LBC now - topic is questioning whether transgenderism is logically the same as transitioning from white to black

[chocciechocface]

Just letting you know ....

Xanthan
I believe that Kamala Harris has always identified herself as Brown
because she is immensely proud of her mother's family
and not very close to her father

Cheddar gorge man was shown to have dark skin.
Most europeans have Neanderthal DNA, alot of the rest of the world do not
Certain peoples in the East have Denisovan DNA, and scientists have identified other 'ghost' pre Homo Sapian DNa species mixed into other people's genetic code which show similar interbreeding with other human close relatives since we came out from Africa, went back in, came out again and mixed it all about, until those other species were all extinct, some relatively recently in genetic terms (around 30,000 years ago)

The idea of 'race' is not a simple story

However. Since the very earliest of human ancestors first stood on two legs (and actually well before that) there were still only two sexes. One who got pregnant. And one who made them so.

SheepandCow

I dont think you have understood the point i was making. irrespective of whether she actually is Jewish or just identifying doesn't negate the arguement that she chose to identify as someone who she is not biologically and can therefore never have experienced that racism.

This doesn't deny the reality of antisemitism.

It is about the actual reality of the experience of racism based on the oppressing group perception of that race of being of lower status.

Equally someone who is Black can share the experience of racism but will never know the specific experience of anti semitism.

Women aren't their biology. But our experience is totally shaped by our experience of being oppressed by men because we are biologically female.

That is the basis and the need for feminism, or rather women's liberation.

I had a listen this morning (here in Texas). I was disappointed in the callers. They didn't seem to have thought about the issue deeply, which made the discussion very repetitive -- except for "Phoebe" towards the end. Applause to you if you're reading this!

I agree Brandine. I nearly gave up (I did skip a lot) but it was worth hanging on for Phoebe.

To be honest, I was unimpressed by Maajid too. He seems like another James O’Brian to me. That is, an arrogant know-it-all man who speaks loudly over anyone who doesn’t agree with him. I don’t think he has grasped the issue any more than most of the listeners have, but while most of them admitted to being confused, he clearly thinks he’s got it and is jolly pleased with himself.

He seems to think that the main problem is women being offended by transwomen assuming that they understand our lived experience and it being unfair that transwomen can get on women only short lists etc. That’s part of it for sure, but fairly insignificant compared to the potential physical danger to women and girls which comes with self-ID. But while he mentioned DV (though without any explanation of why it was relevant) he said nothing about sexual predation and dismissed concerns about toilets just as O’Brien did.

I would have liked him, or one of the callers, to say actually transracialism and transgenderism are not equivalent. The first is clearly offensive to many POC and possibly fraudulent if someone receives a grant or something on the basis of their identified race. The second is offensive to many women and should be considered fraudulent if a transwoman gets a grant or something meant for women (though in fact, the awarder of such grant will be acclaimed for their inclusivity and the receiver called S&B) and it puts women in actual physical danger. And so the question I think Maajid should have been asking is why everyone is so outraged by the former but not the latter.

Is there an actual biological difference between races?

No, because humans don't have races. Wolves do and cabages do but race in humans is an arbitary social construction- mostly based on skin colour.

Humans are very genetically diverse, you can share lots of genes with someone who looks nothing like you, and be genetically dissimilar to someone of your ethnicity.

Certain populations tend towards certain features (hair colour, skin colour, eye shape) but these really are only skin deep and represent very few genes. Some geographically isolated populations can be fairly well identified by their genomes but it's generally very hard to determine ethnicity from DNA.

For example you will get much bigger average genetic differences between families 50 miles apart in Spain than you will between Jews and Arabs from different parts of the middle east. In both cases the diversity will far outweigh the 'racial' similarities.

It's so meaningless that Archeologists largely don't use DNA to discuss ethnicity at all- they use language groupings.

None of that (sadly) makes racism any less real.

