What is the difference? (Warning - another transgender thread)

[Flippetydip]

I am prepared to get totally flamed for this but it is a genuine, and not meant to be goady question. I know there is a huge amount of transgender posts on here at the moment (hence the title so people have the choice not to read) but my question is:

If I can self ID as a man (or woman if I'm a man) can I self ID as a person of another race? I seem to recall a huge hoo-ha back along over some woman in the States who identified as black but was originally white and was absolutely pilloried. Genuinely, what is the difference?

The correct analogy is not between someone like Rachel Dolezal saying she's black, but with someone - Meghan Markle for example - being taken as white and correcting that person, identifying herself instead as mixed race.

So a trans person would be saying look, my biology is what's typically associated with the male gender so you may have taken me for that on appearance, but let me correct you, I'm a woman.

Believe it or don't, that's the difference.

I get what the OP means, though. When TRAs talk about discrimination and not feeling safe in the men's restroom, it strikes me as different because there is some degree of choice involved. If they put on men's clothes and took off the makeup, suddenly no one would take any notice of them in the men's room.

It's sad if they don't like their body. But that doesn't make them different from lots of people on the planet. Many people with physical disabilities aren't necessarily thrilled with the bodies they were born with, but identifying as a runner won't magically make them able to do it.

@MimpiDreams

There is such a thing as transabled and some people have found surgeons willing to amputate healthy limbs at their request (probably dodgy ones as I can't see any credible surgeon doing this).

@McTufty you don't inherit your sex from your parents. All humans are born with a sex, regardless of their parentage. Sex is determined largely by chance, by virtue of the fact that eggs and sperm each contain a chromosome for either male or female. Race is different because genes which account for different racial characteristics (such as skin colour) are not all present in every sperm or egg. Only the genes for the racial characteristics of the parents will be present in the egg and sperm.

A black couple could never conceive a Chinese child. But any couple in the world could conceive a child of any sex. That's because being genetically Chinese involves inheriting characteristics that only Chinese people have. Being born a particular sex is different because any human of any race will be born as biologically male, female or intersex.

@ATailofTwoKitties I don't know who you mean, but that sounds like the person in question is gender fluid rather than transgender. They're two different things.

The correct analogy is not between someone like Rachel Dolezal saying she's black, but with someone - Meghan Markle for example - being taken as white and correcting that person, identifying herself instead as mixed race.

What? Meghan Markle is mixed race though.

In your example the actually correct example is someone mistaking me for a man (and yes it's happened fairly often) because I have short hair and me correcting them and saying "no I'm a woman" because I am one regardless of my haircut

Sorry the was for people thinking I'm a man because of my short hair, not as a dismissal of anything previously said.

Yes, she IS mixed race *flippety", but someone might - on appearances - say she (or someone else who would "pass" as white let's say, to avoid this being personal) was white. But she IS mixed race, so might identify herself as such.

What transgender people are saying is that they ARE the gender they identify themselves as, and that that differs from their biological sex, so the anatomy they were born with.

But that does not answer my question at all.

I could say I AM black, despite looking white. I do not get it at all.
I feel black therefore I am. I feel like a woman, therefore I am one.

I went through a stage of wanting to be Irish (long long ago, quite boring story). I could quite merrily have proclaimed myself Irish - does that make me Irish - no. Nothing to do with colour.

@fugitive ok maybe we meant different things by ‘inherited’ but either way, it sounds to me like splitting hairs in order to support a conclusion that you would prefer to reach. You ARE (unless intersex) biologically male or female, far more than you are a particular race (a white presenting person in mixed BME heritage such as me being a case in point). Adding an extra layer to sex and saying “yes but they identify as the gender” is no different to looking at Rachel Dolezal and adding the extra layer to her white race and saying “yes but she identifies as a member of the culture”.

@xulishes and so we come back to the age old question of whether being a woman is a matter of gender or a matter of sex. Clearly there is vast disagreement on this in a way which I suspect will never be resolved.

