Why can't I claim I'm black or disabled, but can claim I'm a bloke?

Actually, I thought I can identify as any nationality I wish -in that sense of the word where nationality doesn't equal citizenship, but feeling identification with.

It just doesn't have many implications in real life and doesn't expect anyone else to do anything differently around me.

In my country (central europe) declaring "other nationality" was a standard way to get around one stupid outdated law regarding legally allowed names. So many people did it (just for the one bureaucratic purposes and only on that one form ) that the law was updated and now anyone can choose more freely.

So why can't we say that "race" is about more than just biology then? Someone's racial awareness, sense of being such a race, is "real" in some way. Just as someone's gender identity is.

So that still leaves open why we don't allow trans racial identification.

Personally I tend to think that gender is "real", and that's another reason why many trans people will fail to qualify as being "women" or "men". They just don't come off as authentic and so they are neither "women" in a biological sense or a gender sense. They may legitimately have a gender identity of a woman, but identifying as something doesn't make you that something.

Without being too specific, I have worked on projects which were only open to those who identified as disabled. The majority of those who successfully applied for and benefited from the programme were very tenuously disabled, tbh..it's not quite as different from the gender bollocks as you would hope.

Depends how it manifests. I would say no, unless it is unreasonable and against the science.

"But that's as far as I'll go: I don't presume to imagine what it's like being trans. Neither should you"

Of course no-one knows someone else's direct experience, which is why it makes no sense to suggest that gender is as real as sex. You can only experience sex by being in a sexed body; all else is pure imagination or projection. And a sexed body is readily measurable and observable. Sex is instinctively noted too; operating beneath the level of superficial consciousness.

We can of course understand the experience of what 'being trans' means by listening with empathy to those who are explaining their 'process' or their path to transition; and also by listening to the testimonies of de-transitioners, who most often have developed some over-arching perspective on their feelings too - in the light of subsequent experience.

Sex, literally, is biologically determined. As is much that stems from sex.

Gender means different things to different people. it cannot be measured or observed and there is no clear definition; unlike sexual orientation which is simply finding that you are attracted romantically and sexually to people of the same sex as yourself.

Feelings, by nature, are not "immutable" which is why many people go on to find that transition hasn't cured their dysphoric feelings, and in fact has made their feelings worse. What people feel about themselves or about anything at all most often changes with life experience. Identity is not a static condition, it is an evolving locus on which we hook both lasting and transient conceptions of our self. Much of our self identity only exists in relation to other people and in response to certain situations and events.

In response to @MishyJDI and in particular your comment “At the root of the current wave of transphobia is an uncritical acceptance of the gender-critical, biologically determinist position, which denies that the socialisation and lived experience of gender is as real as biological sex.”

My view is that there are certain situations (eg womens sport) where biological sex matters and therefore that the position of Stonewall et al to conflate sex and gender damages womens rights. That does not mean that I think that people should not be free to live the way they want ( subject to not harming others). Does this view mean that I am transphobic?

I absolutely believe that people can feel more affinity with the other gender or with no gender. The rules about hairstyles and dresses and makeup are arbitrary and can change with fashion (just look at men in 17th century France) so may not even necessarily reflect your gender affinity. And your sexuality is your own business, provided you keep it to consenting other adults.

Biological males should not pretend to be biological females though. And should not impose upon areas where women are biologically vulnerable (toilets, changing rooms, rape crisis centres) or into the field of women’s sports.

I don’t have a source other than Wikipedia (and some lady on Quora who says she’s a biologist). Looking at the Wikipedia article on the Stria Terminalis, it does sound as if the number of people studied was very small. Also, the sexual diamorphism of the BSTc was only seen in adults, whereas some trans people experienced gender dysphoria in childhood. So more research is needed.

Great question. Well, it's really similar to being gay, lesbian, or bi.

The claim that trans women and men insist they are and always have been biological women or men is largely an Aunt Sally. Some trans people do say this, but in my experience most talk about it in a much more nuanced way, as people whose lives have involved a voyage towards becoming the gender they have always felt or known themselves to be.

This involves physical transformation to a greater or lesser degree because without it you can't experience the societal role or be accepted as the gender you are - including, but not restricted to, who you are when you have sex.

At the root of the current wave of transphobia is an uncritical acceptance of the gender-critical, biologically determinist position, which denies that the socialisation and lived experience of gender is as real as biological sex.

Gender IS real in the same way that orientation is. Just because it's experienced cognitively, emotionally and as a relation to your body, rather than a fact about your chromosomes and what they do, doesn't mean it's less real - because if you insist it is less real, you're saying only genes matter; cognition, emotion and endocrine make-up dont. Nature -defined very narrowly - triumphs.
The opposite to nature is not 'Nurture'; that implies people become trans because of traumatic or adverse experience and is, essentially, a pathology.
To say so opens the door to saying that's why people are gay, too. What lesbians and gay men have done is to successfully propose that it doesn't matter whether sexual orientation is innate or not, 'disordered' or not: I may have been 'born this way' to some extent, as a dreamy, slightly masculine kid, but that's not the issue. The issue is that I didn't decide to be a lesbian through confusion or adversity or rebelliousness, but because I experienced a largely somatic, hormonal rush of sexual longing when I, a girl, saw other girls and not when I saw boys. I then took a decision later on to socialise those feelings by adopting an identity called Lesbian.

