If I can change my sex, why can't I change my race?

Also, I realise that we are conflating gender/race which are academically, very different things. But superficially, to the average person, are they not immovable parts of ourselves and therefore comparable?

I think there is an underlying conflict in the liberal position (as espoused on Buzzfeed, The Guardian, etc.) of encouraging self identification whilst gathering up the pitchforks for Dolezal. And don't misread me here, i'm no Dolezal supporter. I strongly believe that what she did was wrong. But I see a glaring faultline in that line of thought, and that cognitive disonance is just accepted.

I was going to ask the same question a few weeks back OP but didn't get around to it. Very interesting and complex issue worth exploring.

To my mind, Caitlyn Jenner winning 'Woman of the Year' (and the rest) is just as offensive as Dolezal teaching African American Studies from a first person perspective. Both of them received societal benefits from what was essentially their own fiction.

But I think the issue is a white person wanting to identify as black. They really can't. It's like me as a straight woman saying that I identify as homosexual but living my life exactly the same as I do now as a heterosexual woman. Which means that I would never experience what it means to be gay in any true sense and I would indeed be insulting the gay community by saying that I could. You simply can't identify with being black if you are white from a white family, even if you did have African family members 150 years ago. I'm struggling with just how offensive it is to suggest you could!

'race' is far less clear than sex where almost everyone is born with male or female bodies. With race people are mixes and attitudes are mixed up. ( In the 1920s a black man was prosecuted for having a relationship with a white woman and acquitted because the woman, being Italian, wasn't white.)

Obama talks about coming to define himself as african-american and not white (like his mother) or african (like his father) because even though none of his ancestors were slaves his life as a dark-skinned man in the US was shaped by the wider history of slavery. Fuck knows I'm not qualified to argue with him about that, but what if he'd been born paler? Would he have the right to define as african american if he were blonde and blue eyed despite having a black father? And if not why not? What's the boundary for being white? Put another way, what if Ian Duncan Smith wanted to define as Japanese? If I had a Maori great-grandmother could I call myself Maori? I'm not the biggest Rachel Dolezal fan, to put it mildly, but there is an argument to be made that so much of what we call 'race' is made in our minds that the scope for self-definition is pretty wide.

But then I'm a tumblr loving fellow travelling dupe who likes the word 'cis' and doesn't see much of an issue with people claiming a different gender to their genitalia. We are the stories we tell about ourselves and all of us lie one way or another.

I believe Ollenas has it correct. A white person cannot identify as black because their outward appearance has never made them the target of racism and oppression due to the colour of their skim like a black person does on a daily basis. They can say they are black but they will never live as a black person because they don't have black skin. I think it's very offensive to suggest that as a white person that you identify as black.

Good point !

The US had a history of racial 'passing' - light-skinned mixed race people inventing entirely white backgrounds for themselves so as to escape slavery (and later on Jim Crow laws). There's even a clever reading of Gatsby that sees him as passing.

"To change gender is only really possible if that person "passes" as male, respectively as female, i.e. if others are genuinely mistaken about their biological sex. Only then are women treated like equals by men, only then are men treated like objects by their fellow men."
I think this has been the experience for some transmen -- once case I recall was someone who after transition was assumed by coworkers to be the former workers brother, and they seemed all too keen to comment on how much better he was than his sister.

And I think we possibly have a similar experience with people of various ethnic origins who historically passed for white. I think I need to look up Fredi Washington and see if I can find the 1934 film 'Imitation of Life'. And then Merle Oberon, who "Rather than disown her mother, Oberon passed her parent off as a servant."

isn't this about confusing gender and sex though?
gender is a social construct so anyone can adopt the signifiers of the other gender, and may more or less succesfully pass as belonging to the other gender. As VV says, this is most succesful where there is a longstanding social rule about this. Many gender critical people are relaxed about this to the extent that ' I don't mind if he wants to wear a dress/call himself Jane/use female pronouns'. But sex cannot be changed and this is where we part company- for the few safe spaces and services that women have gained are relevant to our sex, not our 'gender'. It doesn't matter how much or how little a woman or girl conforms to the prescribed gender roles, she is still, bluntly, in danger from men in a way that men arent. I grant that men may also be in danger from other men, perhaps especially if they are gender non conforming, but in that case they need protection in different spaces/services, not ours.

I think that gender is a social construct so you can 'change gender' but not change sex because it is a biological fact that you can't. You can't change chromosomes or DNA

Hmm, I don't think this is in fact always possible. Women cannot change gender, except perhaps in tiny cultures that have rules for this, and where those rules are enforced on men, too. (Sworn Virgins in Albania, for example). Women will always be perceived by men as objects to be raped when they are identified as biologically female. Only very strict social rules can maybe change this.

