Why is black fishing unacceptable but identifying as a woman fair game?

[Blessex]

Please help me understand.

Because men love to play women, and the internet allowed playing with identity. This initially brought on criticism around gender, sex and race appropriation (if you look at 90s papers about cyberspace there’s a lot of mentions of ‘men pretending to be women’). But the net is run mostly by men, and plenty of feminists also followed the Butler/Haraway dismissal of sex differences - and so for many years the only unacceptable thing is race ‘identity tourism’. It’s a lot of men accepting what men want and a few women being cool/compassionate. The rest of us grew up.

Why is black fishing unacceptable but identifying as a woman fair game?

One is racism and men are impacted negatively by racism.

The other is misogyny and that affects only women (despite whatever Dominic Raab ight think).

Affects men - bad

Affects women- s'cool if it makes men happy.

How about we don’t hijack black peoples suffering to start stupid arguments online… it’s shitty and ultimately unhelpful all round.

SomePosters I don't think that is what the OP is doing. I think its a reasonable question. This kind of knee jerk reaction and lack of a sensible discussion is reminiscent of #NoDebate

@Changechangychange

I mean, I suspect the main reason people object to blackfishing so much is that white people use it to make money, then take the fake tan back off again when it doesn’t suit. Whereas Caitlyn Jenner aside, I can’t think of any men who have transitioned publicly and had a big increase in popularity. Or who swapped back when it suited them to be male again.

I can see the potential with women’s sport, and I can imagine if somebody transitioned to win some medals but presented as male in their daily life, that would get called out too. Maybe not by the most committed Twitter warriors, but I think most people would see that as problematic.

Philip Bunce. "A woman" a couple of days a week, all over the media and listed in the Top 100 Women in Business.

White Men.

They decide who gets away with 'Blackfishing'
They decided womanface is stunning and brave.

Linford Christie was ignored by white men when he pointed out the obvious.
Dave Chappelle, lets be honest, there's noise but he is not going anywhere. HE makes too much money for too many people.

Blackfishing is a problem when Women do it.
Eminem, Vanilla Ice, N Dubz, Prof Green. There were murmers but no action.
Some woman from a girlband is accused of it and BOOM it's a problem.

Boy George (the formerly cornrowed, dreadlocked, reggae singing white boy) still seems to have escaped criticism.

IT's as if White Men can get away with any old shit

Both are completely unacceptable.

I have always wondered this, And it’s coming. If people can change sex, why not race? Age? Disability?

I don’t think the ‘they wash it off so it’s different’ is a strong argument. The sentence in the article I think they want the benefit of being black without the consequences that go with it could be directly substituted for women.

@Blessex

But why is self identifying as a black person considered socially unacceptable but self identifying as a woman is considered ‘inclusive and kind’. Even more weird to me given that sex self id can actually cause physical harm (sports, safe spaces etc)

Is what they call "blackfishing" really identifying as a black women?

Because mainly it looks like people adopting trendy looks by pop culture icons, which happens across the board in every direction and has forever. If you have black women who are successful and powerful in the music business, other wannabe stars, and young fans, will want to copy their look. It happens the other way too.

I don't think it has much to do with drag or gender transition, both of which seem to be about something quite different whether or not they're problematic.

I thought the issue was making money out of /popularising things black women are criticised for (Like their hair), not adopting things black women are also praised for.

For women, a better parallel would be things like stay at home dads being praised to the rafters while stay are home mums are called lazy or unambitious. Men in eyeliner being seen as edgy, women in eyeliner being seen as tarty. For example.

@NCBlossom it’s coming! Recent Times article about people self identifying as a woman, black or disabled. Can I now claim disability benefit and compete in the paralympics?

@SomePosters huh? I don’t see any argument here. Just a sensible philosophical discussion. I think we are over stopping discussion and debate now right?

@Changechangychange

I thought the issue was making money out of /popularising things black women are criticised for (Like their hair), not adopting things black women are also praised for.

For women, a better parallel would be things like stay at home dads being praised to the rafters while stay are home mums are called lazy or unambitious. Men in eyeliner being seen as edgy, women in eyeliner being seen as tarty. For example.

Many people don't make the distinction you are, or they are somehow thinking that someone like Beyonce is getting seriously criticized for her hair. Whereas in truth, she's not, she's considered a style icon and that's why a lot of young women want to look like her.

