Edit for context:
My view is transracial isn’t valid and this person is trying to dogwhistle. I’ve already blocked this person, and now they’re going after my friend saying my friend is transphobic because they disagreed with them about transracial being a thing (they’re purposefully leaving the context out so my friend looks transphobic when what my friend really said was transgender is valid but transracial isn’t)
Block them.
No race, no gender. No problems.
Gender anarchism and race anarchism. People be just people. Social constructs shall not be a dividing reason, let everyone behave however the hell they want as long as they don’t hurt others and be happy.
Also US race concepts are kind of weird in general. I suppose the history of slavery and segregation did a number on people’s perception of race.
Literally the only rational answer. Stop giving a fuck about what people look like unless you’re explicitly looking for someone to fuck
This is exactly why I think “transgender” does more harm than good and I’ll die on this hill. What’s the point? The people who are going to accept the way you express yourself aren’t going to care if it conforms to gender stereotypes, and the people who aren’t won’t suddenly change their minds if it does.
All it does is reinforce the very same stereotypes that gave you gender dysphoria in the first place. It’s saying that gender norms are valid, you just got assigned the wrong ones. Live your truth, express yourself how you want, alter your body however you want, but don’t validate oppressive stereotypes in the process.
The best way to respond is to disregard them, block and move on. Transracial is an actual thing, but it refers to people of one race adopted by another. Transracial ala Dolezal is just a troll to attack trans people, no different from attack helicopters.
Don’t even know if I’d call that transracial, that’s just a person who is of one ethnicity but was raised in a different culture than one might expect for someone who looks like them. There’s no “transitioning” happening there.
They don’t appear to understand the difference between cultural and gender identity. I’d try this:
“If a white person of european descent were raised from birth by a Sentinel Island tribe, would they be culturally european?”
The answer is obviously no, illustrating that the cultural identity of a person depends on the culture the person was raised in. I don’t know how gender identity works, but clearly how someone is raised has little to do with it.
Edit: Disclaimer that I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about.Problem is that “race” isn’t just cultural. How you will be treated definitely depends on how other people perceive your “race” and subsequently it will shape your life reality.
That person you gave as an example? In the US, Canada or most European countries he will be treated better than an actual Citizen born and raised in the respective country who is perceived as “black” or “brown”.
Problem is that “race” isn’t just cultural. How you will be treated definitely depends on how other people perceive your “race” and subsequently it will shape your life reality
But surely how you will be treated definitely depends on how other people perceive your “gender” and subsequently it will shape your life reality?
Everything you described up there sounds exactly like “cultural.”
That makes gender more like “ethnicity”/“race” rather than “culture” don’t you think?
I’m advised that there is no scientific or genetic basis for race. I’m a little unclear on how “ethnicity” is different from “race.”
All of them seem to be social constructs.
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“You are wrong. Gender and race are two different things. Transgender people have been around since time began, transracial was invented few years ago to appropriate and diminish transgender people’s experiences. it’s not transphobic to be against something that was recently invented to invalidate transgender people. ciao”
but tbf it seems like that person’s tryna start shit so I’d just block and report em
As someone who isnt qualified to answer any trans related question: just let them be as long as they’re not being a jerk
There are bigger fish to fry. There probably are people out there who fully think they’re a different race. Who’s to say their feelings are invalid while others feelings are.
This person is not arguing in good faith and is just looking to make trouble. Engaging with people like that is as frustrating as it is futile.
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Just don’t have conversation about this stuff at all. You can rarely change a person’s mind.
I used to try talking about politics and things in my rural town but it’s pointless. In America it’s more like a drug people use, they like the rush they get from the drama. And most the time no one is saying anything original, it’s like they just spout off market sound bites. The conversation will always go nowhere.
It might sound counter productive to not fight for something like that. But just live your life, and understand life and humanity is chaos, to try to change people is like trying turn the sun into an icecube. You can’t fuck with the universe.
Dont waste time on that stuff, and instead be the best person you can be and be a good role model to your immediate circle. Thats worth more to the community and will spread naturally without trying.
Race is an extremely unscientific way to catagorize human beings, and it’s no wonder these people claim to be trans racial instead of trans ethnic. The more scientific, cultural, and hereditary definition of ethnicity means they’d have no real arguement to claim an ethnicity they weren’t raised in and have no heritage from but the loose political definition of race gives them lots of wiggle room.
Tldr: tell them race isnt real and ethnicity is based on the culture you were raised in and the heritage of your ancestors. You can’t force your ancestors to be a different ethnicity and you can transition a childhood upbringing, just an identity.
tell them race isnt real
Regardless of culture/ethnicity: two asians have a baby, you get an asian baby.
Regardless of culture/ethnicity: two slavs have a baby, you get a salvic baby.
Race is most certainly real.
Slavs are not a race, but ethnic group.
Two Koreans have a baby, the baby is Korean. Indian and Japanese have a baby, and you got something wildly different from either.
Sure, a Black person looks different from White, but within both there is so much variation that it doesn’t make much sense to group them so roughly.
tell them race isnt real
This is the shit I was responding too. And rhetoric like that is painfully contrary to even elementary biology. If the best response to OP’s question is a demonstrably false statement like ‘race isn’t real’, well, that’s a very sad state of affairs.
doesn’t make much sense to group them so roughly
Just as I wouldn’t generally find it necessary to group people by eye color, the fact remains eye color is real. Same for other genetically determined things like race.
Where do you put children of parents of different races, then?
And the offspring of such children?
