek and who is not, and that others share your definition.

Being a geek is therefore part of your identity.