AIBU to find the idea of trans-racial ridiculous.....

[CastlesBlown]

but support the idea of trans-gender? I just read this article

www.upworthy.com/a-black-trans-woman-explains-changing-gender-vs-changing-race?c=ufb1

And the arguments for trans-gender appear to support trans-racial, despite that being the very opposite of what it aims to do.

I feel SO confused!!!!!

I feel sympathy for her too but she is deluded and she did say some black man was her dad she also apparently took funding specifically for AA students

And I AM a Canadian now (channeling StewieGriffinsMum). I have a certificate and everything. However, neither I, nor the vast majority of people I chat to am a daily basis think I am anything other than British. Functionally. I am Canadian but culturally and importantly by upbringing, I am British. You can take the girl out of Croydon...

How far does it flow the other way though?

How successful do you think a black person would be in trying to identify as white?

I think they would be ridiculed and derided from all sides. I am not willing to accept someone white being able to identify as black until it can cut both ways.

Also, identifying as black can only ever mean apeing and copying in a basic way. You can dress, speak and act "black", but you can't change your ethnic origin in the same way you can have surgery to change your sex.

Your ancestry is your ancestry and with the best will in the world it cannot be changed.

Saying that, a PP is right to ask how far back we go to determine ethnic origin.

Nationality and culture are so fluid. I'm Brit but live abroad. I lived in the UK my entire childhood and identify as British. Actually I'm a quarter Latvian but as I don't speak the language or know anything about the culture I ignore it.

My child has dual nationality. He is growing up with a British childhood and British influences in a country which isn't Britain. So he isn't fully a part of his home country but neither is he having the full British experience. He will grow up to be an odd mix of the two and what he identifies with will be entirely about how he feels.

Added to this, I have friends with third culture kids who have two different heritage countries from the parents but are growing up in a third culture which is alien to both parents. They speak all three languages and identify with all three cultures. What nationality are they? It's an interesting but ultimately pointless question - they are whatever they feel.

But during eras of racial segregation, lots of mixed race people (who would usually be identified as black) "passed" as white. Were they aping and copying white people in a basic way? I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm genuinely interested.

That's about where you draw the line isn't it?

Some official has sat behind a desk and decided that you're "allowed" if your granny was white, but not if your great granny was white.

If you had one white granny but she brought you up, then maybe you'd have more cultural connection with a white culture than a black culture, like my child has more cultural connection with the UK than Italy, despite living in Italy.

However you'd still be of predominantly black heritage.

It's ridiculous! She isn't black, which is a genetic thing rather than a feeling!

"It's ridiculous! She isn't black, which is a genetic thing rather than a feeling!"

but you can say the same about trans gender, and if we accept TG then why not TR?

Race isn't genetic. There's no "balck" gene.

"balck" gene.

Sex is far more "genetic" than race.

Your race can be sixteen different flavours of multicoloured, but your sex is either A or B.

So your post makes no sense.

I think I would accept TG more than TR simply because your gender can be thoroughly changed by surgery.

However you cannot change your race. That is why to me TR would never be more than fancy dress, ie the hair and clothes of a "black" culture person. It's only skin deep.

the 'one drop' rule identified who was black and who was white. if you were blond and blue eyed (the supreme white incarnation) but had one black relative five generations earlier, you were dismissed as black.

the people in America who had a 'white' look and were far whiter than they were black, were the ones who 'passed'. they did not 'pass' for a laugh, they 'passed' so that the police wouldn't beat them in the street, or they wouldn't be denied jobs or housing or attacked by rednecks for being in the wrong part of town.

"How successful do you think a black person would be in trying to identify as white?"

Michael Jackson tried pretty hard!

Apparently people are changing "gender" without changing sex, according to other mumsnet threads currently running. I was to consider penises in the ladies' changing rooms etc.

I think I would accept TG more than TR simply because your gender can be thoroughly changed by surgery. But it can't. How do you propose to change XX into XY?

The very idea of transracial is fundamentally racist, as it implies that there are a set of characteristics or behaviours that are inherently linked to race.

And the reason transgender isn't sexist is..............

You can change your gender Terry - you can't change your sex.

Disappointed - yes Michael Jackson tried but would you say he was successful?

He was a black man with bleached skin.

Yeah, I saw the way I'd written it made no sense. IMO gender is a meaningless construct so you can't 'change it'. Wear a basque on Vanity Fair's cover if you want, I don't want to and I'm a woman.

How can you change your gender with surgery BTW? I don't see how you can. In some future where we are wildly better at medicine, I could see changing your sex. I can't see changing your gender. Wear pink, wear blue, it's all bolloeaux anyway.

This is good - it's a long read and contains a lot of hefty academic language (I can't say I understood all of it!) but it examines a lot of the arguments that are flying around.

Well I meant you can have a fanny type thing put in, or your pensi removed, or you can take hormones. That to me is one step up from wearing and wig and a dress.

I don't see how TR gets beyond the wig and the dress though.

He was a black man with bleached skin.

That is because he had vitiligo. He had been saying this for years but people dismissed his 'claims'. Even now when the autopsy reports confirm that he did have this condition we still had the stupid nonsense that he wanted to be white.

A large number of dark skinned people with the severe form of this this condition will bleach their skin to get an even skin tone.

I know a couple of people with vitiligo. One has bleached their skin. They do not want to be white.

Men generally are bigger and stronger than women. Change a penis into a vagina and remove testes but you don't change fundamental bone structure, height, build etc. And having not gone through puberty as the "right" sex, can you really become female/male just via surgery?