What's the best way to respond to someone who says "transracial is just as valid as transgender"? (Transracial referring to people who identify as another race like Rachel Dolezal)
from Tiffany1994@lemmy.cafe to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 15 Jun 20:23
https://lemmy.cafe/post/18865796
from Tiffany1994@lemmy.cafe to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 15 Jun 20:23
https://lemmy.cafe/post/18865796
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)
#nostupidquestions
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Block them.
If you’re actually being sincere, you might want to ask people how to articulate your view, you’d have to let them know what your view is though. Or ask for peoples opinion on the question.
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 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.
culture and ethnicity have nothing to do with race. race is based on perceived phenotype
I'd say that a lot of race is based upon shared experiences with other members of the group, and being seen as part of the group. Many people from the Middle East and North Africa see themselves as white. A lot of white Americans and Europeans disagree. I would say that being perceived as a member of an in group is more important than actual color. For example, some lighter skinned African-Americans were able to be perceived as white, thus being treated significantly better. Were they black? Of course they were. They made a conscious decision to pick which experiences and culture they wanted. But they definitely had experiences where they didn't pass, and had experiences according to their given race.
what you’re talking about is proximity to whiteness. AFAIK passing was not a choice which makes Dolezal’s actions even more violent. lighter Black people benefit from colorism but they’re still at risk of lynching because of their race. white people doing blackface is a way to mock that powerlessness felt by victims of white supremacy and make money from clout.
as for non-white SWANA people assimilating into whiteness, that’s a way to harness the colonial power structure to their own benefit by distancing themselves from Black people. this is all a trauma response and survival mechanism from centuries of European genocide like colored South Africans with the same phenotype as indigenous Africans claiming they’re not Black.
If one was assumed to be white, then they could either make the choice to correct them, or not. Dolezal is fucking ridiculous, and definitely just trying to sow discord and violence, especially towards transgender people.
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”.
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.
social construct isn’t a synonym for “doesn’t exist”. just because scientific racism is illogical it doesn’t mean that white people don’t behave as if we’re superior to others, whether consciously or not. you can’t say racism is ethnic oppression because even comparing between white Latino and Black Latino there’s a statistical difference in police brutality based on anti-Blackness
Social constructed concepts are applied by others to you. Those concepts and frameworks are build up by the community over time. So where your born matters a lot as what framework your raised in is going to be the one you adopt naturally and use to also see yourself though.
That’s fundamentally the problem. Race and gender both, it doesn’t matter what you choose or think of for yourself. You don’t get to decide what others see you as. And since it’s communal you as a single person can’t change it for everyone. It takes many people working together over long periods of time to change.
Which is why it’s such problem, humans are fundamentally a social animal. We WANT to fit in, so when our self perception doesn’t align with what others see us as we become distressed.
So with in the social framework others see us as, we try to realign ourselves to be perceived as what we want. This removes the misalignment of self perception with social perception.
Fundamentally this is one of the biggest aspects of transgender body dysphoria. That social misalignment vs transsexual body dysphoria and it’s physical misalignment.
Tho transsexual body dysphoria can also play a role here or none at all.
As transsexual body dysphoria tends to be rather detached entirely from the social construct. People are able to have one or the other and both. Transsexual body dysphoria is very self driven and almost if not entirely based on ones own perception of their own body.
Remember gender is made up and fluid based on the culture. Sex is biological and rooted in the physical.
I’m confused. Wouldn’t transracial just be “mixed”? Like one parent is white, one parent is black.
Mixed baby.
Never heard someone refer to it as “transracial”.
Transracial in this context is people identifying as different races, like Rachel Dolezal
Never heard of that name before, so I googled it. Holy shit. Guys, if you haven’t heard of Rachel Dolezal, google it. It is a WILD read.
It reminds me of this local wrestling character. “Malcolm Farrakhan”. A combination of the names Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan. Played by a 90lbs 5’2 white guy, who surrounded himself with a group of big muscular black guys. One of which you might remember from WWE in The Nexus as “Micheal Tarver”.
Well, Malcolm Farrakhan was as white as could be, which was the whole joke. He didn’t do blackface (thank god), but his whole schtick was screaming “I AM A VERY LIGHT SHADE OF BLACK!!! I HAVE BLACK HERRITAGE!!!” meanwhile the crowd laughs at the absurdity, as a group of 4-5 black guys all act like they fully believe him.
