The Rachel Dolezal cisracial/transracial meme isn’t doing the fight for transgender acceptance and equality any favors. While some social conservatives are warning of a slippery slope and suggesting that transracialism will allow self-identification with other races in a way that opens an entitlement floodgate, some progressives seem to be, gingerly, starting to question whether the appropriate social justice warrior position might be to defend transracial identity:
MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry entertained the notion on her show today with kind of a huge question. “Is it possible that she might actually be black?”While not wanting to make the transgender comparison, Harris-Perry questioned whether one can be “cisblack and transblack,” and whether there’s a way to describe “the achievement of blackness despite one’s parentage.”
Alyson Hobbs, who literally wrote the book on “racial passing,” said there’s “certainly a chance that she identifies as a black woman and there could be authenticity to that.”
Here’s a wrap-up of others willing to entertain the idea that racial self-identification can be more “authentic” than one’s birth race.
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32 Comments for “Transgender/Transracial?”
posted by tom Jefferson 3rd on
Well, racial, ethnic or national ancestry is something that can be objectively researched.
Yet, multi-racial and multi ethnic ancestry wil become more common due to globalization, and as the levels of racism decline.
Yet, this idea that lots of people are faking their ancestry to get special privledges is pretty lame.
posted by Lori Heine on
Faking a minority ancestry and faking being a member of the opposite gender can hardly be seen, by reasonable people, as anywhere near the same things. That the anti-trans crowd would gleefully seize upon this story to trample all over trans people can’t really surprise anybody. They’ll take any weapon they can get. But what I don’t see is how LGBT people or their supporters (A) have anything to do with the race-faking situation in question or (B) could be expected to have anything to do with it.
Everything that happens will be seized upon by anti-trans screamers, regardless of whether it has anything to do with the trans issue or not. Why must IGF treat every instance as a subject worthy of grave attention on the part of those who advocate trans equality?
posted by Mike in Houston on
This quote from Capehart’s article in the WP sums it up for me… http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/06/15/caitlyn-jenner-and-rachel-dolezal-clash-of-identity-and-authenticity/
posted by Josh on
Careful, it looks like the social justice left may be embracing racial self-identification regardless of birth race. You and Capehart may have to recant your “bigotry” very shortly, or get labeled as rightwing bigots and reactionaries.
posted by Houndentenor on
As I have no stake in this topic, I’ve been watching it with a detached interest. I have mostly avoided the usual stupid that comes with anything surrounding race or gender issues thanks to not having cable and being selective about my social media. I’m trying to remember any precedent for a white person passing as a member of another ethnic group. Other than a few minor (and justifiably forgotten) movies I can’t think of any. Sometimes it’s nice to watch a controversy unfold without feeling any obligation to take a side.
posted by Jorge on
The Rachel Dolezal cisracial/transracial meme isn’t doing the fight for transgender acceptance and equality any favors.
Noted. Get over it. Sometimes victory requires hard work.
Sorry, Lori, but I agree with Mr. Miller. A lot of mainstream Americans do not understand the transgender ideology. The “what if you’re white and you feel like you’re black” isn’t a hypothetical question–people really have asked it.
I call it an “ideology” to point out that while I believe the transgender experience is pretty much what the LGBT rights community says it is, that cannot be taken for granted. A community could embrace a falsehood as fact merely by its repetition, and silencing competing ideas. When a “truth” is accepted in this way, the lingering doubt weakens its acceptances. There are so many words you cannot use anymore because of the transgender community’s vigilance about saying anything that gives the false impression that they’re really just making it up. But I wonder sometimes which really came first, the transvestite identity or the transsexual identity.
In my opinion, the former Bruce Jenner lied to only a very few people about identifying as a woman: his family. It’s really not many other people’s business. Well he paid the consequences in a rather public divorce.
But she’s a public figure now. Anyone she meets in the future is going to know she’s trans. What if she’d transitioned much earlier, and never told anyone about “my life as a man”? I happen to think there are a lot of situations in which that’s important. I think it’s indisputable that some of those situations are those in which the sexes are segregated by nothing so important as common experiences. Should NOW admit Caitlyn Jenner as a member? Does she have a voice in NARAL? Does she have a stake in the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? (okay, that’s an easy one)
posted by Jorge on
One more thing, Lori.
Most “reasonable people” think there’s a very easy way to tell if someone’s “faking” their gender. It’s a very tangible method, it’s simplicity is quite appealing.
posted by Lori Heine on
My favorite author, Anne Lamott got herself into hot water over the weekend by tweeting something to the effect that Caitlyn Jenner had some nerve calling herself a woman after 65 years of living as a man–with all the privileges that entailed–and therefore not really understanding how crucial life experience is to being a woman.
I’m very trans-supportive, so I was disappointed that she weighed in on the controversy in a way upsetting to so many people. She apologized. But really, she does have a point.
It would be nice if Caitlyn Jenner would simply release a statement acknowledging that women’s years of life experience living as women is something that should be honored and respected. It would have cost her nothing to do so, and the anger of people like Anne Lamott would have been defused.
