Kinda makes me think of my mom, who is one of those hypochondriac/chronically ill people who absolutely identifies herself by her diseases/disorders... which change every few years, making it all the more creepy. All of her friends are from whichever chronic illness forum she's on currently, it's all she talks about, and at once point, in the midst of trying to (utterly unnecessarily) "educate" me about Lyme Disease, she actually uttered the phrase "honey, it defines who and what I am!"
I was utterly creeped out by that, and everything it represents, in any form. Like parents who have no identity outside of being parents, or who jam themselves into tidy little boxes of occupation and religion and genitalia and hobby. People aren't that simple... or at least, they shouldn't be.
I was talking to Pete the other day about some of our friends whose hobby, basically, is being lesbians, and how limiting that is, when you define your whole sense of self by something that's actually borderline irrelevant. It's like having your hobby be having long hair, for instance. Or, if you're Dok, being bald. Or having a clit. These are incidentals, people; the world is way more interesting than that, and so can you.