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?

[MangyInseam]

@Moonatics

So the webberleys who have both been to tribunals? For just giving out puberty blockers at whim almost?

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3598778-Dr-Helen-and-Dr-Mike-Webberley-matters-of-public-record


There are more threads but I'm short on time to list them all.

Mr webberleys tribunal stated more than once that a five minute online consult with no need for tests or more consults was not enough to prescribe puberty blockers or testosterone or "hrt" yet he did just that in so many cases he was struck off.

If we were talking 18 year old I'd agree, officially your of age, you can make these decisions. And yes we all live with regrets. But so many young (younger than 18 for certain) girls making themselves sterile and for what?
The main point is, there used to be around *90 girls a year with gender dysphoria. Now that figure jumped to thousands.

• I saw this number years ago when I first started this journey, it was averaged out I think, or maybe literal. But the point stands from 1989 til recently around 90 girls a year were helped at tavistock, it's a huge increase and no real reason found as to why.

People do seem to forget that the medical profession does not exist to be some kind of wish fulfillment service. There is such a thing as medical ethics, and just because a patient wants something does not make it ok for the doctor to do it. Give antibiotics without reason, supply narcotics, cut of limbs, help anorexics diet. None of these are ethical in most cases.

Cosmetic surgery walks the line on this, and frankly according to a lot of measures goes well over it, but people seem to think that sets the norm. It's not medicine, it's just very invasive aesthetic services.

[guinnessguzzler]

Urgh, aesthetics. Seem to be springing up everywhere. Terrifies me.

Anyway, thanks to those who have explained how the differing approaches of queer theory and critical race theory impact here, very interesting and useful to know that background.

[BryceQuinlanTheFirst]

I asked DH this question who is black, he said two reasons.

1. Black people would never tolerate someone pretending to be black (think how many women love drag Queens 🤷‍♀️)

1. No one would want to be black as he feels he's so disadvantaged socially, he faces daily race-related aggressions.

I wonder that the perception of being female is that they don't face prejudice as many of the issues affecting women wouldn't happen to trans women... Eg menstruation related issues, lower pay, lack of maternity rights, threat of sexual assault. From what I've seen being female seems to be about "liking dresses and lipstick."

[speakout]

@BryceQuinlanTheFirst

I asked DH this question who is black, he said two reasons.

1. Black people would never tolerate someone pretending to be black (think how many women love drag Queens 🤷‍♀️)

1. No one would want to be black as he feels he's so disadvantaged socially, he faces daily race-related aggressions.

I wonder that the perception of being female is that they don't face prejudice as many of the issues affecting women wouldn't happen to trans women... Eg menstruation related issues, lower pay, lack of maternity rights, threat of sexual assault. From what I've seen being female seems to be about "liking dresses and lipstick."

I agree- a man can never know what it is like to be a woman, putting on a frock and kitten heels may make him feel like his conceptualization of a woman, but all it does is deepen gender stereotypes, and ultimately damaging for real women and their place in society.
Trans women are not helping the causes of women, in fact they worsen it giving us role models who enjoy wolf whistles and the commodification of women.
And it is in conflict with queer theory which seeks to blur boundaries.
How can trans women have it both ways?
Ultimately transwomen are men exercising their priviledge and greater choices that most women have globally.

[VladmirsPoutine]

I can't say I have the right answer and it's something I've thought about but to me, being black has been far more stressful in my life than being a woman. Again I only speak for myself but I've been called a bitch a few times and smiled right back, the first time someone used the n-word towards me I think I genuinely considered never leaving my house again.

[TheBiologyStupid]

There are very many genuinely mixed-race people in the world. Mixed-sex, not so much...

[Lilithslove]

@VladmirsPoutine

I can't say I have the right answer and it's something I've thought about but to me, being black has been far more stressful in my life than being a woman. Again I only speak for myself but I've been called a bitch a few times and smiled right back, the first time someone used the n-word towards me I think I genuinely considered never leaving my house again.

Me too @VladmirsPoutine

[LimpBiskit]

@TheBiologyStupid

There are very many genuinely mixed-race people in the world. Mixed-sex, not so much...

😂

[MangyInseam]

@BryceQuinlanTheFirst

I asked DH this question who is black, he said two reasons.

1. Black people would never tolerate someone pretending to be black (think how many women love drag Queens 🤷‍♀️)

1. No one would want to be black as he feels he's so disadvantaged socially, he faces daily race-related aggressions.

I wonder that the perception of being female is that they don't face prejudice as many of the issues affecting women wouldn't happen to trans women... Eg menstruation related issues, lower pay, lack of maternity rights, threat of sexual assault. From what I've seen being female seems to be about "liking dresses and lipstick."

My understanding is that there are actually increasing instances of people claiming to belong to racial identity groups in order to access affirmative action programs, scholarships, and so on. So your husband may not be as correct about #2 as he would have been in the past.

[NecessaryScene]

A new essay by Wokal Distance on this very theme, saying some of what I was trying to say above, better:

The Two Wings of Postmodernism...

For this reason the postmodernists do not play by the intellectual rules that have been set out by what we might call the western tradition of rational thinking. [...]

This leads to a situation where the conclusions postmodernism argues for are intentionally vague, insinuated rather than argued for, internally contradictory, and deliberately difficult to pin down. [...]

The simple way to put this is that the traditional western conception of academia was concerned with what is true. Whereas the postmodern conception of academia is concerned with POWER, who gets it, who wields it, and who benefits. On this view the goal is to convert education into a vehicle for spreading the radical political ideas of the postmodernists and implementing their radical social and political agenda. Searle refers to this as the shift from “domain-to-be-investigated” to “moral-cause-to-be-advanced.” [...]