Wrestling is weird, and not meant to be taken seriously.
But this Rachel Dolezal essentially did the exact same thing a decade later, except in real life. Just less cartoonish about it.
Which is pretty fucked up.
there was a story of a white guy thought he was a filipino guy, because he wears what they wear and drives what they drive.
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.
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.
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?
maybe stop comparing race and gender then. trans women only pass because we’re women. you can’t pass as Black because if you told someone you’re Black they’d think you’re a dipshit. you can’t pass as something you’re not.
Isn’t the entire premise of the post that someone is seeing parallels here, and would like to understand why the similarities are not meaningful? As I said, I agree that transracial people are being silly, but I haven’t seen an argument here that can’t be used against transgender people.
But there are plenty of transwomen who don’t “pass” despite being women. But they should still be treated as women. Hell, there have been at least a few reports of ciswomen who couldn’t pass as women, at least to sufficiently assholish observers. On that basis, I don’t think we can use “passing” as a factor to determine people’s identity.
race doesn’t work that way though, does it? it’s impossible for Black people to not pass as Black because it’s been proven they experience racism based on an immutable characteristic.
gender identity isn’t based on appearance, race is strictly appearance based. the fact you’re bringing self-identification into this makes it sound like you’re arguing in bad faith and trying to diminish Black people’s experiences.
PS: using ciswomen and transwomen makes you sound like a TERF.
What would be a correct way to distinguish between the two?
“Woman” seems like it works refer to both, to be used in the majority of cases when the distinction is irrelevant.
I don’t want to say “natural” women, or “real” women, as even someone as thick as me can see that’s insulting.
It seems that using the prefix for both makes them equal.
What do you think world be more appropriate?
But they would suggest that as soon as we discover a way to change that characteristic, transrace world be valid.
Further, while gender identity may not be based on appearance, the way one is treated is very much based on appearance. If I look male, I get treated as male. If I look female, I get treated as female. If I look like one, but insist I am the other, people tend to have disagreements between their deliberate and automatic behaviors. (Well, the same people do, anyway.)
I can’t think of a good way to prove it, but I am legitimately curious about this topic. I’m never happy with the answer “because this one is right, and that one is wrong.” There needs to be reasons why.
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.
Assuming race, As a white person you are going to struggle to get others to see you as black. Cause those are social constructs. YOU do not get to decide what others see you as when it comes to a social construct. Because the very point of a social construct is that it’s the general social frame work used to see others as.
Ethnicity on the other hand, as a white skin tone person if you grew up in Africa in a tribe of indigenous people then you would be an indigenous person. Ethnicity only cares about the facts.
To mirror that to transgender.
Gender is a social construct, it’s what others see you as and how you categorize into a given communities framework. This differs between communities. For example what defines a male gender in ancient Rome is different then ancient Scotland. Both having male genders that quite literally just do not exist in one or the other.
While sex is the physical only caring about the factual biological. The actual flesh and reproductive organs. You either have them, or you don’t. Primary or secondary. You can alter them with modern medicine sure, but even after alteration. It still only matters what you have. Are you a male producer or female reproducer. Are you functional or not. Do you have both sets? That’s basically it, sex just cares about the facts it’s not socially constructed. You can’t argue that someone with a penis does not have a penis.
Ethnicity tho, doesn’t have a modern medicine equivalent. It just is what it is. You can’t change facts, so your rather stuck with it. Unlike a penis.
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.
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.
It’s not even a race, it’s usually a community with a different culture, so the entire term is invalid. And humans are one species with no races, despite this we keep the divisions that the less educated from history created.
transracial adoption doesn’t imply that the child’s race is being changed but that the adopting family is of a different race than them. it’s usually meant to highlight the way white parents adopt Black children to be used as slave labor.
who’s we? this is dangerous and is implying that the only reason racism keeps being an issue is because Black people refuse to move on. only we as whites have the privilege to ignore the racial caste system and pretend like nothing is going on
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.
I think a better word for it would be “Transcultural” or “Transethnithicy” ?
But I’ve never heard of that specifically, closest people I know of are people with parents from other cultures who grew up in a different culture than one or both parents, call themselves “multicultural” or as having “multiethnicity”…
Don’t engage with them.
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.