Dictionary definition of man and women are based on biological sex. Gender is a societal construct that has been used to group together traits that are used to characterise the sexes usually in a way that is often derogatory to women. The distinction with race being inherited and sex not is flawed because both are genetically determined. Gender characteristics however are society determined. Thus in some so cities doing physics is a female thing. In the past pink was the colour of boys.

If you are a transwoman you are and have always been a man. You may not see yourself that way, others may not see you that way, but it doesn't change the indisputable biological fact that you are a man. People may not want to highlight that, in order to be kind, but it doesn't change the reality of male sex.

The biological definitions of male and female have not changed though the legal and common usage terms may be changing. I'm not sure whether some of you are utterly stupid, or you're taking the rest of us for fools.

Why should she necessarily have been "pretending" - maybe it felt deep rooted to her

IIRC this was the case with Rachel Dolezal. She had grown up in a family that fostered children of colour and so felt an affinity with black culture from a very early age, and an envy of the characteristic that set them apart from her and united them with each other. This led to a sort of dysphoria with her own cultural heritage, and also I guess a genuine (though very limited) insight into black experience. It doesn't seem that different at all to the psychology of gender dysphoria.

@charlestonchaplin nobody is disputing the reality of biological sex. Gender and sex are not the same thing. Transwomen have male biology. That is their sex. They can still be women. That is their gender.

@mctufty I'm not splitting hairs. This goes to the very heart of the issue. You cannot be another race because your racial characteristics are inherited. Your own example of being of mixed heritage proves that - regardless of the culture you were raised in, you still have racial characteristics determined by the genetic material of your ancestors.

You can identify as a different gender to the one that is held to correspond with your sex because sex and gender aren't inherited characteristics. The sexes of your ancestors has nothing to do with what sex you will be. That is what inherited means.

You may want to argue that gender has to correspond with biological sex but that just isn't true. We know that transwomen and transmen exist. We know that it is a reality that not everyone identifies as the gender held to correspond with their sex.

The ideological aspect of this is whether you're going to believe trans people when they say 'I am this gender', or whether you consider a person's biological sex to be more fundamental than their own personhood and experiences. Trans people are fighting for the right to have their own sense of self prioritised over another person's assessment of their biology. It's incredibly unhelpful to derail that by claiming that if transgenderism is legitimate then transracialism must be too when it's clear that they are in no way comparable things.

@HomeTerf not all trans people have gender dysphoria (although it's not uncommon)

Male and female refer to biological sex and have always done so. Now the trans lobby are trying (and probably succeeding at least in the media and politics, unfortunately) to change their meaning. They have assigned the people previously known as male and female new terms without any care as to whether we embrace these terms or not.

Transwomen as a group have little in common with women as a group. What it basically boils down to is that transwomen look at women and say, 'We're like you', and you must accept that. You must accept us into your group. Hell, sometimes they tell us how to 'do woman' better. How does a transwoman know what it is like to feel like a woman? They don't. They can get a limited idea when living as a woman, but not beforehand. And yet, instead of concentrating on living full lives as transwomen, we must all validate them as women.

Instead of widening what it means to be a man, trans rights activists hone in on womanhood. It's an easier fight. We're an easier target.

RD lied and said she was of BME heritage to gain a job. Also lied about her history and about being the victim of hate crimes.

I don't think anyone would really have cared if she just said she identified as a BME woman. The lying was the issue.

fugitive what if someone did feel, deep within themselves, that they were black despite being born in a white body to white parents? How do I know they are lying about their feelings?

I always thought of sex as being inherited, but inherited from the sperm that fertilised the mother's egg rather than inherited directly from a parent iyswim.

I do take your point about the word "woman" refferring to gender not sex-but why? That has not always been the case, and is far from a settled matter.
If the word woman does now refer to gender, would it not be useful to have a word that refers to sex? And will we be allowed to keep it?

I'm trying very hard to understand the relevance of this inherited or not point but I just can't.

You cannot be another race because your racial characteristics are inherited

So what? If race is a biological reality then so is sex and I really can't see why whether these biological facts are inherited or not makes even the tiniest modicum of difference.

