Interesting analogy on X - identifying as black

[ItsCoolForCats]

From Diana Alastair:

Imagine a scenario in which large numbers of white people start saying that they “feel black,” and that because of this feeling, and their enjoyment of stereotypically “black behavior,” they are now not just black themselves, but the most marginalized and vulnerable type of black person.

Imagine them insisting that they should be the main focus of all activism meant to help PoC. Imagine them having operations to darken their skin and mimic stereotypically black features. Imagine them walking around in blackface, and saying it’s the exact same thing as actually being black.

Imagine them being honored as black citizens by the White House, being summoned to talk to the President about issues facing the black community, being supported by celebrities, and having laws passed to make white people who identify as black a protected class.

Imagine these people demanding membership in black organizations, insisting that they receive a share of the reparations that CA is about to pay, and demanding they be given awards created specifically to honor black achievement. Then imagine them getting their way.

Now imagine mobs of them showing up to black events that don’t include them, carrying threatening signs and air horns to drown out any speakers with noise. Imagine them coming up with slurs for any black person who doesn’t accept that white people are black if they say they are.

Imagine them calling for the rape, torture, and mass murder of any black person who disagrees with them. Imagine them getting black people doxxed, harassed, assaulted, fired from their jobs, and investigated by the police for saying that you have to be born black to be black.

Now imagine the government supporting their demands.

That’s exactly the position that women are in right now, with a few extras, like being locked in cells with dangerous men, the sexual predation of lesbians via coercion, and the increased risk of sexual assault in what used to be female-only spaces. Our oppressors are now claiming not only the right to oppress us in whole new ways, but the right to erase our identities as women and rewrite the meaning of womanhood in ways that suit - and include - them.

If you wouldn’t support this kind of behavior towards black people, you have no business supporting this kind of behavior towards women.

https://x.com/i/status/1999820932144140700

It's ironic because colour is a spectrum and race is a social construct, but you can't be 'trans'racial '. 🤔

I think someone tried though.

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-10-08/when-scholars-and-activists-pretend-to-be-black-an-essay

It's a question that is often asked - and none of the TRAs or their rainbow-flag waving groupies can ever adequately answer it.

It shows "trans" up for the con it is. It also shows just how much power women have in the world; virtually none.

Judith Butler's non-answer (from 37:40):

Interesting article, thanks for the link.
This
all these rubrics are important organizing tools that can’t compare to the complex realities of lived Black life.
resonates, doesn't it?

It's an excellent analogy, along with comparing gender dysphoria to anorexia and body dysmorphia.
Those analogies are always shot down as being shocking and inappropriate by TRAs and their "allies". But they make sense to me

Naomi has that post pinned on twitter, with the comment "I have yet to hear an argument against this parallel that rises above “it’s racist to say that!” (It’s not.)".

Oh, you can be trans racial..my post was deleted on the page about Megan markle, because I dared to say she has a white father. Someone put "what's that got to do with anything".

Mm, I think they had a point tbh. Look up "one drop laws". I was surprised when I found out she was considered to be black because it hadn't occurred to me from looking at her, but I think a US citizen with any close relative who is black isn't being trans racial if they consider themselves black. That's a respect in which the analogy doesn't work, but not in a way that makes it more reasonable to think you can change sex!

She also has a black mother. They were right to delete your comment tbh. Mixed race people aren't trans racial.

'Transracial' is a White person claiming to be Black. 'Bi-racial' or 'mixed race' means someone who has a Black parent, like Megan Markle or Obama - they are Black, unlike the likes of Rachel Dolezal who is White, pretending to be Black.

I made this exact point in another post here, basically saying that I as a black woman, refuse to acquiesce to the delusions of trans identified men, in much the same way that I refuse to acknowledge that Rachel Dolezal is a black woman, and a TRA said it would be wrong not to accept and accommodate such people in society. 🙃

This is despite the fact that race is a skin-deep social construct, yet racefaking is rightfully considered abhorrent and harmful, yet sex is biologically determined and immutable down to our very cells, but you're a filthy transphobe if you don't bow down to the most marginalised community in the world and their penis pandering handmaidens.

Sorry I crossposted with solerolover.

No worries @MarieDeGournay!

I think this is because the people who argue "gender self-id good, race self-id bad" don't start with an honest, thoughtful look at the notion of identity and how it works and should work, and then apply that. They start from the desired outcome in each case.

For race, the desired outcome is that the white kids (especially) don't get to play in the sandpit. So definition of (non-white, at least) racial identity is presented as being the legitimate business of the "home" community and identity gatecrashing is considered unacceptable.

The opposite is true with gender. The desired outcome is that womanhood and manhood can be appropriated by anyone who wants them. So definition of gender is presented as being the legitimate business of the gatecrashers and the "home" community is expected to put up, and either shut up or refer to themselves as "cis".

It doesn't add up because it was never meant to. And as someone said upthread, it's the opposite of logical, because sex is far more real than race. If human beings all became non-verbal tomorrow, race would disappear as a concept but sex would continue to function, as it does in other species.

I found that a really interesting interview when I watched it the first time. Ash Sarkar clearly understands the GC arguments very well.

I never understood how some would argue passionately against people being able to identify as trans racial and passionately for people being able to identify as trans gender.

Reading the smug bilge like "No you can't identify as transracial but you can affirm your gender" has certainly not helped that understanding.

Yup.

And this leaves out the one huge elephant in all of this....

Identifying as a different race is not a known paraphilia, where enacting the identity in the company of those actually of that identity is a highly desired sexual thrill. And involves essentially using those others as non consenting props and resources in that sexual experience, while using all the politics to prevent them being able to protest, escape or argue back. It's considered very unkind to even mention this truth, such is the difference in power.

And race does not provide the major size difference and weight difference between male and female that means the average man or teenaged boy can physically beat or overpower most women, nor are those identifying as black people part of the group that carries out 98% of the very high frequency sexual assaults and abuse on the group now 'cis black' hence their exclusion along with all others of that group from those vulnerable people's spaces.

It's a very good analogy, but when it comes to men identifying into women's spaces it's a lot worse than this.

The real point though is that there isn't actually any definition that you could pin down for most of these categories, they really are socially constructed. They don't have a clear biological meaning, they vary according to country and region, and even personal preference, you can in fact have one person who is a combination of parents and grandparents of many races, and they may choose to "identify" as all, a few, none of them, or some sort of mixed designation.

You have people in the US like Meghan Markle who might call herself Black, the same person in the UK might call herself mixed race. My dp, who comes from another country would call himself black (small b) but also pretty much anyone else who isn't northern European. I've also read about a group of people in the US who were in fact white, but marginalised by the local town, called black, and only allowed to live "across the tracks" who came over time to think they were in fact black. (Apparently today some of the older members of this community still think of themselves as black but most of the younger ones don't.)

The idea that someone could be "transracial" is, to me, imaginable within all of that in a way that doesn't work for sex. So it's odd that it's seen as so deeply offensive when it isn't for sex.

I felt that Sarkar was hoping for a slam-dunk anti-GC answer and was maybe a bit disapointed by JB's handwaving

I'm glad it was deleted, because you're chatting shit.

You are allowed to identify as anything you like.

There are no wrong answers on the monitoring forms that request this information. (I am unaware of any that demand it).

Helen webbberly says nobody white can identify as black because black is a colour.

🤷🏾‍♀️

Actually it's an absence of colour.