Methods and systems for protecting object identity in an object-oriented programming language. An object from a class for protecting object identity is instantiated in memory. The object includes a first method that determines whether two object values are equal, and a second method that overrides an identity method associated with a superclass of the object by invoking the first method, the identity method for determining the identity of two objects. The object is immediately locked in response to the instantiating, so that the identity of the locked object is protected from threads that attempt to synchronize on the locked object.