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

I take it you've never heard of black & mixed-fishing. Countless white women have made a fortune, a career and solid following from cosplaying as black and or mixed black women. Indeed many pop artists launched their platform engaging in all manner of black-fishing.

Apart from anything else this is massively offensive to Black women, especially Black disabled women who for all their 'protected characteristics' somehow inexplicably suffer from worse healthcare outcomes, social conditions and employment prospects. But anyway, as you were

It's very common for people to self identify as autistic. And they do seem to be accepted by many in the autistic community and by professionals and researchers.

@BloodyHellKen i just wanted to say your username has made me smile a lot and for the rest of the day I am identifying as a Victoria Wood character.

sorry to derail

Or they want to claim services specifically set up by black people for black people. Or have access to grants or awards set up in recognition of the fact that black people have been denied many advantages available to white people.

My real concern though is the number of women that support the erosion of their own rights and the foregrounding of TW in the feminist movement.

It doesnt work like that though. Once the body part is removed, the fixation moves to a different body part. I worked with inpatients who had this disorder, who got to a point of cutting off their own limbs so not in a controlled way but with a long long history of MH issues and therapy and medication etc and as time goes on, they start fixating about the other limbs and how they dont want those either

People that identify as disabled is an interesting case.

In the right hypothetical scenario, yes, I think it could be moral to cut off a healthy body part. So it's causing them lots of distress, and therapy has failed, there aren’t other known treatments.

But here is the thing: we would never stop looking for new alternative treatments. We wouldn't stop using psychological therapy, even if it didn't have a good evidence base. Rather, hope that someone comes up with a better approach in the future. We would always want to "convert" such people so that they learned to accept their body.

So why not with trans?

I agree with this but I don't think race and ethnicity are the same thing. They're different.

Identity reigns, so you can claim to be anything as long as you don't forget to prefix with "I identify as".

That flippant remark won't win the trans debate because of the above.

I'm fine with a white person identifying as black.

The issue comes when (1) they expect other people to think that they are really black, or things like, (2) they want to be able to lead a black organisation.

I used to work with someone who was visibly black (mixed heritage) but who felt white because she grew up not knowing her dad, her mum was white, her nan was white, her siblings were white (different dad), she had no black influences or people in her life growing up and didnt really identify with people of colour. That may well change as she goes through life, most of us have different feelings about our heritage.

But there is no difference between someone adopting a completely different /opposite identity in terms of ethnicity/disability to someone claiming they are a woman or a man when they are the opposite sex.

Wasnt there a debate about this on German TV at some point where someone was asking why this wasnt appropriate and claiming the opposite sex is appropriate and the trans advocate couldnt answer that?

More than ok apparently. Very fashionable, and marketable. And, of course, stunning and brave

People are trying it on and the world is saying "yes that's fine"

Bizarrely enough, you can identify as disabled you aren’t. It’s called being transabled and is much like being transgender in the sense that those who identify as transabled can be diagnosed with BIID (body integrity identify disorder)

Those with BIID claim to ‘feel’ disabled in some way and often feel that certain body parts don’t belong to them. Many seek medical intervention to amputate said body parts
But will use disabled facilities/wheelchairs etc prior to any amputation.

By the same standards anyone could presumably claim to be unable to see or hear, if no medical cause could be found it would be diagnosed as a psychological disorder.

it’s obviously much harder to present as a different race/ethnicity but no doubt there are cosmetic procedures available if people look hard enough.

Why? Because the world has gone insane!

Nationality is as much a social construct as gender where as race has an immutable scientific basis like sex.

This isn’t as true as you think it is. Race is absolutely not a coherent biological category in the way sex is.

You cannot determine a person’s ethnicity from their DNA like you can their sex. All the services claiming to provide ethnicity estimates are actually just matching your genes up with those found in their reference population.

Skin colour or eye shape or whatever have significant genetic components, but they don’t fall into nice, neat racial categories.

There's a few race fakers that have been exposed of late, mostly in North America I believe. A lot of them in some sort of spokesperson role.

It strikes me that the left now worships identity with the same moronic ferocity as the far right. It's suddenly the most important thing about a person.

My goodness, shall we all try it?! 🤞

Sometimes on forms I tick white British, sometimes mixed other, sometimes mixed carribean. Purely because I'm so mixed though and lazy so tick whatever one appears first

You mean "men" I think.

It's because women don't matter in the sense of being people with full agency, are not allowed to have boundaries and are not allowed to be 'selfish'. The same woman IS allowed those things in the other groups she might belong to, such as a particular race, religious, ethnic or disability category.

But not as a woman.

I have learned this from following the trans debates.

I agree OP,
Fancy dress style "blackface" make up /The Black and White Minstrels have been socially unacceptable for years, yet "womanface" is ok...?

Bet they won’t let me compete in the paralympics though….

I work at a university and got an email offering financial support to those identifying as deaf, so yes it does seem to be a thing (in some settings 🙄)