Women harassed for suspected trans-racialism

[QuietContraryMary]

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6394265/What-blackfishing-Twitter-users-call-white-influencers-posing-biracial.html

Essentially these are white women who are accused of appropriating black appearance.

This is obviously terribly problematic, because:

'Can we start a thread and post all of the men cosplaying as women on Instagram'

'Let’s air them out because this is ALARMING.'

Multiple followers commented on her thread with their own examples of men on social media modeling exaggerated features typically seen on women — including breasts and long hair.

'Men want the benefits of being women without dealing with the responsibilities that come with it"

"They see the features that women are blessed to have, and they literally do anything to obtain it. This form of womanface is even more offensive because they’re not even trying to hide it.'

"'It’s clear that a lot of women are being overlooked for men, but I believe that narrative will change because I refuse to stay silent on the matter,"

[note, I have done a find/replace on certain words in the excerpt]

It's misogyny isn't it?

If the women claimed to be something they are not, changed their names to deceive people or tried to get gigs or onto specific programmes meant to help a group they don't belong, like Rachel Dolezal, then it would be problematic.

But simply changing ones appearance using hairstyling and make up and being open about it hardly warrants this level of criticism.

Though I've never had an instagram account and do not get the culture around it.

The thing is there isn't a direct crossover from race to sex. You just can't do find/replace with the story. This is because:-

Sex is something that is a part of your body and DNA. There are different hormone balances in your body depending on which sex you are, (and your age of course)

Race is something that is assigned to you. In this culture, whiteness is seen as the default, everyone else is "other" and given second class status. You don't feel white or black, you are treated that way by everyone else. Sometimes there are little perks like being seen as cool or smart but mostly it is a de-buff because it's a system of white supremacy we are in. So, there are some white people who get all the benefits and privileges of their whiteness who still want to access the little perks as well. There's a spectrum, trans-racials like Rachel Dolezal are down one extreme. This instagrammer is over that end but not quite as extreme.

Black and other people of colour, on the other hand, don't have that option. "Passing" is the closest analogue but it's not like it is for white people. White people can quit culturally appropriating/blackface cosplaying whenever they want and full white privilege resumes. The worst that could happen is they are made fun of on social media. Being discovered "passing" was life threatening. Most of the time, it's just not an option.

Someone is black because everyone says they are black and everyone says it because white supremacy needs something to be supreme over.

Gender is also socially constructed, and in the patriarchal system we live in females are assigned to a second class status too. So far, it seems similar to race, right?

We are all socialised to see men, women, girls and boys as having certain characteristics and levels of privilege. Just like we are socialised into white supremacy.

But even in an existing non-patriarchal society or even in a thought experiment society with no gender socialisation, it still feels a certain way to be male or to be female. It's the hormones, mostly. Maybe even brain structure (but I believe there is slim to none evidence for that) Definitely our physicality. We go about life in a different way because we have different bodies.

For me, it seems more than possible that a person would feel socialised into the "wrong" role. Especially in a sick patriarchal culture such as ours.

But transsexual and transgender people don't exist because of patriarchy/male supremacy. They have existed throughout history, across cultures.

What happens next is culture dependent. Some cultures said "fine, just cross dress and we'll all treat you like the opposite gender", some said "ok, so you're neither then, here is a special role for you", some said "nope, that's not a thing, conform to your gender or we'll hurt you" and ours right now is changing from saying "we can change your body to as close to the opposite sex as possible but you better not be discovered" to something new.

That's not to say there aren't people claiming to be trans when they are just cosplaying tourists, and more like these people trying on blackface for instagram likes. You can tell them from the others because they go running back to male privilege when it suits them/gets them into the nicer facilities in their golf club.
But it isn't directly equivalent. Just similar.

That's what I think anyway.

But even in an existing non-patriarchal society or even in a thought experiment society with no gender socialisation, it still feels a certain way to be male or to be female

Prove it . It was such a relief to me when I read someone one here saying 'if I had a male body I'd be a man'. I'd always thought that I wasn't a proper woman because I don't feel like one inside. It was a relief to hear that's not a universal thing.

We go about life in a different way because we have different bodies

and black people and white people have very different experiences because of the way they look too. obvious example being all the angst black women suffer over their hair. I read a thread on here from a woman with afro hair who felt that wearing her hair naturally affected how she was seen in her work place. it was very eye opening.

But transsexual and transgender people don't exist because of patriarchy/male supremacy. They have existed throughout history, across cultures.