Sex OTOH determines (on average) skeletal structure, muscle mass, height, brain size, some organs, hormones..... You can tell the sex of a human just from the skeleton or from a single cell.

someone who is black can share the experience of racism but will never know the experience of anti semitism
But some will. Some Jews are black. That was my point. Jewishness is not about skin colour.

I don't disagree with most of what you are saying. I was responding to what I interpreted (perhaps wrongly?) as you describing Jews, a very oppressed group for thousands of years, as an oppressing group.

If we are looking at thousands of years then at certain points of history some groups now seen as facing active discrimination were the oppressing group. And that includes both Jewish and African groups acting as oppressors. And in the circumstances this thread is about I suspect African Americans would class members of the Jewish community, despite their experience of anti semitism, as being closer the the power elite than they are.

And racism isn't just about skin colour, eg english people can and are racists towards Irish people.

But in any event irrespective of whether the woman concerned is actually Jewish (I dont know I've not read the article!) it is appropriation from a position of relative privilege.

@Muttonindistress

I had a listen this morning (here in Texas). I was disappointed in the callers. They didn't seem to have thought about the issue deeply, which made the discussion very repetitive -- except for "Phoebe" towards the end. Applause to you if you're reading this!

I agree Brandine. I nearly gave up (I did skip a lot) but it was worth hanging on for Phoebe.

To be honest, I was unimpressed by Maajid too. He seems like another James O’Brian to me. That is, an arrogant know-it-all man who speaks loudly over anyone who doesn’t agree with him. I don’t think he has grasped the issue any more than most of the listeners have, but while most of them admitted to being confused, he clearly thinks he’s got it and is jolly pleased with himself.

He seems to think that the main problem is women being offended by transwomen assuming that they understand our lived experience and it being unfair that transwomen can get on women only short lists etc. That’s part of it for sure, but fairly insignificant compared to the potential physical danger to women and girls which comes with self-ID. But while he mentioned DV (though without any explanation of why it was relevant) he said nothing about sexual predation and dismissed concerns about toilets just as O’Brien did.

I would have liked him, or one of the callers, to say actually transracialism and transgenderism are not equivalent. The first is clearly offensive to many POC and possibly fraudulent if someone receives a grant or something on the basis of their identified race. The second is offensive to many women and should be considered fraudulent if a transwoman gets a grant or something meant for women (though in fact, the awarder of such grant will be acclaimed for their inclusivity and the receiver called S&B) and it puts women in actual physical danger. And so the question I think Maajid should have been asking is why everyone is so outraged by the former but not the latter.

I agree, Mutton. I also was disappointed in his focus on self-ID as the issue. If you can't change sex (and you can't), two years of wearing lipstick does not matter.

Is it because the people who are negatively affected by this whole debate are mainly women??

Yes. The oppression of women has been literally everywhere for ever, it's like wallpaper. Most men don't give a fuck even when they do notice. Some even enjoy seeing women being robbed of the only rights and protections they've managed to scratch out for themselves, as it gives men back the upper hand.

Ironically, the countries that most people, male or female, want to live in (standard of living, education, human rights etc) are those in which women have the most rights and freedoms so men do actually do well out of it.

Sadly though, many men in the world would rather keep women down and be relatively more powerful than women, than raise themselves up if it means bringing women up with them. Every country you'd avoid like the plague looks like this. Tragic really.

I like Maajid and I liked most of his speech on transracialism and transgenderism, but is he really suggesting you can become either black or a woman from just living that way for 2 years. Because he made it clear he thinks the current GRA process is fine but self ID is not, and he said that both things are the same so your position has to be the same for both. There’s absolutely nothing that can make you black if you were born white. 2 years of ‘living as a black person’ won’t do it. No way. It’s clearly offensive. But he seemed to brush over that part and focus on self ID. So I like his thinking and I like that he was speaking about it on LBC, but he needs to sit down with some GC women and listen to everything we are saying.

