If I can change my sex, why can't I change my race?

[fakenamefornow]

I am white British, family all.white British, from England. I have blond hair and blue eyes. I do have some African blood though, many generations back, I don't feel African in any way though, never even been there, and feel no particular connection to the continent. I love my African heritage though, just because it's interesting.

If I had a black husband, black children lived among a black community and this was were I felt most comfortable, why couldn't I describe myself as black? Actually I think know why, I just don't understand why changing sex (or rather gender) is treated so differently, when sex, unlike race, really is binary. Not wanting to offend anyone and apologies if I haven't used the corrected terms. I really am curious though.

Oh, I also meant to add that we can claim to feel older/younger than we are, but a 20-year-old cannot say with certainty that they feel like a 70-year-old (how would they know? - even assuming all 70-year-olds felt the same somehow). Even identifying as younger seems tricky - although we were all small children once, our memories of that time would be imperfect, and also we can't just un-learn everything we have learnt since then or undo the physical changes (or get people to treat us in genuinely the same way), so identifying as a 4-year-old simply wouldn't be the same as being one.

Sorry, MyNameIs, Stefonknee actually is a six year old girl because that's what they have said they are... [anger]

Don't our external signifiers of sex or race influence how we are perceived by others and it is their response to that is socially conditioned (see the difference between a red head being teased in the play ground in England but fawned over in China)

Some of us belong to the privileged group (sometimes the oppressor group) through biological happenstance. Some of us don't but can "pass", either with a bit of effort (choice of clothes, hair styling for example) or whether we want to or not. But that doesn't change what is there in our DNA, regardless of how we present to the world.

I think that gender is a social construct so you can 'change gender' but not change sex because it is a biological fact that you can't. You can't change chromosomes or DNA

Hmm, I don't think this is in fact always possible. Women cannot change gender, except perhaps in tiny cultures that have rules for this, and where those rules are enforced on men, too. (Sworn Virgins in Albania, for example). Women will always be perceived by men as objects to be raped when they are identified as biologically female. Only very strict social rules can maybe change this.

Men use gender to oppress women, it is them who make the rules, and that is why men, to an extent, can change gender in a way women cannot - but they will always be given male privilege if/when they are recognized as biologically male, even though they manage to be also given (and thereby destroy) all the protections from male violence that women fought long and hard for.

To change gender is only really possible if that person "passes" as male, respectively as female, i.e. if others are genuinely mistaken about their biological sex. Only then are women treated like equals by men, only then are men treated like objects by their fellow men.

isn't this about confusing gender and sex though?
gender is a social construct so anyone can adopt the signifiers of the other gender, and may more or less succesfully pass as belonging to the other gender. As VV says, this is most succesful where there is a longstanding social rule about this. Many gender critical people are relaxed about this to the extent that ' I don't mind if he wants to wear a dress/call himself Jane/use female pronouns'. But sex cannot be changed and this is where we part company- for the few safe spaces and services that women have gained are relevant to our sex, not our 'gender'. It doesn't matter how much or how little a woman or girl conforms to the prescribed gender roles, she is still, bluntly, in danger from men in a way that men arent. I grant that men may also be in danger from other men, perhaps especially if they are gender non conforming, but in that case they need protection in different spaces/services, not ours.

"To change gender is only really possible if that person "passes" as male, respectively as female, i.e. if others are genuinely mistaken about their biological sex. Only then are women treated like equals by men, only then are men treated like objects by their fellow men."
I think this has been the experience for some transmen -- once case I recall was someone who after transition was assumed by coworkers to be the former workers brother, and they seemed all too keen to comment on how much better he was than his sister.

And I think we possibly have a similar experience with people of various ethnic origins who historically passed for white. I think I need to look up Fredi Washington and see if I can find the 1934 film 'Imitation of Life'. And then Merle Oberon, who "Rather than disown her mother, Oberon passed her parent off as a servant."

The US had a history of racial 'passing' - light-skinned mixed race people inventing entirely white backgrounds for themselves so as to escape slavery (and later on Jim Crow laws). There's even a clever reading of Gatsby that sees him as passing.

Good point !

I believe Ollenas has it correct. A white person cannot identify as black because their outward appearance has never made them the target of racism and oppression due to the colour of their skim like a black person does on a daily basis. They can say they are black but they will never live as a black person because they don't have black skin. I think it's very offensive to suggest that as a white person that you identify as black.

