Why is it seen as acceptable for a person be born the wrong sex but not the wrong ethnicity?

[goldtinged]

I saw a somewhat recent article about Rachel Dolezal, the caucasian American woman who identifies as a black woman, and it made me wonder. Why is this clearly wrong but it is (largely) socially acceptable for a man to identify as a woman? She says she has always felt she was a black person from a young age, and she was denounced for this. But if you denounce a man for saying he identifies as a woman, you are a bigot?

Sorry if this is a thick question, I really don’t understand why one is wrong and the other isn’t (I know it is wrong to GC feminists but I mean widely speaking it isn’t seen as wrong). I understand why it is wrong to pretend to be a black person, just in case that isn’t clear.

I'm gender critical and I do think it is problematic to appropriate the identity of the opposite sex, particularly if you are man appropriating a female identity within the context of patriarchal oppression of women. (Though I don't think it's universally completely wrong as some GC feminists seem to do).

But to play devil's advocate whiteness Vs blackness is not an individual thing in the way that sex is. Even though race is not biologically "real" in the way that sex is, it is absolutely socially and culturally real. If you are white, that means your parents are white and the majority of your whole society (most likely) is white, your family and community is white.

Whereas the difference with sex is that all of us biologically at least have a mother and father and are comprised of mixed sex communities (even if there is a segregation and discrimination). Biology dictates that men and women can never belong to completely separate social and family groups in the way that people of different ethnicities can.

I think something linked to this is at the heart of why trans identified male persons entering female single sex spaces feels like a transgression (excuse the pun !) - because this is a self invitation into a community, group or space that is only for women - which feels different than just an individual choice of expression of gender identity in spaces which are for everyone anyway. I think appropriating blackness when you are white is kind of closer to that sense of violating a community identity???

So if you trans-sex but not actively seeking to enter single sex spaces belonging to the opposite sex - then really you appropriating identity more on an individual level, it's how you present yourself etc. But if you trans-race you are really appropriating / violating a very separate community identity to which you (very probably) have no social or familial bonds.

However to finish this rambling - whilst I can appreciate there is some difference, I also don't really buy it / understand it. I haven't really heard any convincing explanation as to why one is completely okay and the other is completely not okay, though I like to keep an open mind.

I think appropriating sex is worse than race as it is putting women's safety at risk whereas as far as I know there is no difference in physical strength between races. And as far as I've read alot of trans "women" ( men) are doing it for sexual gratification whereas I think people like Rachel dozeal just got carried away with their affinity with another race.

😂👏🏼

And of course the waters are muddied by the fact that black and white (in racial terms) and male and female, are not equals and opposite.

A huge part of transness is basically sexually motivated. Pretending to be a woman is a common fetish amongst men, and collectively those men have enough wealth and influence to impose acceptance of their activities upon society. Far fewer men are getting turned on by pretending to be another race; indeed I have never heard of such a thing.

It's because misogyny is ok, but racism isn't.

It’s not meant to be a gotcha. I’m not white myself. I know of a group of people (not personally) who feel deep affinity for my culture (or their perceptions of it anyways), some even go as far as deeply wishing they were my ethnicity, but none of them are trying to pass themselves off as it despite that. That would be deeply offensive and delusional. It’s not even up for debate as a possibility to do that. Some of them are trans, however. I genuinely don’t understand the difference in why one is ok and the other is not.

It would be useful to hear from women who are supportive of transgender rights but would not be supportive of transrace rights, on what the difference is to them. I’m guessing they don’t view one as misogynistic but would view the other as racist?

Thank you - this doesn't feel like rambling at all and I'm a big fan of a lot of the open-minded discussion on this thread around a genuinely interesting point.

I guess your point is complicated by the fact that, within some mixed race family settings, a child who does not have the appearance of a certain race may nevertheless choose to describe themselves as being of that race - perhaps because they identify strongly with the experiences/ heritage of a parent.

Whereas, in the trans example, I don't feel that self-expression - even in a personal/ family context - takes enough account of female oppression/ male privilege (although it's often claimed otherwise). The obvious example is that if a man has a female partner and decides he is a woman, does that mean he also identifies into her possible (and statistically likely) oppression within their relationship - caring responsibilities, majority of the "unpaid" work in looking after their home etc - which he himself may have been responsible for?

Yes, indeed. Apropos 'transage', I always think of the video of Emile Ratelband and Jane Fae on the Victoria Derbyshire show.

Emile wants to identify as 20 years younger than he biologically is, as he feels very fit, healthy and 'young for his age'. I'm not sure how serious he is, or whether he is just trying to prove a (in the context of this ideology) very valid point.

