Identity, as anyone who has been reading my posts for years should know, is (in my view) an ideological construct, not a reality. It is a social invention of metaphysical individualism. Scanning the OED on this is not decisive, and can be used in different ways, but it seems to me it supports the view that only in capitalist society do individuals have an identity. When from the 17th c. on the question "Who am I?" gets asked, explicitly or implicitly, it can't be answered with (for example) a medieval phrase, "John the tinsmith," Robert Earl of Downsbury, etc. The Delphic Oracle when it commanded men (I dont' know about women) to "Know Yourself" meant "Know your place in visible social hierarchy." And this is what I think both Socrates & Plato meant when they echoed that Oracle -- which is one of the reasons that Ted and James Daly have so far not convinced me in their arguments for Plato's ethical positions.
I don't _have_ a history; I AM my history, and therefore it is absurd to speak of my "identity." Homosexual, Heterosexual, etc. are _identities_, and therefore ideological categories rather than transhistorical realities.
Carrol