Looks like 'transracial' might be a 'thing' after all

[PencilsInSpace]

Rhode Island School of Design are offering a course called Transracial Bodies, Transracial Selves:

Thanks to the work and lives of transgender people, we now have room to understand our bodies in radically unbounded ways. Technological advances in surgery, hormonal therapy, psychiatry, cultural warfare, are catching up to the transgender presence: the gendered body is not necessarily that with which we were born, but one that can be crafted to match the real body of our psyche, our dreams. However, one's racial self remains tethered to biology. Blackness, Whiteness, Asianness, Latinness, the whole rainbow of racial identification, is still construed as biologically inescapable and inevitable. To speak of "transracialism" is to evoke self-delusion and community betrayal. But this cultural reaction is contrary to the everyday experience that actually finds racial identification as a process that is always transracial: declaring ourselves racially, we all cross restricted zones in becoming ourselves. In this course, we will use the discourse of transgenderism to build an alternate vocabulary of race.

This could get messy.

can I now claim myself as a lesbian by using the ridiculous stereotypes of dungarees, short hair and owning a Tatu CD - rather than wanting to sleep with women

Gemma, the Queer Community is way ahead of you, here! I stopped calling myself queer when it got co-opted by people who had only ever been, or wanted to be, in a relationship with a member of the opposite sex, but they had a primary-coloured short-back and sides (if female) or long pastel-coloured hair (if male) so they were totes sexual outlaws, and way more oppressed than actualfax lesbians or bi women.

However, one's racial self remains tethered to biology. Blackness, Whiteness, Asianness, Latinness, the whole rainbow of racial identification, is still construed as biologically inescapable and inevitable

I really don't understand this. Biologically I would have thought that my genes were more similar to those of a black-skinned woman or woman of any other 'racial' group than they are different. Plus, although my phenotype is 'white' genetically I'm not solely of white stock and I have 'different coloured' relatives. Race plays a significant and confusing part in my family history that has influenced our migration and wealth (or lack thereof). I've yet to process quite what this means. Friends who are black or brown skinned often say that there is no biological difference between us (except for a sexual one in cases where they have xy chromosomes) and that race is a biological illusion. The real issues thay say are skin colour and the barriers that this presents for them (including historical ones). Some see cultural issues as important - i.e. the colonisation of their cultures and their erosion or eradication, but they and others raise their eyebrows at the idea of 'black culture' because they say this is a complete myth. For others, there is no connection between who they are and where their ancestors may have come from based on skin colour, so they feel no ties to nation or culture (some see this as part of an older oppression if they came from a slave background).

I think you're all being very dismissive of all of these trans-isms and actually quite offensive. There are lots of people who believe themselves to be born in the wrongly sexed body.

I'm glad we're now seeing the emergence of people born in the wrongly raced and (dis)abled bodies. It gives me hope that one day people will take my DH's suffering seriously. At the moment people laugh at him but he was born in the wrong body but there's no support for him.

You see, he's an actual apple. A big red juicy apple but unfortunately he was born in the body of a slightly chubby, pasty English bloke. In the privacy of our own home he can freely express himself by dressing up as an big Cox and he's made contact online with a man in Kettering who is actually a grape but he can't express himself outside of the house. I hope that as society starts to recognise more and more trans conditions that my DH will be taken seriously and will be able to access treatment to transition to the big fat apple he actually is

This is my DH as the world perceived him now versus how he would like the world to see him

This is my DH as the world perceives him now versus how he would like the world to see him

He looks more like a Jonathan or a Fuji to me poisonedivy, aren't Coxes more greenish-yellow?

I don't knowPoisoned he looks more like a tomato to me, like the trainers though.
But seriously this is great news, I always dreamt of coming back as a white middle class man in my next life and now it seems I don't have to wait. Ah the possibilities are endless, my sense of entitlement is expanding as we speak