Men use gender to oppress women, it is them who make the rules, and that is why men, to an extent, can change gender in a way women cannot - but they will always be given male privilege if/when they are recognized as biologically male, even though they manage to be also given (and thereby destroy) all the protections from male violence that women fought long and hard for.

To change gender is only really possible if that person "passes" as male, respectively as female, i.e. if others are genuinely mistaken about their biological sex. Only then are women treated like equals by men, only then are men treated like objects by their fellow men.

Don't our external signifiers of sex or race influence how we are perceived by others and it is their response to that is socially conditioned (see the difference between a red head being teased in the play ground in England but fawned over in China)

Some of us belong to the privileged group (sometimes the oppressor group) through biological happenstance. Some of us don't but can "pass", either with a bit of effort (choice of clothes, hair styling for example) or whether we want to or not. But that doesn't change what is there in our DNA, regardless of how we present to the world.

Sorry, MyNameIs, Stefonknee actually is a six year old girl because that's what they have said they are... [anger]

Oh, I also meant to add that we can claim to feel older/younger than we are, but a 20-year-old cannot say with certainty that they feel like a 70-year-old (how would they know? - even assuming all 70-year-olds felt the same somehow). Even identifying as younger seems tricky - although we were all small children once, our memories of that time would be imperfect, and also we can't just un-learn everything we have learnt since then or undo the physical changes (or get people to treat us in genuinely the same way), so identifying as a 4-year-old simply wouldn't be the same as being one.

Sometimes I wonder whether a better analogy is that of age. It's still not perfect (I don't think anything would be), but does highlight some of the concerns around transitioning based on "feelings":

• We can change the age we "act" (dressing older/younger, dying hair, getting a walking stick or a dummy), and not everyone matches the stereotypes about their age, but it's impossible to genuinely change your age
• We wouldn't expect someone to be given age-related privileges based on how old they "feel inside" or want to be (e.g. you wouldn't be allowed to retire early or get a free senior bus pass, nor would you be allowed to pay child fares)
• Legal restrictions and protections are based on biological age, not feelings (sorry teens, you still can't buy vodka or drive just because you feel 25!).
• We recognise that children need special protection and safe spaces. Adults are allowed into them in certain circumstances (e.g. being vetted before being allowed to work with children), but there would be no question of an adult being allowed to attend nursery, swimming lessons etc as a "child" based on their feeling like one, and most people would be wary of their motives (Stephonknee, anyone?...)
• Sports are segregated by age, due to the natural variations in weight, strength etc. We would not allow adults to compete in junior events (unfair), nor young children to play in adult rugby matches (dangerous), even if they feel older/younger.
• Healthcare is (and has to be) based on actual age, not how old you feel
• If someone claims their age to be very different from what it appears to be, we aren't required to go along with that (for legal or child protection purposes, for example) without some kind of proof
• There are some medical conditions where an individual may (physically or mentally) age more quickly or slowly than normal. But it's recognised that these are anomalies, not some kind of proof that age is meaningless.

Any thoughts?

Race is a social construct, and a relatively recent one. I think the English invented it to justify their oppression of the Irish

I don't think so. They might have taken advantage of it but they didn't invent it.

Come, tell me why it is that the Celts and the Germans are fierce, while the Hellenes and Romans are, generally speaking, inclined to political life and humane, though at the same time unyielding and warlike? Why the Egyptians are more intelligent and more given to crafts, and the Syrians unwarlike and effeminate, but at the same time intelligent, hot-tempered, vain and quick to learn? For if there is anyone who does not discern a reason for these differences among the nations, but rather declaims that all this so befell spontaneously, how, I ask, can he still believe that the universe is administered by a providence?

Said Hippocrates of Cos (yes that one as in hippocratic oath)

Or an historian of the 3rd century Han Dynasty describing barbarians of blond hair and green eyes as resembling "the monkeys from which they are descended."

Or

The Invention of Race in the European MIddle Ages I: Race Studies, Modernity, and the Middle Ages | Geraldine Heng - Academia.edu
www.academia.edu/321674/The_Invention_of_Race_in_the_European_MIddle_Ages_I_Race_Studies_Modernity_and_the_Middle_Ages

I think that gender is a social construct so you can 'change gender' but not change sex because it is a biological fact that you can't. You can't change chromosomes or DNA.

Race is a little more complex and nuanced in that not everyone who comes from an ethnic background will obviously 'appear' to have come from that background. I know a woman with very pale skin and red hair who has dual heritage. All of her siblings have much darker skin, 'afro hair' and are 'visually' dual heritage.

Her Dad (Caribbean) didn't believe she was his child until a DNA test confirmed it. Her heritage is white European and Afro-Caribbean; she carries all the history of her BME heritage. She identifies as dual heritage because that IS her heritage.

But she doesn't experience the day to day ingrained prejudice that her siblings do because she doesn't look 'non white' to the rest of the world.