Gender is mutable, race isn’t
I am not saying they are equal, but I don’t understand the difference since gender and race are both social constructs that start with physical differences.
gender identity has nothing to do with physical appearance. it has to do with what you identify as. a Black trans woman can choose to transition her gender presentation so that people’s perception matches her inner reality but can’t “transition” into being white. she’d have to do a body transplant for that since race is strictly based on perceived phenotype not self-identification. the reason why whites can’t transition races is because the racial oppression only goes one way, like a pyramid. white people invented the racial caste system so it’d be impossible for us to oppress ourselves into becoming Black
I’m thinking of a situation where someone can easily pass as either race depending on context and they might change their identity based on finding out new information. Not altering their skin color or even their behavior necessarily, just how they identify.
Also, in the US race for the census and other federal data collection is based on self-identification and has been for well over a decade. A lot of people with mixed ancestry often choose one as the race they identify with based on social perceptions, like choosing to identify as black despite having a white parent where they could be both white and black because of social pressures. Or their parent raises them to identify as white because they don’t want their kid to suffer from racial oppression .
That just seems comparable as something that is imposed on someone, isn’t always accurate, has social pressure to go with first impressions, and a negative response to someone choosing how they want to identify.
Note: This does not include Rachel Dolzal (sp) who changed the color of her skin, that was definitely someone who was pretending using blackface.
seems like you’re confusing ethnicity and race, which is why the US census isn’t treated as a valid source in sociology because it conflates the two.
even if biracial Black people identify as white because of having a white parent (anti-Blackness) that doesn’t change the fact they will continue experiencing racism for being Black. race is all about first impressions because it was meant to be a cognitive model for white people to reduce our guilt for enslaving Black people.
There are actually a lot of people who meet the social definition of black but are white passing by being light skinned enough and they choose not to identify as black to avoid the racism.
you mean they were raised with Black culture? there’s a difference between Black American as an ethnicity and Black as a racial classification. a white biracial can be raised by 2 Black parents and identify with that culture but that won’t lead to them experiencing racism because their phenotype is still white to cops and other whites. i don’t understand the relevance of how biracial people identify?
I don’t think this is going anywhere because you seem to think anyone can spot whether someone is black at a glance.
if we couldn’t then by definition racism would cease to exist? if white people don’t perceive you as Black then you aren’t, no need to complicate it needlessly
You don’t. That’s not even a dogwhistle, it’s outright racism and transphobia, and isn’t worth responding to any more than the normal flavors of racist. Report, block, and (for mods) ban.
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.
Either people can express how they feel or they can’t, and I’d rather people be able to express how they feel
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
To quote the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on Race (human categorization):
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.
Race is the construct ethnicity is physical. Race is basically the loose and flimsy way to over generalize ethnicity.
It’s basically like the difference between gender and sex.
One is based on the cultures perceptived notions of a group of people based on only physical characteristics.
The other is based on the hard facts such as history or biology.
It’s easy to change ones race, just go to a different part of the world with a different view of what the races are. It’s impossible to change ones ethnicity as you can’t change who your parents are or where you grew up.
This gets into the nerdy weeds and generally the avg layman just thinks fo the two terms as the same thing. Which is where most of the problems come from
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.
white people stop pretending like we live in a post-racial society challenge
Sounds like someone just looking to pick a fight. Disengage.
That said, I reckon as long as they’re not hurting anyone, people can be whatever they like. Mind your own business. It’s a slippery slope to start considering whether a fellow human is ‘valid’ or not.
I would say never disengage. We’ve all lost so much disengaging especially if the argument is difficult. It leaves the argument unchallenged and if you can’t answer it and you feel strongly about trans issues what did you think someone casually viewing it would think.
We need better arguments and we need honesty. If it’s a good argument, it’s a good argument denying it out of feels only weakens the entire thing.
Lemmy is filled with people who gave the right a red carpet treatment. Probably the last place we should ask questions about engagement to.
It’s like asking r/relationship about relationship advice. It’s a terrible idea
My second paragraph covered that, I thought.
You can't rationally debate someone out of a position they didn't reach through rational consideration.
So you allow them to influence other people with their ideas?
It’s stuff like this why people in real life all share the same opinion on trans issues and other right wing issues. It’s this stuff that has allowed their arguments to spread. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what you were supposed to be doing. You gave them a red carpet and helped contribute to the spread of their propaganda by disengaging. Changing their opinion was not ever said as a goal. You need to challenge their opinion to show it is badly formed. If it isn’t then you need to evaluate yours.