Patriarchy/male supremacy has also existed across history and cultures, and there is a lot of evidence to suggest that men adopting the roles assigned to women is very much a reaction to the imposition of gender roles by patriarchal societies. Yes, in some societies this was accepted but even then the people who adopted those roles were usually marginalised either literally or figuratively.

I admitted on a different thread that I 'felt' black as a little kid. I really felt like I was born into the wrong body and culture. I only ever fancied black people or aspired to be like them. I haven't actually thought about this for a while, but I used to want to do past life regression when I was a teen to understand it. I never changed my appearance like braiding on dredding my hair - I always thought it looked daft on white people.

I now realise it was all a bit daft, but it explained a lot of feelings at the time.

Anyway I also do not 'feel' like a woman. When I was a kid the feeling of being black was a lot stronger than feeling like a girl.

It's weird looking back on all this now, but I remember in secondary school feeling really upset that the classes were suddenly divided along racial lines and wished we could all be mates again like primary school.

As an adult, I now seen the fury underpinning the black kids deliberately separating themselves in classes. It wasnt black and Asian kids - only kids with African/Afro Carribbean heritage grouping separate from the Caucasians/East Asians. Anyway, I didn't understand their desire to be separate because the societal racism they suffered was invisible to me. They knew they were perceived and treated differently because of their perceived race, but I had very naive wishes of 'why can't we all just be friends?'.

So in a nutshell, there is nothing more authentic in thinking you are the wrong sex than the wrong race. It is disrepectful to not acknowledge that it is a lifetime of being perceived and treated a certain way that makes you 'feel' like your sex/race. It is naive to think 'why can't we all be friends?' when some people need to separate, process the racism/sexism they suffer, join together and help to pull one-another up.

"What happens next is culture dependent. Some cultures said "fine, just cross dress and we'll all treat you like the opposite gender", some said "ok, so you're neither then, here is a special role for you", some said "nope, that's not a thing, conform to your gender or we'll hurt you" and ours right now is changing from saying "we can change your body to as close to the opposite sex as possible but you better not be discovered" to something new."

That sounds like a fairy tale to me.

Boys in Thailand are castrated at the age of 13 to become kathoey (ladyboys), in India eunuchs (as they are called, and may in fact be) are known for begging & petty crime, and widely ostracised.

Which cultures are you suggesting allow this?

I know a man who lived as transgender and then lived as a gay man (slightly effeminate possibly, but not more so than many gay men in the UK), this was a result of differing local cultures where he lived and moved to.

I believe in many cultures homosexual men are pigeonholed into a third gender role. Largely due to homophobia. They are 'transwomen', but they are not the same as women, for many reasons.

If we look at countries like Iran where it's transgender surgery or death as a homosexual, the idea of these enlightened traditional cultures being somehow progressive and enlightened looks far off.

Certainly there are pressures on all of us to conform to some sort of cultural norms, but a cultural norm that says you have to pretend to be a woman if you want to be in a sexual relationship with a man is very plainly regressive and not some sort of noble savage tradition at all.

BernardBlacksWineIcelolly the hair thing is white-supremacy-context dependent. My ability to withstand aching pain better than my husband can isn't because of the patriarchy.

SaskiaRembrandtWasFramed true but you still get transgender people in matriarchal cultures. And we get trans men in ours. We don't get black people asking everyone to accept them as white because that's how they feel inside.

LikeDust I don't think I feel like a woman either but I'm not just a woman because everyone says so. In a lot of ways, the gender socialisation I went through failed but I never experienced extreme dysphoria, thank the stars.

Being sub-divided into an arbitrary racial group based on superficial appearances has nothing to do with objective reality. It's soul destroying to see it at work in adolescence, and I expect a lot of your difficulties came from being a white child growing up seeing the full horror of it, and not knowing how to process how evil and insidious white supremacy is.

In another time and culture, you and your mates might have split along any number of lines depending on what was valued in that particular society.
In every time and every culture, the boys would be over here and the girls would be over there. (with people in both groups going "wtf! I've got more in common with people in the other group!")

I just read an interesting story about a woman who grew up thinking she was Native American but after a sibling got a DNA test, found out that she was white, Chinese and black. She now doesn't know what to think. She was bullied for being Indian, she based her identity on her heritage and she says she felt Indian. She was Indian because everyone said she was, and now she's not because everyone says she isn't.

It couldn't happen with sex and a DNA test wouldn't challenge someone's gender identity.

It's hard to unpick though because we do live in a patriarchal white supremacy. It's all jumbled up and twisted together.

Didn't Kim khardasian get canned for 'looking black'? Obviously she is so well known everyone knows she isn't and she didn't say she was anyway.