Basically, young women who admire her and want to copy her look, whatever their race, are basically doing it for the same reasons.

They aren't claiming to actually be black, not ever celebrities that copy these looks are claiming that.

I've only just discovered this week that Rita Ora is not black - she's been happily and deliberately (wearing Jamaican colours etc) letting people believe she was for years. Similarly Arianna Grande is not Hispanic. So some people do just experiment with different hairstyles, but some people honestly do make a whole career from deliberately misleading (lying?) about their race.

Is it just me who thinks "oppression olympics" is a pathetic, reductive term that overlooks actual issues? Along the lines of "elf and safety" and "you can't say anything these days". Proper Mail-reader stuff.

@ViceLikeBlip

I've only just discovered this week that Rita Ora is not black - she's been happily and deliberately (wearing Jamaican colours etc) letting people believe she was for years. Similarly Arianna Grande is not Hispanic. So some people do just experiment with different hairstyles, but some people honestly do make a whole career from deliberately misleading (lying?) about their race.

Ariana Grande has only ever described herself as Italian-American. Which she is. Is it her fault that so many people don't understand that European peoples can have different skin tones and don't just come in pasty white?

And the same is true for Rita Ora. She's Albanian. There's plenty of xenophobia within Europe and there's a reason why Southern Europeans get the short end of the stick on that front - because their skin colour is darker than that of Northern and Western Europeans.

Are we really going to argue that people who have never claimed to be of a different origin than they are, are to be blamed because their American fans don't have the first clue about European peoples and judge everything in an American context?

Is it just me who thinks "oppression olympics" is a pathetic, reductive term that overlooks actual issues?

I think it accurately describes a certain phenomenon, but agree it can be overused.

@GreyCarpet

Why is black fishing unacceptable but identifying as a woman fair game?

One is racism and men are impacted negatively by racism.

The other is misogyny and that affects only women (despite whatever Dominic Raab ight think).

Affects men - bad

Affects women- s'cool if it makes men happy.

Is there a word for when racism and sexism both have a negative effect per chance GreyCarpet?

Personally I have begun referring to drag as blackfishing as a woman because to me profiting from stereotypes that women are punished for (too much make up, skimpy clothing) is EXACTLY what drag artists are doing. Whether or not they then ‘identify’ as a woman is a separate issue I think.

Is there a word for when racism and sexism both have a negative effect per chance GreyCarpet?

I don't think the poster meant that race didn't have a negative effect on women, just that, unlike misogyny, racism is also experienced by men.

The thing with the entire discourse is it chucks Black women under the bus.

Rita Ora blew my mind. I told a couple of friends recently she wasn’t black and they wouldn’t believe me. Even when I showed them her Wikipedia page they said she still must be mixed race.

I’m seriously starting to question my friend’s refusal to believe anything I say.

That's a valid point, but a different one to the one that specific pp was making, so I don't think it's fair to single her out.

Black women have been saying black fishing was an issue for ages.

Now that the issue is crossing over and into the whole trans thing and affecting white women now white women are noticing it more.

Hate to say it.. white people don’t care about most issues unless it affects us. Ok generalising of course. But as a whole unless something negatively affects whites it is not really seen as a “big deal”.

At most the whole racism issue being solved is really lip service.

My black American friends have a very different take on racism due to their history compared to Europe and they tell me that until white people are affected then it doesn’t matter. And I see by the reactions of other white people it is actually true which is sad.

@MarshmallowSwede

Black women have been saying black fishing was an issue for ages.

Now that the issue is crossing over and into the whole trans thing and affecting white women now white women are noticing it more.

Hate to say it.. white people don’t care about most issues unless it affects us. Ok generalising of course. But as a whole unless something negatively affects whites it is not really seen as a “big deal”.

At most the whole racism issue being solved is really lip service.

My black American friends have a very different take on racism due to their history compared to Europe and they tell me that until white people are affected then it doesn’t matter. And I see by the reactions of other white people it is actually true which is sad.

White women absolutely care about an issue that effects black women because of the blank women being women.

Whether or not women care about an issue that effects black women because they are black likely varies from white woman to white woman.

It’s entirely valid to feel that white woman don’t care about the racism woc experience, but feminism isn’t a movement for the liberation of poc, it’s for the liberation of woman. So it centres women’s concerns about being women.