I think Maajid was being clever about how he approached this issue. Also, you can only really delve into one issue at a time on a talk show and this show focused on the logical inconsistencies between transgenderism and transracialism.

All credit to him - he got callers to think about this issue in a way that they hadn't before, and they admitted as much. He also got callers to say they agreed with JKR.

Yes, his starting point was self-id, but that's because self-id is the main bone of contention at the moment. Accepting the premise that the current GRA is fit for purpose allows the discussion to move on to look at the ideology behind self-id.

Whether the GRA really is fit for purpose is a debate for another show. (And bear in mind, presenters do not want to risk losing their jobs etc. due to accusations of transphobia. He has to be careful about how he handles this debate.)

As for the criticism that he interrupts his callers, I do think that Maajid is willing to engage with people who have a different point of view to him. However, he does want people to respond to the questions he puts to them and he expects his callers to be able to back up their points with logic.

I am hopeful that he can keep returning to this topic. He grasps the issues far more than O'Brien does.

Muttonindistress
I agree with you. I called in to his show once and he was so rude, talked over me, dismissed what I was saying.
The very next day, the point I was making was reported in the national news. I was right, he was wrong.
I haven't bothered listening to him since.

You cannot be mixed sex (if you have a Y chromosome you are not female)

This is the only time I've disagreed with this and used intersex as an argument. You can be if not mixed sex then not clearly and straightforwardly male or female sex. That's what disorders of sexual development are - something went wrong in the development of normal binary sex.

(Insert disclaimer about only a vanishingly tiny % of population, who don't have any desire to be included under the trans umbrella, and whose existence doesn't change the fact that there is no such biological thing as "Ladybrain" or "Manbrain")

I have been thinking this for some years now. Always get dismissed by people IRL if I mention it. It's bizarre that feeling you are another "race" (for which there is no biological difference) is deemed to be so offensive whereas feeling you are another sex is to be encouraged. A strange world in which we live.

stumbled in, I have to disagree with your, I suspect, unthought-through claim, that Jews were the 'oppressor class' versus black people at any point in time, or that Jews now, as Jews, are 'closer to the power elite' than African Americans are. That seems a fairly obviously racist statement, relying on anti-Semitic stereotypes.

Yes, there will be some rich or successful Jews, just as there are some rich or successful African Americans. But the existence of a Zuckerberg, say, no more makes all Jews elite than the existence of an Obama makes all African Americans elite.

I don't feel the use of these lazy stereotypes contributes anything helpful to the discussion. It shows a basic lack of understanding of race and the points being discussed. Jews can be black. They may or may not identify as black. That is the essence of what we are discussing.

Racial essentialism is mainly used by racists. Racism is real and clear, though racial boundaries themselves are not.

Compare that to sex, where biological boundaries and the male-female binary are real and very clear. Misogyny is also real.

It is clear that the arguments against appropriation of an identity and identifying into oppression are much, much stronger where sex is concerned than race.

Yet currently, it is socially unacceptable only to identify into another race and claim their oppression, but not into the opposite sex. That is clearly ridiculous. Both are problematic, but identifying into the opposite sex is much more problematic.

And to add, stumbledin, your post came close to the sort of extremely, blatantly anti-Semitic propaganda that attempts to blame Jews for slavery (yes this is, unbelievably, a thing).

I'm not saying that that was what you meant to imply, but you should probably be more aware of anti-Semitic tropes before pontificating on Jews as an 'oppressor class'. I'm Jewish and am regularly taken for black or 'unidentified foreign' and experience that as fairly bloody oppressive actually. My parents fled to this country as child refugees and many of my close relatives were murdered precisely because they weren't seen as 'white', or even as human.

So enough of the 'Jews are an oppressor class' or 'Jews are white' already. It's not funny. It's actually pretty hurtful.

I don't think stumbledin said that.

That's what disorders of sexual development are - something went wrong in the development of normal binary sex.