Absolutely. If people like the idiot this post is referring to are allowed to spew bullshit without push back, then other idiots will believe it and spread it. These people need to be shamed and publicly corrected for their bullshit stance that can hurt others. I say hurt others, because an idea like this can be used to delegitimize transgender people.
I remember a study once showing that you can skew the views of any group if only 10% of that group change their opinion.
I think this is really important here because if you’re on an social media and you see nothing but right wing views, I think it does influence lots of people. This is why I get so mad seeing attitudes suggesting we should all just ignore it all like it’s a waste of time.
No, absolutely not. I run instances to give gender diverse folk safe spaces. I ban transphobes the instant they appear, I don't debate them. Offline, I'm visible, active and proud. I am an volunteer at my local parkrun, I've spoken openly with people at my workplace, I've hosted a queer community radio show, I host a vodcast, and I used to be active in organising events for my local gender diverse community. Because what gets people to change their minds, is an emotional connection with the group they're targeting. When they start to see us as people, just the same as them, then they start to make choices that aren't harmful to us, and they start to wind back their own arguments.
Pushing back is incredibly important, but debating them isn't effective. Like most people, when confronted with debate points in regards to a topic they hold on to for emotional reasons, they will shift goal posts, and only see the things that validate what they already believe, whilst ignoring the things that challenge it. When they get to the point where they're ready to challenge their ideas (because their emotional position has shifted) then, lots of the talking points you would normally debate become relevant, but by that stage, it's a discussion, not a debate.
Thanks for all you do Ada, you continue to be an inspiration.
I’m prepared to trust other people’s intelligence to see through it, and if they can’t, fuck them as well.
Part of being intelligent is being social. Being social means we mirror and sometimes go with the crowd. That’s just how it is. Which means if you think people are intelligent, it means it also should understand they will be susceptible to certain things like this. I think it’s a sign of intelligence to be susceptible to certain things like this because these tactics are built on the idea that groups of people share similar social habits. Shared social habits is a sign of intelligence. It’s anti social people who failed to socialize that are harder to manipulate.
Disengaging does not help spread propaganda. Engaging and giving horrible ideas a platform does help spread propaganda.
Your “debate bro” advice is about ten years out of date.
You’re wrong. Completely wrong on so many levels. This is all about engagement. That whole “too enlightened to engage” attitude is exactly how the right managed to take over so much of the online space. Right-wing think tanks and PR firms invested in engagement, nonstop posts, repetition, platform saturation. And it worked.
People see the same ideas echoed over and over again, and eventually it shapes how they think. That’s why regular, everyday people, people who aren’t even political start parroting right-wing talking points. Even my kids and their friends are saying this stuff.
It’s not because they believe it. It’s because that’s what they see. All the time.
The reason it’s gotten this bad? A whole chunk of people on the left thought disengaging was smart. That if they just ignored it, it would go away. It didn’t. It spread. And now we’re here.
You are 100% correct on this part.
The problem is, arguing with them magnifies that effect, it doesn't challenge it.
That's not to say you shouldn't push back. I don't mean smile and agree, or just ignore them. Deplatforming works, protests work, proud visibility works, civil disobedience works. Responding negatively works. Making it so that there is a social cost to being a transphobe works.
But debating them isn't any of those things. Debating them is engaging with them, and in the act of arguing with you, they actually solidify the beliefs they already hold, and this is especially true of heavily polarised issues. Here's some research on it https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01623-8 (PDF link), and an article that goes in to the topic a bit https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/why-is-it-that-even-proven-facts-cant-change-some-peoples-minds
As much as it feels right to argue with them, all you are doing is strengthening their already held beliefs when you do. It might feel like its helping, but it isn't. You'll read my response, and you'll likely go "screw that, you're wrong, I'm going to keep arguing". And that's the exact effect I'm talking about at play. Every time you argue with someone, they have that same internal reaction to your comments, no matter what you say, or how strongly you believe it.
If you debate people and onlookers find themselves agreeing more with the other guy than they were at the start, the answer is to re-evaluate your arguments. When you go to social shaming, while you may get people to shut up, you also solidify those people against you. You blocked off the mechanism for those onlookers to have their mind changed and created resentment for the social cost you impose on them.
