Can someone explain why transgend is OK but transracial is not?

[speakout]

I am trying to understand the arguements.
My niece and I have been trying to find reasoned arguments or points of view to understand why transgender and transracial are so "completely different".
Other than the " if you can't see the difference you must be stupid".
Anyone found some logical explanation?

Beats me! I mean there are only 2 sexes ie. so you can't be a bit female and a bit male. Whereas there are a myriad of races, and you can be (and are) a bit of a whole variety of races.

I would say it's because one has a biological precedent and the other doesn't. 'Gender' is a social construct that comes from lots of things but is in part influenced by hormones. Many people with gender dysphoria have been found to have higher than expected levels of the other sex's hormones. Whilst we try and get away from sex stereotypes (which I think is great) you can't deny that there are some personality attributes that are more commonly associated with one sex or another that are from biology rather than just society influence. With race, as far as I am aware, it's just a physical thing. Obviously there are huge cultural differences that often come along with racial differences but, as far as I know, there is no genetic component that affects personality. So I can sort of see how someone may 'feel' like their gender doesn't fit in with their sex but I can't see how someone can 'feel' like a different race any more than someone can feel like they have a different eye colour. Could be totally wrong but that's how I can make sense of it.

What if funding that had typically had gone to support the group in some way was then going to the people who 'identified' as the group? And the people actually from that group had to either keep away or keep their mouths shut about people not from that group pretending to be from that group? Indeed, posters on the door saying 'people who don't believe people not of that group are not welcome here'.

So in order to have the benefit you have to go along with the pretence and see your groups being ripped apart in front of your eyes and nobody will listen to you.

Or say, people from that group had donated say, books, to benefit that group and then people not from that group join, and start blocking actual people that originally donated the books from accessing them or the group itself?

Whereas I’d say that the priority should be investment in the provision of robust and empathetic psychological counselling to help people suffering with any kind of dysphoria or dysmorphia to reconcile with reality. Unless you also advocate for people with anorexia to have their stomachs stapled and those with BDD to have healthy limbs amputated on the NHS? And if you don’t, why not? What’s the difference?

There’s not so much profit in talking therapies for MH conditions, of course…

don't all the major psychiatric and medical say that transition is the best treatment in some cases?

In some cases, yes. But how many, and how do we tell who they are?

ECT is the best treatment for severe depression in some cases. But several countries have decided that ECT is not reliable enough to be worth all the severe depressives for whom it does nothing or causes harm because doctors can't predict who will be helped and who will only be harmed, and those countries don't allow ECT at all. (The UK still does.)

At the moment, trans campaigners seem to want physical transition to be available to anyone who says it will be good for them and has enough capacity to give consent, even if later on they are quite likely to decide it was a mistake. Because having to prove to a sceptical psychiatrist that you can cope with the downsides and you're really not likely to change your mind, or that you're so unwell that any damage done by transition is better than the alternative ... is intrusive, and embarrassing, and time consuming, so no-one should have to do that. Should they?

It's like the way drag is fine but blackface is not. They are analogous.

Whilst we try and get away from sex stereotypes (which I think is great) you can't deny that there are some personality attributes that are more commonly associated with one sex or another that are from biology rather than just society influence.

Which personality attributes arise from biology (supported by scientific evidence) rather than ingrained social perceptions of the sexes?

I think what you're saying comes under adversely affected in my post.

The obvious difference is that supporting the dysmorphia of an anorexic would inevitably kill them, whilst there is medical evidence that suggests supporting people with gender dysphoria has a positive effect in many (not all) cases.
Generally I've found that doctors tend to want to help people rather than kill them, perhaps your experience differs.

I'd love some of the monitors to drop in to explain how changing your race is any different to changing your sex.

I mean, blackface is bad but womanface is something to be applauded?

Many people with gender dysphoria have been found to have higher than expected levels of the other sex's hormones.

I'm not sure why that would qualify as a sound biological basis for the argument. Hormone levels vary very considerably and there's a lot more to sex categorisation than this.

I'm not a medical professional so I can't honestly answer your question, but I don't believe there is a worldwide conspiracy involving all major medical bodies to mendaciously diagnose people with gender dysphoria. I trust the medical profession enough to think it is a condition, and that there are sufficient criteria for diagnosing it.
I have a lot of sympathy for those who regret their transition, or detransition, and for the families and friends who have to go through it with them. But, to be harsh, a doctor can only diagnose on the symptoms presented, so if someone insists their dysphoric and goes through numerous operations then I think the only person to 'blame' is them. Lots of people have to make difficult medical decisions, for themselves and for others, sometimes with both outcomes being unpleasant. At some point we have to trust adults to take responsibility for themselves.

The short answer is "because men" of course. Ironically, race actually is a spectrum whereas sex is binary....but what pushy men want they usually get.