So her race is an undisputed biological fact but the wider world doesn't 'see' it. And she has been accused of appropriating BME culture in the past or 'identifying' as BME when she isn't. But she is.

That's just one example. I know another family with both parents being dual heritage and 2 DC being 'visibly' dual heritage and one DC having pale skin and straight blonde hair.

I know an extended family of Pakistani origin with pale skin and very red hair.

Race is a social construct, and a relatively recent one. I think the English invented it to justify their oppression of the Irish. (Yes, the Irish. They had all those "scientific" proofs that the typical Irish skull was different from the English one, and deducing someone's personality from the form of their skull was all the rage back then. I think that was before they used it to justify enslaving black people, but I might misremember.)

Before that, people of course did notice different skin colours, etc., but divides were along class lines and along culture lines, skin colour was less important. (I think there's some hilarious medieval story of a knight who married an African noblewoman and had children that looked like chessboards, as people back then had no idea how a mix of white and black skin would actually look)

Sex and physiological differences between people with different ancestry are real. Gender and race are social constructs.

My guess as to why identifying as a gender is more accepted than identifying as a race is because sex-based oppression, which leads to gender, is more deeply entrenched and much older than racism, and that black men are seen as human and worthy of sympathy in a way that women are not.
People do not see sexism in the same way they see racism. Sexism is the status quo everywhere, and much of it is invisible because it is so normalized. People just don't see that identifying as "woman" is appropriating the lived experience of an oppressed class.

Well, quite Desolate.

The idea of a white person presenting himself/herself as black makes me very angry, and it's hard to articulate why. I think because the lived experience that makes up that identity is not theirs, however many black people they know or are related to or have given birth to. Experiencing it at one remove is not the same as experiencing it. It feels like the ultimate erasure, in which people from the oppressor group take over your identity in order to escape any stigma as oppressors and to appropriate (cherry pick) our identity as noble survivors.

Change white person to man and black to female and it's damn near the same argument as transgender.

Race may be an uncertain and even unscientific concept, but it is a political reality. It makes sense as a cultural, social and political identity (we still all associate more with people of the same race than people of different races), and it affects one's treatment and life chances significantly, occasionally as much if not more than gender does

"Race" is the wrong word isn't it? But we are stuck with it now. I agree cherry picking parts of a particular ethnicity or culture which suit you is very questionable behaviour.

I'm not sure I could genuinely say I identify with black people , let alone as a black person. I'm not sure I understand what "identifying with" means. I can understand there are any number of groups whose lives are much harder than mine but identify with them?

Race may be an uncertain and even unscientific concept, but it is a political reality. It makes sense as a cultural, social and political identity (we still all associate more with people of the same race than people of different races), and it affects one's treatment and life chances significantly, occasionally as much if not more than gender does.

The idea of a white person presenting himself/herself as black makes me very angry, and it's hard to articulate why. I think because the lived experience that makes up that identity is not theirs, however many black people they know or are related to or have given birth to. Experiencing it at one remove is not the same as experiencing it. It feels like the ultimate erasure, in which people from the oppressor group take over your identity in order to escape any stigma as oppressors and to appropriate (cherry pick) our identity as noble survivors.

I feel that any white person of any goodwill and understanding would say that she/he identified with black people not that s/he identified as a black person, and get why that distinction was valid and so important.

"she was seen to be taking the place, in civil rights campaigning, that belonged to a black person"
As I recall, she supposedly went to a uni on a scholarship intended for black people, she taught classes on the African-American experience whilst passing as black, hence claimed to be teaching it from a first-person perspective that actually wasn't hers. My take would be although she had some experiences 'as a black person' when she passed as black, she did not have the experiences of being raised as a black person, and whatever experiences she did have when she was passing as black, that experience must have been coloured (no pun intended!) by the fact that she knew she could always step back to being white. And her passing seems to have included passing off a black man as her father who was actually unrelated.

I was just reading this opinion piece:
www.seattleglobalist.com/2015/06/15/rachel-dolezal-lies-hurt-black-people-spokane-ijeoma-oluo/38338
Very well written, a good read.

Plus the obvious link is why is this not okay when it comes to race, but okay when it comes to gender? Because, I suppose, no one reputable believes in a 'black brain', but a lady-brain is okay? Being black in America is born out of struggle, but being a woman isn't? When did they decide we got the vote/had our own souls/could own our own property/weren't the property of our husbands/fathers/brothers?....................

Olenna that's exactly it! I could get a nose job, relax my hair, get a bum and lip reduction but that would make me white/ Caucasian/ European, would it?

Except there are physiological differences between people of different races, aren't there? Some examples here. So I can say that I am now black, but I don't magically change my bone density, any more than a man who says he is a woman can magically change their pelvic bones