Isn’t it weird how when you talk to someone online they generally won’t go against the grain, yet Trump now won a second term? And not only that, but he won the popular vote this time around with 14,317,752 more votes than he got the first time around.
That is what social shaming does. Instead of trying to convince people, you force them against you.
Exactly, and something that is entirely missed by the left is that you don’t need to “win” the argument. Just have fun. You can make them look silly by showing their absurdity by just joking with their dumb arguments. Jon Stewart is great at this. He doesn’t need a whole segment logically destroying every point in a monotone diatribe. He throws up video of a Republican saying one thing and then doing the complete opposite then cuts to him laughing and shrugging. The viewer comes to their own opinion. It’s entertaining. That’s the game. People online on the left ignore that game.
Their argument indirectly hurts transgender people. It’s akin to when BLM (the movement, not the corrupt organization) was big and to counter it, conservatives parroted All Lives Matter. I’d say using the term transracial is arguably worse, because it’s all bullshit, while technically All Lives Matter is true, but it’s bad faith argument. I personally feel it’s the duty of rational people to fight against that sort of speak.
And you don’t engage with bad faith arguments. Just tell them to fuck off and grow a brain.
I’ll say fuck off without saying fuck off as to not get my shit removed, but bad faith arguments still need to be refuted so that ignorant people don’t only see something like that and believe it’s true. The amount of effort put into that only needs to be enough so that there exists a counter point.
“No it’s not, and you know it”
Feel free to throw in some "dickhead"s as well, if they’re gonna come in bad faith you don’t have to be polite. Talk garbage, expect pain
Don’t waste your time, if someone is claiming transracialism then they are way too far gone and it’s not your job to understand or fix people that can’t be fixed or understood. Every interaction with that person will equate to a net loss on your life and time, they will hit the wall of reality eventually or die a joke.
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.
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.”
ironically the assumption that Michael was trying to become white is both racist and ableist. he was suffering from vitiligo which led him to use skin-lightening prescription creams to cover up the uneven blotches of color caused by the disability.
And the rhinoplasty?
I prefer elephantoplasty…
He wanted Latoya’s nose
And the wigs? Vitiligo means uneven splotches. He was fully white from head to toe from bleaching.
does a Black person wearing a wig or straightening their hair make them white? i don’t understand this asinine question.
Vitiligo is a disability that causes ostracization so he tried hiding it. there’s this thing called universal vitiligo which can progress to your entire skin. maybe do a bit of research next time before casting judgment?
Transgender is more comparable to Naturalization.
You can become an American, British, Canadian, German, Japanese, or Chinese, in terms of Citizenship/Nationality, but you can’t just magically change from White to Black or to Asian, or vice versa.
Hey now we have crisper, I’m sure with some minor DNA editing and risking the entire breeding population of humans though poorly made genetic editing is totally legit.
Have an afro, make your natural hair change color, hell regrow your hair AND give yourself the curly locks of your dreams!
Change your skin tone to blue and become a sexy Star wars alien!
Step 1: Change skin color to Green via DNA editing Step 2: Build a flying saucer
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Y’all are all my subjects, kneel before me, fithy earthlings.
“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
Walk away.
People want to troll. Don’t feed trolls.
there were surprisngly a number of articles that came up over the years, rachel dolozel, the white chick that dint even know she wasnt black, so a reverse rachel dolezol. and a white guy pretending to filipino.
Is there something like “trans smart”?
If there is, I’ve definitely seen some “trans-dumbasses” as well as “cis-dumbasses”
Did they say that they define as dumbasses?
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.
white people stop acting like we live in a post-racial society challenge!
also, being trans was never biological, that’s called bio-essentialism
Saying that race isn’t real is not the same as saying that we live in a post-racial society.
it is actually because how could racism exist without race? the only people who claim race isn’t real are white
“Race” was invented by racists. There was a lot of fake science here in Germany in the 30s to “prove” that not only “human races” exist, but even so that they have different worth.
So this is what I always still hear when someone is using the word - and commonly they are racists.
I do understand where you’re coming from, and I totally agree that there are a fucking lot of supremacist people and yes - if I had been a teenager in the 30s, people would have seen I’m blonde, blue-eyed and tall. So I would have that privilege and still it is a privilege in the modern world.
