Sorry if this has been done before, but gender identity and race identity

[BabyOctopus]

Hi all,

I am discussing the GC and TRA debate with my lovely best friend. I fall very much on the GC side, while she is very much of the view that transwomen should be treated as a category under the umbrella of ‘woman’.

The debate has stayed friendly and respectful, and neither of us have at any point got angry with each other

The one thing I am trying to get my head around is the race vs gender identity question and why we might reject one and accept the other.

I am musing over this article as a topic for our next debate. It’s written by an assistant professor in the philosophy department at Yale University who identifies as non-binary, and a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Rutgers University.

The argument hinges on the concept of ‘accumulated generational inequality’ as a basis for justifying why a white person shouldn't be able to identify as black, but a man should be able to identify as a woman.

The authors claim that since they believe women as a sex class don’t experience this accumulated generational inequality (due to multi-gender households), it’s okay for a male bodied person to identify as a woman, despite the sexism they experience.

It also describes J K Rowling as an ‘anti-trans activist’ and contains what I think is a bit of pseudo-science thrown into the mix.

They also state:
“In cases where revising a classification would have a negative sociopolitical impact that outweighs the good of respecting how an individual identifies, we think that the classification should not be revised. And we think that revising the rules of race classification to accommodate transracial identification into Blackness is a case like this.”

But while they talk about the negative consequences of a person identifying as black, they make no acknowledgement of any potential negative impact of expanding the classification of ‘woman’.

Nevertheless, I’m not a philosopher (albeit I am universality educated to MA level in a similar subject), so it’s quite possible I’m missing something.

I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on its merits and weaknesses, as this will help aid the discussion!

bostonreview.net/race-philosophy-religion-gender-sexuality/robin-dembroff-dee-payton-why-we-shouldnt-compare

Thanks all!

As the previous poster and others have said, it really boils down to "Women don't count." "Men do."

But, for what it's worth, this was the answer when I searched high and low for what on earth the pro-transgender + anti-transracialists themselves were thinking.

Race, they say, is a real biological fact. You're born that way. It can't be changed. Whereas sex is all in your mind.

No, I don't know how they explain abortion of female fetuses, femicide, rape, lower pay and promotions, and, and, and, and so on forever.

I've met flat earthers with a bigger inkling of reality since they sometimes let slip words like "globe-spanning" when boasting about the size of their movement.

You would think that race has the potential to be so much more fluid than sex because people can have multiracial heritage through parents and grandparents etc and be raised in one or other culture that they may feel their personal identity is more or less connected to.

The collective patience for white new age types claiming a distant relative was from one first nation tribe or another always seemed pretty thin though.

The different cultural reaction to the idea of comedians blacking up to perform racist caricatures for laughs versus male comedians dressing up as females to perform sexist stereotypes for laughs... makes me feel that sexism still has a long way to go to be considered as serious as racism, even though white women have white privilege.

Today I am a 32 year old 6'3" blonde Danish male architect- just for a change.

Hmmm, perhaps you need to get your pal back to the 'reality' of letting men into women's spaces, OP.

Letting other races in is... ok! No problem. We may sometimes have problems with spoken accents (or even language), or even cultures. But it seems to work out ok.

But letting men in... Did you read the account in the Mail a while back, about men inmates in women's prisons? The everyday harassment, men in the lunch queue touching up the women etc. Even rapes (Karen White). How about the men exposing themselves, for sexual gratification, in changing rooms, has your pal missed the whole WiSpa incident (one of many)?

Not the same as racial mixing.

Thanks all, I really appreciate all your responses.

Definitely food for thought. My friend is coming from a good place; she is a kind, well-educated person. My own view is that she just has a bit of a blind spot around this area, though she no doubt thinks the same of me.

She used to be religious (due to her background) but is now an atheist. I was going to raise the question of whether believing in gender identity is quasi-religious, but haven’t yet. I don’t want to make her feel under attack by suggesting I think she has given up one belief system only to take up another.

@oldwomanwhoruns That’s the point I am struggling with, actually. For example, over half of males who were accused of violent crimes in 2009–2010 were black, despite only 10% of the population being black, which is thought to be the product of socio-economic and historical forces.

I am trying to get it clear in my own head how excluding male bodied people from female toilets is different from excluding black men from certain spaces due to the statistically increased risk of violence? Or indeed excluding low income people from certain spaces for the same reason?

hmmm, not so sure of that statistic, OP. Are you in the UK?
The figures I can find are, from the Prison Reform Trust:
26% of the prison population, 22,683 people, are from a minority ethnic group.
Analysis conducted for the Lammy Review found a clear direct association between ethnic group and the odds of receiving a custodial sentence. With black people 53%, Asian 55%, and other ethnic groups 81% more likely to be sent to prison for an indictable offence at the Crown Court, even when factoring in higher not-guilty plea rates.

• so it does look as if they are getting a bit of a raw deal. But I can't find your direct statistic.

But good luck with your project of trying to bring daylight to your friend's thinking. Can you remind her about SAFEGUARDING? That deliberately making the situation worse, with raped women the collateral damage, does not accord with basic safeguarding principles.

Tell her about the Girl Guides, that they had perfectly good safeguarding rules, then they decided that TWAW and that they could take young girls camping... what could possibly go wrong.

I am trying to get it clear in my own head how excluding male bodied people from female toilets is different from excluding black men from certain spaces due to the statistically increased risk of violence? Or indeed excluding low income people from certain spaces for the same reason?

The difference is that you can look at socio economic data and plausibly say that external factors like racism and economic disadvantage contribute to disproportionate numbers of black men being imprisoned.

However if you honestly believe that women are as likely to commit violent crime as men, your life must be terrifying given how few of them are convicted. Presumably all these violent women have escaped justice and are roaming the streets.

People have different levels of comfort with unisex facilities, but the issue is also as much about dignity as safety. I don’t think my 80 year old father should have to use a urinal in a unisex space either. If people also want unisex provision I’m not stopping them campaigning for that as well.