Jane keeps banging on about how absurd he is - and even how horrible and disrespectful he is to seek to 'appropriate something that he clearly is not' (even though somebody's exact age is much, much harder to judge than their exact sex), as he very obviously was not born 20 years after he actually was - without any apparent sense of irony whatsoever!

It's a great question and my answer to it is because woke bullshit.
This double standard exists because wokeass white gen zers lack critical thinking ability and are always trying to suck up to people of colour. One of their favourite whines is about "cultural appropriation." Ooh, that's bad. Gender appropriation, otoh, is good.
A focus group of the best sociologists in the world couldn't figure out the reason for these stupid inconsistencies. They are a hive mind and those are the established rules.
I say this as a very left wing person. The younger people on the left now are abject morons and bullies, cheering on Hamas and Hezbollah and TRAs who hurl abuse and threats at women. They are what I would call morally insane.
Rant concluded.

That's weird. Where's the "contrast"?

It's a bit like saying "A mars bar is a chocolate bar. In contrast a marathon bar is nice to eat". Whatever the writer is trying to suggest by this sentence, these are not contrasting qualities. They are just different.

And to @DoIEver , I have never seen a post here which explains the difference using a coherent and reasoned argument. Just posts like yours asserting that there is a difference.

😄
I hope you'll allow me to translate this woke word salad from dudebro ChatGPT.

"Thinking you're a woman is because you really are a woman and means you are also a harmless, lovely person who would never ever be mean to other women, but thinking you're black is just because you're a vicious racist asshole."

So, some follow-up questions for ChatGPT; how many black people did Rachel Dolezal harm or threaten to harm? How many black people have been harmed by white people who claim to be black?
Compare those numbers with how many so-called transwomen have harmed or threatened to harm women.

This is the answer I got;

Rachel Dolezal, a former NAACP chapter president, faced significant backlash for her claims of being Black while being born to white parents. The harm she caused is often viewed in terms of racial identity and representation, leading to discussions about authenticity and privilege, but there are no specific reports of her directly threatening or harming individuals.
As for the broader issue, the complexities of racial identity and appropriation can lead to harm in terms of trust, community dynamics, and representation, but quantifying the exact number of individuals harmed by white people claiming Black identity is challenging and not well-documented. The impact often lies more in social and cultural ramifications rather than in direct physical harm.

So ChatGPT refuses to answer questions about so-called trans women harming women. It's answer to the other question about racial identify appropriation is basically "Umm...er....nebulous notions of social harm can be presumed to apply, just because. There is no evidence of harm to any person."

"Social harm"= hurt feelings.

There is literally no difference between them. People may try to gaslight you into believing otherwise, making out that one is somehow mysteriously complex and exceptional. They might seek to blind you with pseudo-science or most likely shame you out of asking the question at all. But your gut instincts are correct. There is no difference between people who overidentify with any other (usually more oppressed) group and seek to misrepresent either their status, be it race/sex/disability status/indigenous heritage/social class/species or whatever. Their motivations may be multifactorial. Almost nobody truly believes that brains can be born in the wrong body. Mostly the main dispute is how blunt we are allowed to be about the truth, based on whose feelings or safety is considered the most important.

As well as the previous problems pointed out with this, you could also directly swap the 2 arguments without it making any less sense.

But to play devil's advocate whiteness Vs blackness is not an individual thing in the way that sex is. Even though race is not biologically "real" in the way that sex is, it is absolutely socially and culturally real. If you are white, that means your parents are white and the majority of your whole society (most likely) is white, your family and community is white.

But even that is very white-centric, when discussing the basic concept of your race/racial identity framed within that of your family.

It's true that, if you are white (a recessive genetic characteristic), both of your parents will be as well (except for a very few genetic anomalies); but the same is absolutely not necessarily true if you are black or mixed race.

Taking that viewpoint to its logical conclusion, we would be seeking to distinguish between people who have two black parents and those who have one black and one white parent, or one black and one Asian parent; or indeed going back to their grandparents' generation or further back.

Ad absurdum, we could be berating somebody with a black and white parent and asking how dare they try to 'appropriate the racial identity' of somebody with two black parents.