Prejudices about skin color exist, I absolutely agree. Racists exist, I agree. Just “race” - every time I hear that, it’s like something out of the Nazi textbooks my grandfather had to use at school.
OK, so at least you’re conscious that the word race makes you uncomfortable. and I’ll ask this in good faith, why do you think that is? maybe because acknowledging that your white phenotype, something you have no control over and could never change, gives you privilege over non-white people?
I promise you that the words you use or don’t use won’t make racism go away, confronting internalized racism will. and that’s what white privilege is, the opportunity for us to go our entire lives without ever having to acknowledge race still exists, white supremacy is commonplace, and we’re part of that system because of societal brainwashing that begins at birth and is lifelong unless we deconstruct said programming.
I don’t really think I can come up with a more concise way of summarizing the idea than anthropologist Audrey Smedley did on the first result of the Google search “race social construct”
I would recommend you read something like “Feminism and ‘Race’” from Oxford Readings in Feminism or some of bell hooks’ work to understand the idea better.
extremely simple question for you, if bell hooks believed race isn’t real then why does she call herself Black? do you seriously believe she means that in a “race doesn’t exist” way? 🤦♀️
You do not need to believe race is a biological reality to acknowledge that the perception of others as you (+ your ancestors) being a member of a race has materially affected your identity
so I never said it’s a biological reality, just that it’s real because white supremacy is real. seems like we agree
I agree, it feels like we’ve been arguing over semantics. When I (and I’m assuming the person you originally responded to) say “real”, I don’t mean to claim that it doesn’t have material effects, I mean that it has no biological basis - i.e. it is socially constructed.
yes thanks for elaborating. the reason why I got defensive is because most of the time when I argue with other white people, they abuse the socially constructed race theory to make me concede that racism doesn’t exist or that whites can experience “reverse racism”.
Oh yeah no fair enough, thanks for hearing me out. Those kinds people are exhausting
If the earth isn’t flat, how can there be flat-earthers?
Race can be pseudo-scientific bullshit, and still have a bunch of racists around. The idea of race is, at its core, a racist idea.
Uhh while gender is a social construct that’s existed in countless forms though out all of history.
Sex and transsexual are VERY much a biological thing.
You can’t just say trans isn’t biological. Transgendered isn’t, but gender isn’t biology.
Sex IS biology and transsexual IS biological.
You need to be specific if you want to get into actually defined scientific terminology.
Gender isn’t biological. You’re conflating with sex
Well trans people, if they medically transition, quite literally change their sex.
If they don’t, they’re still transitioning their gender. Exactly how much they decide to change themselves doesn’t matter. That’s the point of the term.
Trans people transition BOTH their sex and their gender. The term “transgender” is a broad umbrella term. But most people under that label do seek to physically change their bodies. You’re arguing semantics, I’m arguing the lived experience of living breathing human beings.
The it sounds like you should be arguing for different semantics. Ones that match the experience of living breathing human beings.
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.
It’s nonsense because race is a social construct.
white people, we learn one sociological term and run it into the ground. it doesn’t mean what you think it does.
“A social construct is an idea, category, or framework that gains meaning through collective agreement within a society”
The racial lines of division are arbitrary and different in each society. Therefore, a social construct.
Remember, it wasn’t THAT long ago that Italians weren’t considered white. Now they are.
But so it’s gender, so this isn’t really a good argument is it?
Look, understanding and relating to someone of a different race is one thing, but if you think that you somehow are that race then there’s something wrong in your brain, one way or another. It’s better than being like “I’m really a wolf” or similar nonsense, but only because at least you’re not claiming it believing that you’re a different species. Instead you’re on the sliding scale of delusion/dog whistle and either way I’d rather just not be around you.
Makes sense on the surface, but people have reacted that exact same way to the whole transgender concept. “You can be in touch with your feminine side but your still male” or whatever.
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 reeks of, “I don’t see color,” which is bullshit racists say to justify ignoring the plights of people of color in the US.
We need to see color if we ever want to possibly attempt to correct the deep, systemic problems we have with racism.
There is no “did” here, it’s ongoing.
This is absurd talk. I don’t want people generalizing me for my race or gender, and I wouldnt do it to someone else either.
You must go around treating every minority as if they are a victim of something. I’m sure they greatly appreciate your refusal to see them as an individual.