'race' is far less clear than sex where almost everyone is born with male or female bodies. With race people are mixes and attitudes are mixed up. ( In the 1920s a black man was prosecuted for having a relationship with a white woman and acquitted because the woman, being Italian, wasn't white.)

Obama talks about coming to define himself as african-american and not white (like his mother) or african (like his father) because even though none of his ancestors were slaves his life as a dark-skinned man in the US was shaped by the wider history of slavery. Fuck knows I'm not qualified to argue with him about that, but what if he'd been born paler? Would he have the right to define as african american if he were blonde and blue eyed despite having a black father? And if not why not? What's the boundary for being white? Put another way, what if Ian Duncan Smith wanted to define as Japanese? If I had a Maori great-grandmother could I call myself Maori? I'm not the biggest Rachel Dolezal fan, to put it mildly, but there is an argument to be made that so much of what we call 'race' is made in our minds that the scope for self-definition is pretty wide.

But then I'm a tumblr loving fellow travelling dupe who likes the word 'cis' and doesn't see much of an issue with people claiming a different gender to their genitalia. We are the stories we tell about ourselves and all of us lie one way or another.

But I think the issue is a white person wanting to identify as black. They really can't. It's like me as a straight woman saying that I identify as homosexual but living my life exactly the same as I do now as a heterosexual woman. Which means that I would never experience what it means to be gay in any true sense and I would indeed be insulting the gay community by saying that I could. You simply can't identify with being black if you are white from a white family, even if you did have African family members 150 years ago. I'm struggling with just how offensive it is to suggest you could!

I was going to ask the same question a few weeks back OP but didn't get around to it. Very interesting and complex issue worth exploring.

To my mind, Caitlyn Jenner winning 'Woman of the Year' (and the rest) is just as offensive as Dolezal teaching African American Studies from a first person perspective. Both of them received societal benefits from what was essentially their own fiction.

Also, I realise that we are conflating gender/race which are academically, very different things. But superficially, to the average person, are they not immovable parts of ourselves and therefore comparable?

I think there is an underlying conflict in the liberal position (as espoused on Buzzfeed, The Guardian, etc.) of encouraging self identification whilst gathering up the pitchforks for Dolezal. And don't misread me here, i'm no Dolezal supporter. I strongly believe that what she did was wrong. But I see a glaring faultline in that line of thought, and that cognitive disonance is just accepted.

FontSnob

You're right, of course. The Rachel Dolezal move is bizarre and indefensible, but where the boundaries lies is a tricky one. What if she had been quarter black? One eighth? One sixteenth? What if you were on the straitish but not quite end of the Kinsey scale? At what stage does claiming an identity become offensive?

Christopher Hitchens only found out his mother was Jewish when she died. He was in his forties by then and felt that it wasn't really an identity he could assume. What if he'd gone the other way and started going to synagogue and wearing the kippah and learning the Torah? Would that be offensive? Would it be more or less offensive than a secular goy going through the motion of conversion to keep their equally non-believing Jewish other half's family happy? Is that significantly different from pretending you're C of E to get the kids into school?

There is a huge difference between becoming or living as someone else and experiencing a life as that changed person and saying you identify as something that you are not nor can ever be. So, I could as the wife of a Jewish man, convert and so our chosen be Jewish. However, my experience as a converted Jew would still not ever really match that of a person born to the religion with a history of ancestors and truly being able to understand how it feels to be persecuted as a Jew. I may encounter prejudice which would become a part of my experience and I could call myself Jewish and follow the religion.

Now, if I'm not black, I never will be, I will never experience the racism and prejudice that is encountered daily, I would not feel the oppressive history that goes with having black skin. If there was a member of my family who were black but I was white then I still couldn't identify with their experience and I couldn't lay claim to being black, I just couldn't.

Sorry if that a bit garbled, tired and on my iPhone. I think a person converting to religion is a different question entirely and I don't think it's offensive if that's what you believe in. If you do it just to appease someone else then it is a questionable decision that people may find offensive but no, nowhere near as offensive as saying you can identify as a person when you never ever could.

But you're saying 'was white' 'was black' as though these were definite things. FWIW in my case I do think it'd be daft if I claimed to be a different race, but for a lot of people it is more fluid and it's not clear (to me at least) that it's easy to draw the boundary.