It is also not true that the sex of your ancestors has "nothing to do" with your own sex: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7776210.stm

You may want to argue that gender has to correspond with biological sex but that just isn't true

I am not saying that. I am gender critical, which is not the same thing at all.

Trans people are fighting for the right to have their own sense of self prioritised over another person's assessment of their biology

It's not my or anyone's assessment of their biology. If they have XY chromosomes they are biologically male. That is fact. I am fighting to ensure that among respect for this sense of self, there is consideration that sometimes biology and biological sex does matter. Not all of the time, but some of it, and where that is case there needs to be a fair balancing exercise rather than calling women who raise concerns "TERFs" and saying "no debate". A fair outcome will take into account the identity of trans people but also the potential impact on others. If you are saying that the self identified gender of trans people overrides biology in all cases then I profoundly disagree with you.

I sympathise with those with gender dysphoria and save for a few limited examples where it is sex which has to take precedence, e.g. Sport, some women's spaces, I am happy to respect their self identity. I was on the deleted thread today saying there should be a trans woman on the 100 years of women programme. I am appalled by misgendering and the "men in a dress" narrative some feminists put forward. I believe in respect all round. But I just cannot understand the "woke" among us saying that one is totally legitimate and anyone who even questions it is a bigot and one is a grotesque appropriation of the oppression suffered by a group to which you biologically do not belong.

@fugitive - I'm not saying they do.

whereas transitioning transperople seldom benefit socially/economically

This may have been true at some point (when people who saw themselves as transsexual were targetted usually by people who assumed they were gay or lesbian - so, because of homophobia) but it isn't true now.

Among wide swathes of young people, being trans is a high-status position. Among adults, there are plenty of high-profile trans people who wouldn't be given the time of day, never mind a platform, if they weren't trans. (If you ask me for a list I will supply one.)

All the major political parties, including the party in government, are prioritising trans rights over other rights. When you have both the government and almost all parties in opposition on your side, it's difficult to claim you are disadvantaged.

Many organisation, including organisations aimed at providing services for young people (eg the Guides), have active policies aimed at protecting the rights and privacy of trans people, but have repeatedly dismissed any calls for the same rights and privacies to be offered to the girls and women who use their services.

If you look at the "top earning women" in some sectors of industry, they aren't top-earning women at all - they are men. Genderfluid men who spend some or all of their time at work dressing and presenting as the men they are, and only occasionally wearing "women's clothing" (not that I believe there's such a thing as women's clothing - it's all just clothing) get speaking slots in Women In Industry events, get approving profiles done of them in the financial press, etc etc.

Mediocre male sportsmen who then identify as women are winning women's events with their larger, stronger physiques, when they never were able to win men's events.

tl;dr there's a lot of evidence to suggest that plenty of trans people benefit both socially and economically from their transition, often at the expense of women.

I saw this instructional poster earlier and the last one has perplexed me. Instead of saying 'sex change', we are supposed to say 'genital reassignment surgery'. Fair enough.

But then the reason given is 'surgery does not change ones gender or sex'.

So what does change the gender of someone who is transgender?

That's much better than 'gender confirmation' surgery which I've seen a fair amount of. Still a bit euphemistic but includes the words genitals so you don't get the confusion of reports of sex change surgery when someone has had breast implants only.

there is so much double talk in trans activism it can be hard to understand it at all, presumably this is at least half the point.

Personally I don't see the difference in telling everyone they have to treat you as black when you are white as treating you as female when you are male. Both are untrue. Both are using a privileged position to impose on those in a less privileged position. Sometimes it is to escape from personal pain, sometimes it is to gain advantage. It's impossible for a third party to know what's going on in the other person's head, and unreasonable to expect them to do so. Most of us are more likely to go by how someone behaves than what they say they think and feel alone.

Kellie Maloney referred to themselves as female on sky this pm
To add insult to injury it was on 100 women
Kellie is male. Taking woman is bad enough but only a male can be a trans woman

You can identify as a soft toy OP. Look up furries