I do not know what it's like to be trans; I've always been OK about inhabiting a female body. But I'm prepared to believe that for trans people, the clash between their body and their nature is as visceral, as immutable, and at times as profoundly ego-dystonic as I, growing up lesbian, found my sexual orientation to be.

The only difference between me and a trans person is that my orientation to others as sexual objects didn't fit society: their orientation towards themselves as sexual subjects doesn't.

But that's as far as I'll go: I don't presume to imagine what it's like being trans. Neither should you.

You see how far we've come from dying on the hill of 'men are men and women are women and nothing can change that'? As scientists often say, I think you'll find it's more complicated than that.... But you need to read beyond these echo chambers and be open to conflicting ideas and thoughts.

So yes it is very different to claiming to be black or disabled.

Hope that gives you something to challenge the orthodoxy of these threads. :)

Lady brain arguments are not new. They’re just dressing them up in different science these days.

Can you provide a reference for that. So far studies presented have been fatally flawed; ignoring homosexuality, impact of drugs know to affect the brain, have studied dozens of brain measurements so the difference is likely to be down to chance in the very small sample size, claiming ‘more similar than other males’ to mean ‘the same as women’, ignoring inconvenient participants...

It’s equally dangerous to assume that you don’t need to ask questions or investigate things because the patient isn’t in the target ethnic group.

Categories for disease risk can help but when you start reifying them and claiming that a disease is a Jewish disease or a black African disease or whatever it becomes just as problematic and discriminatory as refusing to take women’s health seriously.

The thing is, it never actually helps to elide the issues around sex and race. It’s totally different. And disability is another kettle of fish entirely.

Which is why we are in a situation where people are asking questions like the OP. The answer is a whole bunch of power relations and social issues that mean we perceive a claim to gender totally differently to a claim to race. Ironically, we see the one with a much better biological basis for rejection as fair game.

Nascent gay children and lesbian girs have long expressed cross sex feelings. This has always been part of the struggle in coming to terms with sexual orientation.

The latest argument I’ve heard, is that trans people are intersex, as there is an area of the brain which is sexually diamorphic (the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc)) and trans people have one that is typical of the other sex in terms of size and number of cells.

That said, further research is needed on this as the evidence is limited. And it in no way justifies allowing trans women to compete in female sports categories.

They - poc
I couldn’t write we because
I am a mix of many things, but mainly white European as far as I know.

This.
Because we are just one species - one human race. We exterminated or absorbed all the other humanoid species on the planet: neanderthal, denisovan, florensis and so on.
Here we can talk about phenotypes (if I remember my basic biology right):
blue eyes vs brown
Dark skin vs lighter skin.
ears with flips or without.

»race» today are external charachteristics brought on from largely environmental adaptions and/or sexual preferenses (possibly mixed with faint features from the other humanoids thrown in the mix though the latest occurrence of that seems to be at least 15 000 years ago).

My children can identify as nearly any «race» they like: asian, white-European, arabic, and Black too of you go a fair distance back.

Having said that; I understand that after the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and the European Colonialism there are layer upon layer of hundreds of years of abuse that mainly white people have heaped on mainly Black and coloured people,
so that they are weary of that is perfectly understandable.

I was going to say this.

It must be very frustrating for people who really need these accommodations and who may be taken less seriously because of the above.

Yes, Rachel Dolezal ( 'The Rachel Divide'); and there is also german woman, Martina Big (though she is clearly disturbed and has obvious mental health issues)

I honestly don't have a clue what point you are trying to make here.

Disabled people are "invisible" so it's not a relevant example? What?

Yes I have heard of racism. It's still the case that race is a protected characteristic.

I suspect it comes down to the fact that drag has become ever more acceptable to the degree it is now mainstream; with the queens being referred to as " she" even when off stage. Gay men have been appropriating womanhood in the service of their 'liberation' and expression for a long time.

Add to that the increasing visibility of cross dressers such as Eddie Izzard - and then the expanded trans umbrella which suggests that both of the above examples come under the label of 'trans' ( which is why Eddie Izzard is now suggesting he 'came out' as trans 15 years ago). The 'queering' of society, basically.

It's not enough for them to say you are thin, they have to believe you are thin. That's what does my head in.

Race and species differ. Other hominid species went extinct 40,000 years ago. Humans have always interbred between communities whenever they met so the fact that a specific gene appears in low numbers in other populations does not rule out population groups having a distinct genetic makeup. At times that can be important - eg when considering disease risk, or looking for donor organs. Ignoring differences in genetics between population groups in medicine is a bit like using men as the default model for medical treatment including treatment of women.

There are white people who pretend to be ethnic minority. They get vilified when found out. So I agree with what you say.