Many if not most people on Earth have a combined descent.
To quote the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on Race (human categorization):
Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning.
race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning
Physical traits are passed through genes onto kids, thus kids have much the same traits as their parents. Asian parents have asian kids. Why are we doing elementary biology here?
This really isn’t the argument we should be latching onto.
I’m not saying the physical traits you are talking about aren’t real. I’m saying you’re using the wrong word to describe them. Biologically there is no such thing as different human races. You are talking about ethnic groups.
If you take two people from an African country they can be genetically closer to an European or Asian person than to each other.
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You conflate being Asian (a resident of a continent) with Slavic (a cultural group). So what is race? A coordinate, or a cuisine?
Race is so unreal that you can’t even keep the lore straight in your own head.
Do you know what an actual scientific attempt to define races would look like?
Let’s say you wanted to scientifically define races. Instead of using subjective things like facial structure, you look at actual DNA and the groupings among populations. Let’s say we want to group humanity into a half dozen races, and to avoid bias, we do it based on some statistical analysis of DNA patterns.
You know what you would end up with? The computer would spit out that there are five racial groups represented the population of Subsaharan Africa…and one racial group representing everyone else.
The vast majority of human genetic diversity lies within Subsaharan Africa. If you tried to rationally define a list of ‘races,’ you would end up with a bunch of African racial groups and then one group for literally everyone else.
This is what people mean when they say race isn’t real. Our culturally-defined racial groups are completely unrelated to the actual diversity and distribution of human DNA patterns.
I’m no expert on either topic. But I believe humans basically start off as female in the womb, and either become male or don’t. And there are many intersex conditions. The body responds to hormones typically associated with either sex. So gender is fluid in a biological sense. If someone transitions to male, female or nonbinary, they already kind of contained that potential.
However, race is a social construct, usually based on heritage as well as biological appearance. So it’s hard to say how much biology is really involved. Does the human body contain the ability to be any race? Or to cultivate an appearance that prompts other humans to socially categorize you as one race or the other?
Maybe for people who are mixed race, there is a sort of spectrum available to them. They likely know how to present themselves in a way that gets them categorized as one race or the other.
But otherwise, not really. If you’re White, and you say, “I identify as Black,” the question might be: do you have Black heritage? If you don’t, you can’t really create it out of thin air. There wasn’t a situation while you were in the womb where various hormones could have influenced you to appear more Black than you do. If your parents are both White, they were going to have a White baby, no matter what. Race is a social construct, but it’s based on appearance and heritage. It’s about belonging to a group, not about being an individual, the way gender is.
If you’re assigned female at birth, and you say, “I identify as male,” then cool! Your body already has the capability to become hormonally male. You can socially identify as male. Any human, of any race, has this potential. Any two parents could have a baby that is any sex or gender, depending on various factors.
So, as a white person, I cannot pass as black, so I can never expect people to treat me like I’m black?
Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea is silly, but all the arguments I’ve seen in this thread are a word-swap away from being a bad argument against transgender people.
What’s the essential difference?
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Some of this makes a bit of sense, but it still leans heavily on perception by others, rather than respecting what people know about themselves. This does not seem to be what many transgender persons want.
I’ll think about it.
how is this even close to be about transgender/phobia, were talking about white people trying to pretend to be another race, because they have have x amount of checks on the checklist. race doesnt = gender.
I’m uncomfortable with the idea that the only reason that being trans is valid is because of biological factors.
If we could construct a human that came into existence without being Female at some gestational point, you gonna tell them they can’t be trans? If someone has a thyroid problem such that they their body CAN’T handle a sex hormone, you gonna tell them they can’t be trans?
I feel like we’re looking for a 9-D chess play when a 1-D play is sufficient: you say you’re trans, you’re trans. I’m not the fucking cops
Good points, and I think we generally agree. I definitely didn’t mean to exclude anyone in those real or hypothetical situations you mentioned. To me, those examples are more about showing how gender is, or can be, biologically fluid. There are many “odd” situations that aren’t binary. So amongst the many unusual ways that sex can occur biologically, “male brain in a female body” or “I reject the concept of gender entirely” are valid and believable.
I agree with your last point as well, but in the context of this post, would you tell Rachel Dolezal that she says she’s Black, so she’s Black? I guess I was trying to find some sort of difference between gender and race identity, the way the question was posed.
I’m definitely not claiming to have an unassailable argument, so thanks for responding with good points.
They’re either trying to get your goat, or it’s genuine. Either way, it’s not making the world any better by bestowing upon yourself the title of judge and enforcer. You’re either taking bait or you’re a fucking cop. “Ok” is all you gotta say.
Transracial doesn’t exist because “Race” in the context that they want to use it doesn’t exist.
Genetically there’s only one “race”; that’s the human race. If they want to identify as a different culture, it’s purely a cosmetic cultural thing, not biological or genetic. Whereas as being Transgender is biological. Therefore, you can safely tell people like Rachel Dolezal to fuck off and go back to fifth period science class.
I’d respond, “Rachel Dolezal was never shot by the police” and “Michael Jackson did not become an honorary white person just because he tried to be one.”
It’s nonsense because race is a social construct.
someone said that in a thread on lemmy early, i cringed. it seems the only people that think transracial is a thing is primarly done by white people. i wonder if thats the same person were talking about.
and yes i was thinking about rachel dolzal. or white people claiming they are native american, because they have less than 1-5% of thier dna, your still a white asf guy. and a white guy pretending that he is filipino, because he drives a tuk tuk.
