I'd say identity studies aren't real academics by virtue of lacking rigor, lacking consistent models, and being unable to do studies that produce reproducible results. At best identity studies is a laundry list of gripes, with associated labels. Even soft sciences and humanities try to be something other than pure opinion, they do more than create mere labels and pretend it is useful knowledge.

well, idk about rigor, there have been some studies done about transgender stuff... though honestly this transgender stuff is what made me kinda start to question science more because it really just doesn't seem right to me even if the numbers are there. and there has afaik been anthropological work done in other cultures and in western subcultures, that's just descriptive and can be plenty rigorous.

I never really took the identity stuff for humanities (though one humanities class I took I later remembered when reading lists of subversive frankfurt school authors.) so I don't really know what's in there and how it compares to other humanities stuff.

eta: I was censored here on SaidIt without explanation