Most people who are intersex are still clearly Male or female, except I think there are 2 intersex conditions where this is not the case, someone might know them. It’s a myth that intersex necessarily means not of either sex.

xxyzz That is NOT what she said! You need to read the comments made again and be careful of throwing around words

@endofthelinefinally

Muttonindistress I agree with you. I called in to his show once and he was so rude, talked over me, dismissed what I was saying. The very next day, the point I was making was reported in the national news. I was right, he was wrong. I haven't bothered listening to him since.

I bet he still thought he was right though.

^I think Maajid was being clever about how he approached this issue. Also, you can only really delve into one issue at a time on a talk show and this show focused on the logical inconsistencies between transgenderism and transracialism.

All credit to him - he got callers to think about this issue in a way that they hadn't before, and they admitted as much. He also got callers to say they agreed with JKR.^

I agree with this. DH never thinks about this issue at all. It's only because of me that he has any idea at all. I only have awareness because of Mumsnet and because I've made a concerted effort to see out people to follow on Twitter.

I think, for the majority of the population, 'transgenderism' is about decent individuals who have dysmorphia and have painfully transitioned, and have been among us for decades, and now women are irrationally angrily objecting to their existence. They don't get the TRA angle. They think we're being unnecessarily cruel.

Maajid, I think, managed to get some people to have an 'a-ha' moment by focussing mainly on self-ID and keeping it simple. DH was listening and shaking his head and said, 'When you think about it, it's just crazy, isn't it'. And that's despite me banging on about stuff for ages. In fact, I even feel I'm still learning and I am WAY ahead of my female friends.

In fact, I suspect when my female friends are asserting that transgender women ARE women, they're doing so in the context of 'it's no skin off my nose to say this', and it doesn't occur to them that that transgender woman would literally think they are the same sex as women, or that sex is nonsense.

I do think there's a LOT to take in, and some of it is so mindfuckingly out there, it's hard to believe it is actually true.

For example, I get wildly angry at the idea of a man self-ID'ing as a lesbian woman, and then calling lesbians transphobic for not having sex with him. DH still doesn't quite believe this is actually a thing because he thinks it is so absurd.... like, flat-earth level absurd. So I send him screenshots of so-called 'lesbian woman' ... and he still thinks they're the minority.

The gas-lighting is extreme.

Why does it matter even if they’re a minority though?? (Though as most trans eomen are attracted to women because they’re straight men id Dispute a minority but whatever!)

Does your DH think we should do away with safeguarding becatse only a tiny minority of adults abuse children?

Sorry OP not getting at you btw it’s just the way men do casually hand wave aside women’s experiences as acceptable collateral damage

@MillyMollyFarmer

xxyzz That is NOT what she said! You need to read the comments made again and be careful of throwing around words

I was literally quoting stumbledin's word's - as I said, that may very well not be what she intended or the point she was trying to make, but it was tone deaf in the extreme, and I am equally unimpressed with anyone who tries to argue that Jews come from an inherent position of privilege.

Think before typing this stuff! Or in defence of it!

I don't want to derail the thread as suspect that you and stumbledin and I probably all largely agree on the substance of this thread, but words matter. Stereotypes matter. Maybe they don't matter to you when it concerns an oppressed group you're not part of, but they sure as hell matter to me, and anti-Semitism shapes every aspect of my daily life.

Benjamin Boyce hasn't got Maajid's listenership but here's his take on the blackface / womanface inconsistencies:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra6vxi8kMDs

I also really don't think that arguing that Jews and blacks are racially entirely separate and that Jews oppress black people helps at all in making the feminist point that actually race is somewhat more amorphous than sex yet even so, identifying as a member of an oppressed race is seen as unforgivable whereas a man identifying as a woman, where the sex boundaries are completely clear, and where women clearly are oppressed by men, is not seen as problematic at all.

It weakens the argument - and is complete baloney - to suggest that all races are completely separate, with clearly defined biological boundaries, or to suggest that all races line up neatly in some sort of oppression Olympics.