I'm glad someone else thinks this. Since adolescence, I've always looked leftwards for radical, challenging or emancipatory ideas, yet I find myself increasingly frustrated by the preoccupations of the younger generation of leftists. I can't, in conscience, embrace trans rights in a strong form, despite not minding how people wish to dress or spend their spare time. Similarly, it's very hard to find Hamas terribly appetising, (or the current leadership in Afghanistan, come to think of it), nor am I particularly keen to embrace the corporate interests of the global billionaire or governmental class, or endorse the censorship they seek to impose. That's a slight derail of the thread, but it's important not to let the TRA and be kind brigade monopolise 'left wing' discourse. At it's best, Marxism gives you a lot of tools of critique. It certainly teaches you about the importance of economics!

It’s an interesting question. Take the case of Anthony Lennon who was working in theatre as a black man when it was revealed both his parents are white…

… but hang on a minute, when you read about him, you can see him and his brother looked like they were not white from birth onwards (his brother committed suicide) and he was open with his black friends, who saw him as black, about his parentage. He was bullied terribly. In some ways he has lived the black experience. And when he did a DNA test it pointed towards black heritage - they just don’t know where exactly in his family history.

i think AL should feel able to identify as black - he is judged as a person of colour from his appearance.

race is much more complicated than sex and while anyone can identify how they like, I don’t think men should tell others to identify them as women.

This is it, exactly.

And that's why AI is a potential danger; only as clever as the people setting it's boundaries.

Yes, my DP and I tried asking Chat GPT this and received the same or similar answer. It's extraordinary, isn't it: almost as if Chat GPT has been programmed to ignore the entire history of women's oppression up to this day, the whole social and cultural context of gender as a concept and all of gender-based violence, as if they never existed at all.

Very frightening that young people will be getting their information from this programme.

Absolutely nothing really. Except that it is seen as racism or cultural appropriation if it’s ethnicity, but it isn’t seen as sexism / sex appropriation or misogyny if it’s just silly women making a fuss and demanding their rights.

Richard Dawkins brought this up ages ago now, and the idiots tried to ‘cancel’ him. He didn’t give a sht and they failed.

It's not even that clever. In a literal sense, Chat GPT doesn't know what it's talking about. It just knows what words are likely to come next.

"Race is very much a spectrum. Most African-Americans are mixed race, so there really is a spectrum. Somebody who looks white may even call themselves black, may have a very slight [African inheritance]. People who have one great-grandparent who is Native American may call themselves Native American. Sex on the other hand is pretty damn binary. So on the face of it, it would seem easier for someone to identify as whatever race they choose. If you have one black parent and one white parent, you might think you could choose what to identify as."

https://richarddawkins.com/articles/article/race-is-a-spectrum-sex-is-pretty-damn-binary

I think a lot of this can be put into that hefty "Americans are so weird about race" file.

I know race and ethnicity can be complicated. I have Romani ancestry. I don't call myself Roma because I didn't grow up in the community or in touch with its traditions. I don't look stereotypically Roma (sometimes people think I'm Jewish, which I'm not). Very few people know this about me, and if I ever mention it, it's as a curiosity. At most I'd say it gives me an instinctive sympathy for the community, a desire to learn more about it, and a certain saltiness towards non-Roma who go around loudly taking offence on behalf of a community they don't belong to or know anything about.

But I'm not American.

It seems to me there's a particular thing about Americans that, if they're not of recent immigrant background, they're pretty much all mongrels and often know little about their ancestry. That's part of why DNA testing has become such a big deal. I think it's also connected to lots of affluent, educated Americans having abandoned the idea of the melting pot and moved towards a kind of woke segregationism where race is all-important and there's a premium on being able to say that you're not baseline white.

Hence the Americans who pop up on genealogy subreddits saying "23andMe says I'm 3% Italian, can I claim this ethnicity" as if ethnic heritage is Pokemon.

You see it a lot with claims of Native American heritage. Now huge numbers of Americans, especially in the South and in black communities, have some kind of vague family folklore of NA heritage which they've no reason to disbelieve. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it isn't, but if it's just a matter of them having an apocryphal story about a Cherokee GGM then it's not really harming anyone.

But then you look at Native American studies departments in universities and there seems to be quite a trend of academics (it's almost always women, for some weird reason) who've built a career on pretending to be NA when they're really white. They get exposed on a semi-regular basis. I've heard an estimate that, out of the academics working in NA studies, maybe only 20% really are Native. This seems to cause less outrage in universities than insensitive sports mascots or Halloween costumes.

Or you get the case of Buffy Sainte-Marie, and with her it's not just that she's spent 60 years pretending to be something she's not, it's that she's won a slew of awards specifically earmarked for Native musicians, that wouldn't be open to an Italian-American woman who has an affinity for Native Americans.

That's when it starts to look a bit like blokes winning medals in women's sports.