Women can't do anything without causing a storm. Hair style, skin colour, clothes, weight - and God help her if she shares an opinion.

QuietContraryMary
How about Native American "two spirit" people?
I'll admit it is hard to find examples since white colonialism destroyed the other ways of doing thing throughout history, and the American empire is currently enforcing and imposing "Western" culture on its satellite states.

It couldn't happen with sex and a DNA test wouldn't challenge someone's gender identity.

This is true. Sex is an immutable binary.

However what is comparable in both transracialism and transsexualism is that both are an individual feeling entitled to validate their feeling of belonging in a group they are not part of by adopting appearances, stereotypes, names and mannerisms associated with that group and stating, contrary to all evidence and the facts, that they belong to that group.

If the group they actually belong to has more social power than the group they claim to belong to, then this is an act of domination and has a far greater impact than if the power dynamics were the other way around.

radiometer genuine question, where were these matriarchal cultures?

And the Instagrammers getting flamed are imo no different from David Bowie gender bending and copying Geishas for make up ideas. They are being open and honest about who they actually are. No deceit.

Radio how can you confidently say that being male and female is a feeling but that the same is not the same for race?
It’s impossible for a male to know how it feels to be female and vice versa. Same as it’s impossible for a white person to know what it feels like to be black.
Just curious how you’re so sure that race and sex are so conceptually distinct.

IMO there are of course differences in behaviour between men and women but most of those are due to socialisation. Some (eg violence) may be due to hormonal levels. We just don’t know, because the patriarchal structures are there, so we don’t know how we would behave without them.

The point is that a person may feel uncomfortable in their body. But this cannot be because the body itself is wrong. It’s because of the social roles and the additional meanings that society places on being male and being female. So a man can feel that he does not fit with what it means to be a man and that he feels more aligned with the female social role. The same is true for race. Race is not neutral. It is often linked to culture and to certain expectations. I can certainly see how some white people may come to associate with being black for instance. However, it’s not because they are born in the wrong body- it’s because of the cultural associations.

I have no issue with people IDing as what they want. Women don’t own femininity. But the problem is when someone’s feeling that they are in the wrong body is given the force of truth and people say that a feeling alters material reality.

In reality, a woman can ID as how she likes. She will still belong to, and be treated as belonging to, the sex class of women. This is not some secret society or exclusive club. It’s just a descriptor of a class of people. It is important because that class has been oppressed throughout history. Certain protections are needed in order to prevent unfairness. A man who IDs as female will not be female and will not be treated as being female. However, he may well face discrimination for failing to conform to his social gender role. However, he has the option of presenting as male to reduce the oppression. Women can’t do that. Same as a white person can revert to whiteness, but a black person, no matter how white they feel, will never be seen as white.

how can you confidently say that being male and female is a feeling but that the same is not the same for race?
It’s impossible for a male to know how it feels to be female and vice versa. Same as it’s impossible for a white person to know what it feels like to be black.
Just curious how you’re so sure that race and sex are so conceptually distinct.

^^ this

I now realise that I probably 'felt' more 'black' than the black kids at school, just like a 'transwoman' 'feels' more 'like a woman' than me.

The black kids just felt like humans with skin a certain colour, I feel like a human with a woman's body.

The idea you 'feel like' a member of a group you are not part of means you have othered, exoticised diminished them and their humanity. They are not a feeling. They are humans, just like you, who happen to have a different sexed body or a different skin colour.

Everyone's sex or race or class or nationality or disability is an accident of fate, not something we are meant to be or not to be.

100% agree with you LikeDust

The idea you 'feel like' a member of a group you are not part of means you have othered, exoticised diminished them and their humanity. They are not a feeling. They are humans, just like you, who happen to have a different sexed body or a different skin colour

Yy

'How about Native American "two spirit" people?
I'll admit it is hard to find examples since white colonialism destroyed the other ways of doing thing throughout history, and the American empire is currently enforcing and imposing "Western" culture on its satellite states.'

Weren't the Inca into child sacrifice? I'm a bit suspicious about this noble savage stuff.

I'll freely admit to not being an expert, but I'm quite suspicious of what amount to white men attempting to construct a narrative around 'gender' in other people's cultures in order to further their own ends.

QuietContraryMary I agree. There is a long history of white men constructing narratives about the cultures of colonised peoples, usually in the form the 'noble savage' or some kind of 'exotic' mysticism. The reasons vary but the one thing these narratives have in common is that they are always for the benefit of the colonisers, and they always involve othering and dehumanisation.