This race/gender anarchism would help trans people as the general public would stop giving a shit how people choose to behave and what they are interested in.
I get your point, but you’re missing the point of what the person is saying. They said that if no one cared about gender or race transgenders or transrace wouldn’t be an issue, it would be seen similarly to people who dye their hair or undergo plastic surgery to change something they don’t like on themselves, i.e. cosmetic changes that society in general doesn’t give a crap.
If society treated race the same way we treat shoe sizes, i.e. they exist, we recognize them when it’s needed but understand that outside of picking a shoe you don’t care about it (there are no toilets for people who use size 6, or a special door that only people with size 7, and people certainly don’t require your shoe size in your CV and use that as a decision point as to whether they will hire you). IF we could get everyone to think like this, then we wouldn’t need to worry about the plights of any group because they would be in the past. That being said, this is not realistic because people are habit creatures, and if you grew up being taught to be racist and are never confronted about it you will keep those beliefs, that’s why it’s important to break stereotypes, that’s why affirmative actions are important, not because it helps the individual break through a societal barrier (although that’s important as well) but because they help society break from the preconceived notions that have engrained in most people’s minds through centuries of oppression.
The ideal future is one where gender or race doesn’t matter, but the road there goes through recognizing the plights that each gender and race has to face and adjust society to compensate for them so they can live “similar” lives and that on the long run society walks towards a more diverse and inclusive group. It’s easy to have a prejudice against someone different from your “normal”, which is why it’s important to break “normal” views and extremely important to normalize taboo behavior.
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.
Yeah fuck it, it’s 2025
The differences between the sexes is much less than people like to pretend. Every cell in your body has different modes it can operate in. Many, perhaps most, cells have estrogen-dominated and testosterone-dominated modes. If you change the dominant hormones in the body, every cell in the body switches between these modes. Trans people who medically transition are simply taking advantage of the body’s existing mechanism of secondary sex characteristics.
Ultimately, any person could have a male- or female- typical phenotype. If you put the right hormone injections into a fetus at the right time of pregnancy, an XY fetus would be born with a vagina and a uterus. And the opposite is true as well. These conditions sometimes happen naturally with intersex conditions. Every human body has the potential to develop along a male- or female-typical path. It’s just a matter of what hormones are passing through the body at what stage of development.
But race? There’s no comparison. Cells don’t have different expression modes that correspond to different racial phenotypes. There are no “black hormones” that a white person could take to gain many of the characteristics of black bodies. There is simply no equivalent to the medical transition process many trans people undergo. There is simply no equivalent to the fundamental rewiring of the body that occurs on a cellular level with trans medical treatments.
Are you saying hormone injections or other medical measures are necessary for you to consider someone transgender? I’m pretty sure most people wouldn’t agree with that. Correspondingly why would that be required to be transracial? You’re right that hormone differences aren’t involved in race, but how does that invalidate the whole concept? TBH it sounds the same as the anti-trans argument, “it just doesn’t make sense.” I mean I can see people reacting like, “If we allow this then it would be easy to abuse.” Well maybe, but that seems like another issue. I’m just now dipping into this and trying to understand it.
I feel like your over focusing on the medical aspect
I took to mean like how you compare say breeds of dogs. Both a golden retriever and a German Shepard are both dogs,.both k-9 members of the space species.
All fo them have the biological ability to be both male or female as it’s a secondary trait controlled by hormones.
While race is basically genetics and your DNA. You cant just edit your DNA and rewrite your body to express characteristics of another race.
You can’t just make your body suddenly become a red head, or grow an afro. You can’t just suddenly force your nose or cheek bones to rearrange themselves.
You can’t just shrink to lengthen your bones.
Most of what makes up human “races” is just the breeding of our ancestors.
In the future we may be able to change all of this and custom design out bodies. But that wouldnt be a natural change unlike hormone therapy.
Instead of taking advantage of a natural ability of the body, you would be entirely overruling it and entirely creating something new that isn’t natural.
Basically you would be performing eugentics. For good or bad.
I feel like we’re not even having the same conversation here. I explicitly object to the argument that medical measures are necessary to validate a trans concept. You say I’m focusing too much on that, then explain that being transracial isn’t valid because of exactly that.