Had this discussion with DH many times (he is black I am white). He has a very mixed family and our son is very light skinned. The notion of racial identity is very complex, some people in his family have multi racial parents but "present" as white, he has multi racial parents but is dark skinned so presents as black not mixed. I imagine our son will be able to choose how he identifies a lot more as his ethnicity will not be immediately clear..... Yet it still wouldn't be acceptable for me as a white woman to suddenly announce I feel like a black woman. It's a much more complex discussion about ethnic identity rather than sex which is very binary.

My niece and I have been trying to find reasoned arguments or points of view to understand why transgender and transracial are so "completely different".

Race is about DNA, genetic science. It has nothing to do with emotional feelings, social conditioning or political correctness.

Sex is about the science of chromosomes. No amount of surgery or medication can change the chromosomes a person was born with. Chromosomes have nothing to do with emotional feeling, social conditioning . sexual preferences or political correcteness. Most people who are either XX or YY identify with the sex that matches both their chromosomes and their genitalia.

A very tiny number of people are born with variant chromosomes ; they are neither XX or YY but somewhere in between. Truly intersex. Some decide to live with their body as is; others decide to have surgery or hormones so the body matches their gender sense of self.

There is a far larger number of people whose genitalia and sex chromosomes are indisputable but just don't match their emotional sense of self. They may live in a male body but feel their are female. They identify as transgender and some may take hormone medication or use surgery to alter their physical body to more closely resemble their sense of who they are. Others prefer to retain ambivalence.

Sorry, not concentrating. Most people are XY, (male) or XX (female_

Joking aside, I think there are probably two elements, namely:

(1) Critical mass/'safety in numbers'. At least one in every, what, couple of hundred men seem to these days see themselves as a woman. Many of the men who do this are eloquent, educated, men, from, I suppose, 'the ruling class'. So people listen to them. There are as yet no such safeguards for trans-racial people.

(2) Existence of a binary. Even though denying the sexual binary is an absolute favourite trans pastime (right up there with tweeting abuse in JL Rowling's direction), the very notion of being trans implicitly acknowledges the binary's existence, e.g. 'I wasn't male, now I'm female, you must at all costs treat me as female, treating me as male would be a hate crime'. But race doesn't really have a binary at all. There are obviously plenty of people, it's probably true of most people really, who you can quickly glance at and immediately have a really good go at deducing at least the majority components of their recent ancestry. But to the questionable extent that you can pigeonhole people into discrete 'races' there are certainly more than two, and e.g in this country there are plenty of very 'white' people who have non-trivial amounts of non-white ancestry (e.g. sub-Saharan African, Romany, etc etc)... so, y'know being trans-racial sort of can't really be 'a thing' in the same way that transgender is, since so many people really are a bit of a mix.

*jk Rowling, obviously

Race is about DNA, genetic science. It has nothing to do with emotional feelings, social conditioning or political correctness.

The thing about race is... What determines it? If my son is a mixture of ethnicities, what determines what identity he has? If you are 1/2 black, a 1/4, a 1/8 at what point are you no longer black?

There is a far larger number of people whose genitalia and sex chromosomes are indisputable but just don't match their emotional sense of self.

You could apply this to race also, so why not?

A very tiny number of people are born with variant chromosomes ; they are neither XX or YY but somewhere in between. Truly intersex.

No one is truly intersex. There are DSD, which mean that sex characteristics don't develop as normal, but everyone's sex can be identified. There are also conditions like vitiligo which disrupt racial characteristics like skin colour, but I've never seen anyone bring these into the argument.

Something purely anecdotal that occurs to me that may also be of relevance to the OP.
When I was younger I dated a guy who had a black father and a white mother. His skin colour was white, his siblings were all dark skinned. But ethnically he was mixed-race like his siblings, and I think would now be classed as BAME (not a thing back then). So someone can have an ethnic background that isn't immediately obvious from looking at them.

There is no difference really.

Or transageism - I feel like an 18 year old but im 55. Why shouldn't I behave like one?

People can feel all sorts of things. I think because we put too much meaning on what being a woman or an age or a race etc is.

Being a woman means you have a womans bits. It doesn't mean that you like pink and babies and photos of cats - that's an individual thing.

Being 55 is your biological age. It doesn't mean you're not playful or immature or naive etc.

I should add being a woman means being born a biological woman.

I dont subscribe to people having an operation and "becoming" a woman.

I realise there is a spectrum within radical feminism, what is considered GC, and where the boundaries should be- and I can see, and am fascinated by, some of these divides and differing beliefs expressed on this forum (still trying to work out where I fall on this spectrum and MN is very helpful in this exploration).

I sense that maybe Sheila Jeffrey's comes from a standpoint not everyone would agree with, but whatever resonates for you in the dabate and spectrum of belief/where the boundaries lie, I think Sheila Jeffrey's analyses the issue discussed here (womanface) very well- and points to some relevent articles- about blackface.

I also find this womanface topic and the vid below fascinating in reflecting on most of our (women's) responses of the Canadian-big-boob teacher and Dylan Dulvaney (Forbes) threads too.

It's 30 mins or so, but she gets into the meat of it from 10 mins in if anyone wants to listen and is short if time.