Right now people tend to trust postmodern academics and treat their ideas as though they are the product of careful, rigorous, scholarship and neutral unbiased methods. I want people to see that these academics are putting their fingers on the scale in the name of advancing their political goals, and they are academically laundering these ideas through universities with that end in mind.

The sooner people realize that postmodern ideas are not the fruit of rigorous, careful, enlightenment liberal scholarship, the sooner postmodern ideas can be subjected to the scrutiny they deserve.

[TheKeatingFive]

Your posts have been very interesting necessaryscene thanks for that

[Cillery]

@NecessaryScene

A new essay by Wokal Distance on this very theme, saying some of what I was trying to say above, better:

The Two Wings of Postmodernism...

For this reason the postmodernists do not play by the intellectual rules that have been set out by what we might call the western tradition of rational thinking. [...]

This leads to a situation where the conclusions postmodernism argues for are intentionally vague, insinuated rather than argued for, internally contradictory, and deliberately difficult to pin down. [...]

The simple way to put this is that the traditional western conception of academia was concerned with what is true. Whereas the postmodern conception of academia is concerned with POWER, who gets it, who wields it, and who benefits. On this view the goal is to convert education into a vehicle for spreading the radical political ideas of the postmodernists and implementing their radical social and political agenda. Searle refers to this as the shift from “domain-to-be-investigated” to “moral-cause-to-be-advanced.” [...]

Right now people tend to trust postmodern academics and treat their ideas as though they are the product of careful, rigorous, scholarship and neutral unbiased methods. I want people to see that these academics are putting their fingers on the scale in the name of advancing their political goals, and they are academically laundering these ideas through universities with that end in mind.

The sooner people realize that postmodern ideas are not the fruit of rigorous, careful, enlightenment liberal scholarship, the sooner postmodern ideas can be subjected to the scrutiny they deserve.

Yes the seeds of these ideas were sown during the 60s but are now coming to fruition - horribly!

[AmaryllisNightAndDay]

@NecessaryScene
I don't know.... "The Two Wings of Postmoderism" looks plausible enough and is probably a good summary of a lot of what's been happening but I still feel cautious about it. It's a good thing to be aware of the social and political and power biases in supposedly "objective" research, and also to recognise that when it comes to studying people, perfect objectivity isn't going to be possible. Powerful people can influence which academic questions are even worth asking. So there is always going to be a political dimension and having other academic tools to query that dimension is a good thing.

I agree it's a bad thing to throw the baby out with the bathwater and say that therefore objectivity in itself is always irrelevant to truth or is purely a tool of oppression. Oppressors and the powerful can use whatever comes to hand including queer theory, postmodernism and all the circus.

I am cautious about e.g. a claim that "the postmodern conception of academia is concerned with POWER, who gets it, who wields it, and who benefits" and that this is (a) purely a bad thing and (b) the only thing that postmodernism is about in academia. I don't know a lot about postmodernism and I care even less but this kind of statement doesn't feel like an objective truth, it feels like someone who has a political agenda themselves. I don't know the context, I don't know who Wokal Distance is or what their wider agenda may be, I don't even know if they're talking about academia in the UK, the US, the world.....

[TheBiologyStupid]

@Ofcourseshecan

Thanks for this very clear explanation, NecessaryScene. I hadn’t thought it through before. Very different aims, but both ’theories’ created to further an agenda, not to search for truth.

Yes, that was an excellent analysis by Necessary.

[NecessaryScene]

Oh, "Wokal Distance" is a fairly prominent online "anti-woke" campaigner, in the James Lindsay circle, and will be thinking of mainly US academia. You'll see interviews with him on Benjamin Boyce's channel. Definitely someone with a political agenda.

and that this is (a) purely a bad thing and (b) the only thing that postmodernism is about in academia

Oh, I'm sure that there is this stuff being done in a non-activist sense - I don't think he's trying to generalise that much, but rather describe the tools the activists are using (or misusing?).

Sure, it's not ALL highly-motivated activism, but you can't deny there is a hell of a lot of it going on. And that it's interfering with the people trying to actually get a handle on truth, where it comes into conflict.

[NecessaryScene]

Oh, random thing I saw on Twitter today - only partially relevant.

Someone in an argument with Jack Turban (US total "gender affirmation" advocate in full denial of everything else happening outside the US). Turban was making a thing about some very-flakey study he was waving being "peer reviewed".

Someone pithily pointed out it would be more accurate to say it was "peer affirmed". Kind of spot on.

[AmaryllisNightAndDay]

@NecessaryScene Thank you for the explanation, that really helps .

[AmaryllisNightAndDay]

.. and I wouldn't deny that there's a lot of it about!

There's been some really weird stuff going on in the London Review of Books in the last few weeks, I meant to post something but life got in the way.

[Ladyof2022]

Trans-racial makes far more sense.

There are millions of people in the world who are mixed-race as a result of having parents from two biological races. Some grandparents are also of differing biological races, so there are also millions of people who are 25% one biological race and 75% another, and indeed any permutation of percentages.

Members of my own family have recently had their DNA analysed via Ancestry and the results were fascinating, we found our DNA showed that all of us were comprised of different races from across the globe.

Some of them (siblings) are half white British and half black African and in their daily lives incorporate aspects of both cultures. (Are they "appropriating" when they choose African cultural props on a particular day?)

In stark contrast, there are no people in the world who are, for example, a percentage biological male and a percentage biological female.