Saying you can’t make your body change in the various ways you list invalidates being transgender - you can’t make your body naturally produce the hormones to create secondary sex characteristics, you have to artificially take them. But again, so what? I don’t think the body changes are relevant - if you’re trans then you’ve always been trans, you just might not have understood it. To me the transracial concept seems equally valid, and I don’t see how your biological objections relevantly differentiate them. I mean, you’re not even being accurate - people do modify themselves in all the ways you list. Cosmetic surgery and body mods are more than a $100 billion/year industry in the US alone. I just don’t see how you’re making a point.
Those who seek outrage will find it every time. Yes, obviously there are some trans people that don’t seek out medical transition. That’s why I said “trans people who medically transition.” But language can be overly inclusive. We don’t need to start every single writing on trans people with three paragraphs describing every exception and caveat. Obviously when you talk about a group, any group, you have to talk in generalities. If you insist on starting every comment about trans people with paragraphs of caveats and provisos, you make actually getting to the point impossible. You water down the language to the point of uselessness. At at time when trans rights are under assault on all sides, I don’t mind focusing most trans discussions on the material realities and needs of most trans folks.
Most trans people want to medically transition. Are those that don’t somehow invalid? No. But we also don’t need to start every discussion with a thousand caveats describing every sub-category within a group. There are atheist Jews and there are gay Muslims. That doesn’t mean every discussion of those faiths is centered around these rare exceptions.
Depends if I have time and I want entertainment at that moment, I know they are trolling and don’t care and usually people just want to get me angry at them so I calmly responded to everything they say as it’s a real legitimate question, treat every question as if there truly caring about it. Most people will just back off after a bit because they can’t get me all angry and pissed off. It’s quite entertaining watching them get angry and wound up because I was trying to answer them honestly and nice way. Doesn’t always work but it’s just something I do I learned really pisses off those kinda people
I don’t know anything about this issue but apparently the presumption here is that your view is the right view and you’re just asking how to splain it to the person. My question is about the “I’ve already blocked this person” part. Instead could you possibly just limit your conversation to other subjects? It keeps looking like we’re all getting more and more isolated from each other as we develop extreme aversions to anyone not having our exact POV about everything, so we shove them out of our world. It reminds me of survivalist bunker mentality.
Why not ask more questions about it? And if they insist it does no damage, it wouldn’t matter either way
This thread clearly shows that people are naturally bigoted. There is trace community on reddit. There are a lot of trace people who are also trans. They have dysphoria. They are suicidal. The hate their body. They are not accepted by society. They get death threats. Arguments used against trace people are the same as arguments against trans people. So, we are actually the same.
Does it really matter if someone is either
I genuinely don’t know enough about what people who claim to be trans racial are even saying and why they’re saying it to form an opinion on it. My gut feeling is that it isn’t valid and they’re bad actors, but my gut has been wrong before.
So if someone told me “trans racial is just as valid as trans gender” I’d either not respond or just say “I don’t know about that.” and leave it at that.
Gentle reminder that if you believe someone is a bad actor and using dog whistles there isn’t a point in responding to things like this because you aren’t going to change their mind.
The best way is asking: what’s your point? Is it that transgender shouldn’t be accepted or that transrace should?. And proceed from there to either defend transgenderism or criticize transracism accordingly.
First let me start by saying I strongly dislike the race therminology, but I’ll use it here for consistency, although normally I would call it ethnicity.
The difference between those lies in that gender is a social construct, and race is not. Race has some biological meaning, just like sex, people can’t change their sex (yet), they can’t change their race (yet).
Gender is a social construct, it’s things that have nothing to do with biology but that we as a society attribute in general to a specific sex. A similar concept for race would be culture, a person can be of the sex male but prefer to wear clothes usually associated with female sex, just like someone can be of the white ethnicity but prefer to hear music usually associated with black ethnicity. I wouldn’t call Eminem or Michael Jackson transrace, what would that even mean?
“Shut up.”
The correct response is to consider what the correct way to synthesize the positions is, and go with that. There’s nothing wrong with adapting your position to handle possible inconsistencies. The goal is not to win but to be the most correct.
Typically, the assumption is that this is an argument that transgender is invalid. Perhaps there’s another way of looking at it. Perhaps a way people aren’t ready for, which is why your opponent went in that direction.
Alternatively, it can be pointed out that this is changing the topic, because it technically is.
Transracial isn’t a thing. You can scientifically change your gender. You can’t change your race