You were right

What do you mean by accepting? We accept them as people, and we have great compassion.

Do you really mean validating? I don't think I have any moral responsibility to validate other people at all.

Ego - the disconnect is this Same for a transwoman. If they had transitioned / been treated at a young age, they would have experienced all the discrimination a girl gets because of being female. There would have been some biological issues that would not have affected them but generally they would have experienced life as a girl and a woman along with everything that entails

'some biological issues' - those biological issues are what makes a woman a woman. No matter how early they transition, a male cannot become female because they just don't have the equipment. Yes, they can take on external characteristics, they can therefore receive some of the experience of being a woman, but they can't ever actually be a woman.

We have great compassion for someone who is so unhappy, but it can't change biological reality.

As to why they would do it - my assumption was that they're trying to find anything that will relieve their pain, they hope that by doing this they will feel better - pretty much the same reasons any unhappy person tries things that might harm them - be it taking drugs, having a baby in a failing relationship, becoming obsessed with work, anorexia, or any number of other things.

link

I do have sympathy for the turmoil that transpeople live. I'm not going to stop using logic and living in reality though. Also, I don't think women pretending that trans people are exactly like them, will do anything to ease their suffering. It wont make them 'pass' any better. And its men that abuse and ridicule them. And men that have influence over employment etc gemerally

Ego, you mentioned choice (or lack of it for trans women) and feelings of desperation and suicidal thoughts are awful for anyone to experience but it doesn't automatically make the person correct in their beliefs. Feelings of desperation / suicide being the only solution are experienced by many but it doesn't mean they actually don't have options, but they can't find an alternative and often need help and support to find options.

There is a massive series of 3 threads that covers all this already, so I'm not repeating it all here. I will try and link in a minute but 'female' is a word, a label used to describe the half of the population who gestate babies; xx chrosomes, uterus, vagina, mammary gland's etc. That is what the word means. It doesn't mean someone who wears frocks and cries at sad films

Ego, thank you. I'm too tired right now to post coherently on this but I think you've asked some valid questions.

Harvey, of course it's possible. Don't be ridiculous.

o be honest ego I'm not interested I 'why'. I don't have any I in trans-issues, beyond the impact on women

It is not possible to transition from a man into a woman. The reason why, doesn't alter this

And you think a white person transitioning to black, doesn't drop down the privilege ladder? In America??

1. think what Rachel is an indicator that she does have mental health issues

2. you actually know nothing of Rachels 'i ternal struggles' or 'motivations'

3. yes TG people do choose to transition. Many choose not to

4. the drivers do not actual make it different, in terms of whether the objectives can be met. They cant be in both cases

I think it is important to remember that from everything they have written, Talusan seems quite damaged and delusional. I am at a loss to explain why the guardian keeps giving them a platform.

In the more mainstream debate, there does seem to be a clear argument by some trans women that "I feel like a woman, therefore I am what a woman is, therefore this is what a woman's body is". RD's situation seems to me that you could apply the same arguments and therefore she is black.

Except we can all see she isn't .

Andd elsas if you were to be using those differences between the sexes to say transgender and transracial are completely different. You would be arguing that transracial was much more 'doable' and that transgender is not

I think Rachel Doelzal is the best thing to happen for feminists regarding transgender people

What perfect timing. Maybe her and Caitlyn could do photo-shoots together

partial do you think black people have different brains to white people? Otherwise what point are you making?

That article is by a very odd person who seems to struggle with reality. How can Dolezan only 'identify' as black but Talusan is a woman? Surely it is as transphobic to deny Dolezan's 'black identity' as it was to say that Talusan is a man in a dress (the writer has been/is involved with someone who apparently said this to them and has kicked up an almighty stink about it)?

It's incredibly dismissive to say that Dolezan only changed her appearance for political reasons (and it does sound much more complicated in any case) but claim that all transgenders have no choice because they are actually female.

In the comments: "Rachel Doelzal's claims of being black have neither impact on or comparison to being transgender. Whether Dolezal's actions were taken as a deception by the black community is between her and that community." Does that mean the community of women can reject Jenner, Talusan and other trans women then? I've not seen that presented as an option anywhere, indeed any slightly negative comment is leped on as being hateful, bigoted, oppressive and violent.

Just massively hypocritical.

See - the other side of this is that people often say they 'acquire' color/accent etc if they move (this is mentioned in the article). For someone growing up in Nigeria, that has dark skin, they obviously are aware of their skin color, their nation's history, and the economic position of their country. however, if they then move to a predominantly white country they suddenly acquire a new dimension to their self awareness that wasn't there before.

In the example of a person of a child with dark skin growing up in Iceland, they will have a very different experience from both white children in their environment, and black children in other countries. It is very difficult to understand how that would be for someone, and they may struggle to self identify with one particular group, or feel that they partially identify with many. However, their identity would be based upon a real experience of who they were. In the case of a man becoming a woman, he may well have felt that he wanted to be/should be a woman his entire life, but he didn't grow up as a woman, and he didn't grow up in a 100% male world, looking like a woman. I have no problem with people wanted to be trans gender or gender fluid, but I do have concerns about people who then claim that they were really a woman (or whatever) all their lives. They simply haven't lived through the same experiences (and this could be a cause of great unhappiness for them) so they should acknowledge how they have lived a different life, albeit an unhappy/unsettled one. (So I'm neither radical or liberal, or maybe both?)

Agh I wrote a long post in support OP and lost it.

hmm - the argument that transgender people have spent their lives feeling like they were in the wrong body is quite questionable. In order to qualify for the surgeries to take place, it used to be the case that patients had to go through some fairly rigorous and odious (some would say traumatic) 'testing' (or interrogation.) Before they would be accepted for the medical procedures, they had to convince a team of doctors that they were in fact desperately unhappy, to the point of suicide, and simply could not continue in their current physical form. There is a lot of first person documentation from the earliest trans-gender patients that fit along with this narrative.

This is now being quite seriously questioned. More modern gender theorists claim that the narrative reflects more the requirements of how the medical profession needed to 'prove' an illness/syndrome/whatever, than how many people actually feel.

there is a big split. Some people (generally labelled radical feminists) believe that if you haven't grown up experiencing the life of a woman, then you can't ever really claim to BE a woman. That when a man decides to enter into a woman-only, space, no matter what medical procedures he has been through, he is invading and trying to appropriate that space. Others (liberal feminists) believe that we should accept all people who choose to label themselves as female.

There are some similarities here between transgender and trans-race (for want of a better phrase) - that someone of a higher status is wanting to be part of a lower status group, and feels the need to somehow take on that persona, even to become an 'expert' on what it means to be part of that group.

My personal opinion is that there must be a huge number of reasons why a person wants to adopt/become an identity which they aren't. We all do it to some extend, but the more notable examples attract a lot of discussion and we can't just ascribe one reason to those people as if they all have the same thoughts and feelings.

However, I would be very unhappy for someone who had spent their life (until a certain age) being treated as male to try and tell me how I should feel/think/behave. To put in into another context, I moved to the US when I was 39. I cannot imagine a time when I will claim that I know what it is like to be an American, even in 30 years from now.