Trans as an adjective or an identity

A Twitter thread from phyphor 11th June 2021
Starting at:
https://twitter.com/phyphor/status/1403390526783623168?t=neiX-O-osoicBmY-0G7JMQ
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At least one person has suggested that Twitter is ideal for people floating thoughts before they crystallise, so that shit takes can be easily dismissed and good ideas can be strengthened.

So, with that in mind, here's something I'm still fleshing out:
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In English we have a(n imperfect) way of differentiating between adjectival descriptions and identities.

Descriptions tend to be lowercase, but identities tend to be uppercase.
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If you look at me it's obvious I'm white, that's an adjective, but I wouldn't feel comfortable saying I am "White", because the political identity doesn't feel useful or healthy for me.
(The rejection doesn't deny that I benefit from systemic racism, etc.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_identity
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In the US there are important reasons why people with dark skin, i.e. that are, lowercase "b", black, have a cultural identity that exists and why many talk about "Black people". Where the uppercase "b" is integral to the discussion.
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There are, similarly, people in the LGBTQIA+ community (and I still think QUILTBAG+ is a better term) who are happy to say they are gay, but who don't *identify* as Gay. That all Gays are gay people, but not all gay people are Gay.
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This idea of a difference between a description and an identity is, I think, important; it's possible for a word to be a simple adjective or it can be used in a way to suggest and/or reference cultural implications, and that capitalisation can be used to indicate the difference.
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The cultural implications aren't always desirable to a person who could be correctly described by the adjectival term. To go back to an earlier example, with gay people becoming more accepted in society the necessity of being aggressively, politically "out" reduces.
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There is less need for people to be Gay (although with it being Pride Month the individual implications for it being a public part of your persona change, of course) and it's OK to be gay*.

(*You don't have to "do crimes", but I have to at least acknowledge that meme, here.)
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All of which is a slow lead in (although all of the stuff before might also be nonsense and I'm willing to change my mind) to why I think there is a necessary difference between Trans and trans.
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Being Trans, as an identity, is very important to many people. For very good reasons, though, we don't capitalise the term, just like we never really capitalised the g for people with a Gay identity. (That was just me using it for emphasis.)
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The term also comes with a lot of cultural baggage. A lot of people don't want to be saddled with that, even though the fight is still not won so many believe it's important for us to show a unified community.
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Because people want to reject the cultural implications of the identity, which was deliberately formed as an umbrella term to allow us all to band together however we actually exist, they say things like "I'm not trans".
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It's the same thinking behind transphobes who reject being cis. They don't want the cultural implications of that label.
Ultimately, though, whether someone's gender identity is a trans or a cis one should just be a description of it, with no value judgement.
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The terms "cis" and "trans" should simply describe whether someone's gender identity (if they have a gender and, if they do, what it is) matches what was assigned to them at birth.
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That these terms also have political identities tied to them has both up and downsides.
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Unfortunately the fact that the same term, with the same capitalisation, is both a descriptive, factual adjective, and a political identity, means people who want to reject the political identity have to reject the adjective.
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In particular I'm seeing many nonbinary people, especially younger nonbinary people, explicitly reject being trans, even though the strict definition of the adjective clearly applies.
They were assigned a binary identity, of some kind, at birth and that's not who they are.
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Heck, I've even seen people say that "cis and trans is just another gender binary so obviously it doesn't apply to nonbinary people". I can understand that perception of the terms "as identities", but as adjectives that doesn't make sense.
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Definitionally either one or the other adjective must be true about someone's gender identity, assuming they were assigned a gender at birth.
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I have, in the past, strongly pushed back when nonbinary people say that aren't trans because I was assuming the adjective term was being falsely rejected.
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But I think I can now understand and accept that what people are doing is rejecting the identity.
I think that them doing so is harmful, because trans people are still under attack, and it's getting worse.
But it's also their choice.
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Long story short* I unreservedly apologise to anyone who I made uncomfortable by appearing to reject their identity when I misunderstood what was being said. I was not meaning to police identity, although that's how it came across, only use an adjective.

I'm sorry.

*Too late!
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Shit, I forgot to say that the one example that really helped me form the thought is that people who are "hard of hearing" are deaf, but there's also Deaf culture. And even if someone could suddenly start to hear they could well still be Deaf, even if they were no longer "deaf".