LBC now - topic is questioning whether transgenderism is logically the same as transitioning from white to black

Thanks for the BBC link @merrymouse
What it says makes a lot of sense to me.
Like it says, we human beings are likely to be mixed race wise over thousands of years. I think it's less clear biologically, certain going by skin colour only, than sex.

I'm not defending this woman taking funding aimed at supporting black people btw. It's just confusing seeing the outrage over this but not over gender identity. If someone can be trans gender, surely someone else can be trans race?

Then how are these companies able to tell people they have Irish or British DNA when the two nationalities are not genetically distinguishable?

Also Ancestry studies now include Evidence from long-dead humans which largely validated prior ancestry inferences from living human genomes.

Well, not exactly - 23 and me and other such companies (Ancestry.com etc) began with ancestry marked dna sequencing in the public domain. Really good representative Scientific studies. And They are constantly updating their data with new studies.

Ancestry Estimates from these companies are based primarily on these “gold standard” data rather than self reported “race“ Of participants and largely agree with academic research. sometimes they don’t agree on details as they may put different data into their models.

Yes and 23andme only have data from other people who have chosen to do the test so in some areas I expect their sample size is very small.

Yes, both of those are really good point.

People want to believe in 23 and me and similar companies, because it is a vanity product. But it is giving a really false idea of ancestry and ethnicity.

There is massive variation between people from different parts of Africa, far more than between Europeans, but they all get lumped together as black.

You can be mixed race
(half Jamaican, half Indian)

You cannot be mixed sex
(if you have a Y chromosome you are not female)

An issue online is often that European ideas of race and ethnicity are different to American ones, which causes arguments online, because people view their social constructs as universal, when they are not.

We also tend to talk about race in general terms like 'Black' and 'Chinese' as though 1.4 billion Chinese people and everyone whose ancestors come from the African continent is genetically homogenous.

23 and me add to the confusion by implying that they are tracing your genetic history, when in fact they are just comparing your DNA to other people who are alive now and grouping it accordingly.

Sex is analogous to human geographical variation. Gender is analogous to race.

So there is variation between people based on where in the world there ancestors are from.

There are differences in skin tone based on climate. This gives people with darker skin a greater risk of vitamin d deficiency and people with lighter skin a greater risk of skin cancer.

There is a genetic difference that makes some groups more prone to sickle cell anaemia but less prone to malaria.

There are genetic differences in South America which mean that some groups can carry a baby to term at altitudes at which European ancestry women would miscarry.

This is different to being able to put people into distinct racial groups. Hence the constant confusion between race and ethnicity and different cultures having different groupings for race and ethnicity.

An issue online is often that European ideas of race and ethnicity are different to American ones, which causes arguments online, because people view their social constructs as universal, when they are not.

If men and women were treated exactly the same, and there was no such thing as patriarchal control, there wouldn't be such a problem.

I don't think that is true.

Men just don't need things that women need like contraception. A man has always been able to deal with an unwanted pregnancy by simply walking away.

I can imagine a world where race is completely irrelevant. I can't imagine a world where sex is completely irrelevant.

Is there an actual biological difference between races?

I think this is quite good on race:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4tLGJxdLg1zxKYl5v5B9wPc/five-racist-myths-debunked

www.goodreads.com/book/show/42042093-superior The return of Race Science.

And also www.goodreads.com/book/show/31869108-Inferior, How Science got Women wrong

On my list of books to read..

It's all about the chromosomes!

Let's say there's a prize for BAME writers and that woman won it. Would it be any different to a TW winning a women-only race, or that TW in a pink frock being in the Top 100 Women in Business list?

I have actually seen a paper by a renowned doctor (peer reviewed) that men (XY) cannot get the illness I have, because it only affects XX

Isn't the main similarity the oppression aspect?

If men and women were treated exactly the same, and there was no such thing as patriarchal control, there wouldn't be such a problem.

The same with racism. If it didn't exist between blacks and whites, the power dynamic, which in this case allows a white person to identify into the oppressed group, wouldn't exist.

It's less to do with proving the actual, physical differences, than understanding how the differences manifest in a power dynamic.

Everyone is extremely aware of the power balance in racism. It's an incredibly prevalent topic. Hence the outrage of people like Rachel Dolezal.

And although the power dynamic between men and women is, of course, recognised, it's not got the traction that should have, and it's in the interests of half the population to keep it going. By normalising it.

People have to be allowed to self identify their race. No other approach makes sense. You can’t tell someone they don’t look black enough or white enough to tick that box.

This was good, speaking of sex and illness.

I suffer from a genetic disorder that only affects females. As I am female how does the "other side" explain this. Men cannot be diagnosed with the form of the illness I have.

*a thing

So is racial dysphoria/euphoria and thing or not?

Re: genetic markers for “race”, genetically speaking where your ancestors are from is something detectable genetically. That’s how 23andme and so on are able to work at all. The issue is this connects only partly with the constructs of race. For example in the US if you had one black ancestor you were of the “negro race” so it would be illegal for you to marry a “white” person Under Jim crow miscegenation laws.

sex is analogous to ancestry, while Gender is analogous to race.

In terms of how someone looks we can guess where someone’s ancestors are from (Very broadly speaking) relatively easily because There are real genetic differences that lead to differences in how people appear in terms of traits like skin tone, hair color and texture and so on. Like sex existing this is obvious to anyone with half a brain. But this only Really Applies if these ancestors came from one broad region. People with mixed ancestry are often difficult to guess, which is in fact part of the whole history of humanity - peoples have always mixed. So ancestry is unlike sex because it is much less binary. it’s determined by inheritance of thousands of tiny variants rather than a single big one (sry).

Btw someone above said there are thousands of genetic differences between males and females. I think that person is talking about gene expression perhaps? It doesn’t make sense to say we are more genetically related to women with different ancestry. Relatedness is a measure of what variants we have inherited by decent - aka how much ancestry we share. So I’m equally genetically related to my mother and my father. He has a Y I have nothing to do with though.

Been fun watching the Twitter spats about this today.

Not one single coherent argument as to why there should be a difference between them. When you ask you get "Educate yourself you transphobic bitch" and the like. But watching them flail around not even being able to come up with a nonsensical argument is quite fun.

In Maya Forstater's case this was raised. Her employers were crystal clear that they saw both race and gender as matters for self-ID. That they would accept whatever race and gender a person claimed for themselves. That doesn't tend to get mentioned - lies that claim she misgendered a (non-existent) trans colleague do instead.

That's absolutely the logical standpoint. It's just that people who vehemently argue that gender matters and sex is irrelevant, and that gender is defined 100% by the individual and their pronoun choices, tend to become apoplectic with rage if the same is tried about race. Almost as though they know, in fact.

Interesting bbc article today in a similar vein:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-54008495
Jessica Krug: George Washington University professor says she lied about being black