I think there is an underlying conflict in the liberal position (as espoused on Buzzfeed, The Guardian, etc.) of encouraging self identification whilst gathering up the pitchforks for Dolezal. And don't misread me here, i'm no Dolezal supporter. I strongly believe that what she did was wrong. But I see a glaring faultline in that line of thought, and that cognitive disonance is just accepted.

I agree, I'm confused by this. It seems we are in a time were people are excepted as being whatever they say they are (regardless of the biological facts) although this seem to only be applied to gender. The only reason I can see that one is ok, even celebrated and defended and the other demonized is that as many men are black as women and the rights of men always come first. I know this is very simplistic though and it's all a lot more complicated, hence the confusion.

A white person cannot identify as black because their outward appearance has never made them the target of racism and oppression due to the colour of their skim like a black person does on a daily basis

I do disagree with this though. I think genetics is very complex and people can be born to a black family with an outwardly white appearance. Their white skin might shield them from the day to day racism their siblings face but I don't think that means they can't identify themselves as black.

btw I don't identify myself as African and I have no legitimate claim to. I do love the fact that I have some African blood though, but I have never had to carry the burden of racism in a white mans world.

I think MyNameIs makes a good point about age.

But you are talking about people who are mixed race or have a skin pigmentation difference due to genetics but are of that race in every other way. That is very, very different to a white person who just decides that they want to identify as black, which is what I, and very many people find grossly offensive.

But you are talking about people who are mixed race or have a skin pigmentation difference due to genetics but are of that race in every other way. That is very, very different to a white person who just decides that they want to identify as black

True. But you said that

A white person cannot identify as black because their outward appearance has never made them the target of racism and oppression due to the colour of their skim

It's this that I disagree with. I think skin colour is only one factor in somebodies racial make-up and identity. Appearing white might make you immune from much of the racism that goes hand in hand with being black and give you a different perspective on being black.

I used to have a friend, years ago, in this very situation. She looked white European but wasn't. She was from a family of five children and she was the only one who didn't look like the rest. She had loads of milk man jokes her whole life, including from immediate family. She was very close with her siblings though, despite the teasing. I think looking different to the rest of the family was quite hard for her and although having white skin might have eased her path through life she said always felt a little outside the rest of the family because of her looks. Oh and the white skin came from some German ancestry .

It's why changing sex is seen so different that's the puzzle for me though?

I am responding to the original post, can you change your race. No you can't and you can't just say oh i'm going to be black because I want to be or think i should be, for all the reasons that i have outlined. I apologise if I haven't made it clear that i wasn't talking about people who are mixed race or who are in a minority like your friend. Of course they pose a different conversation and I believe identify with being black without any type of offence being caused.

Your original post did not touch on the nuances of being mixed race. You asked if, as a white woman submerged in a black family, could you identify as black. No, you couldn't and it would be considered offensive if you did appropriate the culture (I understand it is a rhetorical question)

This is an interesting article which whilst doesn't answer your original question, should give you insight into why it is offensive. At most you can only ever appreciate and try to listen to understand another race. You can not be them.

everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/appropriating-black-culture/

This quote from the article:

"So I understand if you have questions, like: What if I grew up around Black people? What if Black people compliment me on this? What if I’m not white, but biracial?

Asking questions is a great way to figure it out – because the key is applying context.

Do some research.

Find out about the origins of what you’re borrowing, and if it’s possible to honor its meaning as a white person. If you’re a biracial person with white passing privilege, reflect on what it would mean for you to be read as a white person benefiting from this aspect of Black culture.

Perhaps most importantly, think about the impact of what you’re doing.

If you’re doing this out of appreciation for Black culture, then are you giving us support or trivializing our struggles?

If you’re doing this for your own self-expression, are you expressing yourself in a way that contributes to the oppression of Black people?

Keep in mind that it’s not just about you – nothing you do is separate from the broader system of white supremacy, no matter how pure your intentions."

Your original post did not touch on the nuances of being mixed race. You asked if, as a white woman submerged in a black family, could you identify as black. No, you couldn't and it would be considered offensive if you did appropriate the culture (I understand it is a rhetorical question)

Yes, I agree, I can't change my race, I'm not black and have no real or meaningful connection with Africa. I don't understand why sex is seen so differently though, why it IS fine to change sex but not race.