I never got the privileges of living as a man. Neither did my sister, my mother, or my grandmothers. Though I’ve never had the slightest desire to be a man, I certainly believe that life experience as a woman should count for something. Some basic respect, or acknowledgement at any rate.
posted by Dale of the Desert on
Lori calls male life experience privileged, while calling female life experience crucial. While not expressed explicitly, the difference in seems to imply that a “crucial” female experience involves a heavier burden, and that Caitlyn should pay homage to that burden. If the implication was intentional, then I say that bull crap and cow crap look and smell about the same. What Caitlyn has done couragiously is to publicly acknowledge that she has spent the majority of her life presenting a public gender image she wasn’t experiencing personally. Having missed out on much of life’s female life experience, she’s not going to miss out on any more. There are burdens as well as privileges to experiencing life as a male, and there are privileges as well as burdens to experiencing life as a female. Life as a male and life as a female may not be the same, but the range of female experience is as widely varied as the range of male experience, and no one can set qualifying prerequisites for either category.
posted by Lori Heine on
Well, that’s a good example of distortion through oversimplification.
It is not “setting qualifying prerequisites” for experience to note that women spent centuries seeing theirs discounted and devalued, being robbed of their voices, being told to shut up. And being lied about and hearing their words distorted by men.
That shows up, still, in some of the oddest places. Like here.
Thanks, Dale, for proving my point.
posted by Mike is Houston on
Interesting phenomenon and proof of preconceptions – when discussing trans issues (by largely non-trans folks), it’s all about trans women.
Lori’s observations about cisgender male privilege absolutely echo the experience of my trans male friends. The idea the some people can see and experience things from male/female perspectives is discombobulating and maybe frightening… not to mention threatening to established by orthodoxies. The anti-gay folks arguing against DADT repeal often talked about gays behaving like the current crop of leaders who use their power positions to commit sexual assaults.
posted by Lori Heine on
I think we should all try to be more receptive to other people when they share their experiences with us. Gay, straight, bi, trans, male, female–you name it.
As a little girl, I always had more little boys for friends than I did girls. Little girls scared the hell out of me.
Even today, at least half of my friends are men. That doesn’t mean that I understand their experience the way they do. It does mean that I’ve seen it at close enough range to know that most women have no greater clue about how men feel than men do about women.
posted by Dale of the Desert on
You’re welcome, Lori. But I’m afraid you’ve given me too much credit. I don’t think I proved your point very well at all. But you came a little closer to proving your point, as well as mine, in your reply to Mike.
posted by tom Jefferson 3rd on
I think that men and women can join NOW, and, yes, pay equity laws can apply to men or women.
Men tend to be paid more then women, so that is why the pay equity laws are generally a womans right issue.
Granted, when you have the money of a family name, I doubt Jenner or Catylin have to worry much about how their boss treats them.
posted by Houndentenor on
In case anyone missed it, Larry Wilmore and his Nightly Show contributors had a field day with this last night. Check out the middle section (available on hulu and the Comedy Central website). The story just gets more “cray” the more you read about it. It is not, however, representative of anything as the only other instance I can remember is the literary character (SPOILER ALERT) D’Orothea from Tales of the City. Hey, maybe this is all Armistead Maupin’s fault!!! (j/k)
posted by Stuart on
What is so intrinsic to being black that if you experience that quality, you must be black? I thought blacks were no different than whites except for skin color, or was the Cosby Show misleading?
Remember when everyone thought Michael Jackson was trying to pass for white, so much so that he was bleaching his skin? And we all thought that was strange and sad?
There is more to being a woman that merely putting on a dress and makeup. No transwoman will ever have to deal with experiencing her first period; deal with the risk of pregnancy; be physically smaller than potential rapists; be quietly shuffled out of math and science classes; etc. No transwoman will ever know what it’s like to not have a room of one’s own.
No white person will ever have to find their heritage in a list of slaves. No white person will have had ancestors legally and publicly lynched simply for their skin color. No white will have spent their lives being picked up for minor traffic violations not knowing if you are going to be killed.
Transrace and transgender are offensive. Can a straight man be trans-gay? All the glitter, but none of the discrimination? Wouldn’t gays be offended if someone said, “I don’t find men attractive, and I’ve never been beaten up, but I love your parades?”
posted by Houndentenor on
Straight people are welcome at the gay pride marches. Haven’t you ever heard of PFLAG? I have straight friends (even the guys) who sometime watch gay themed movies or read articles. A few have even gone into a gay bar with me for a drink. No one was offended by any of that. We need more allies not fewer. Yes, Jenner benefitted from male privilege for years. The cost of that privilege, however, was hiding who he was. According to an ex-wife he started to transition in the 80s (hormone therapy) and then stopped. He couldn’t do it. Can you imagine a celebrity coming out as transgendered in the 80s? I really don’t think we should play the “who’s more oppressed” game. It’s not like there’s even a prize if you win. (Quite the opposite, actually.) But our own experiences ought to provide us with empathy for people who have struggled with some difficulty. I’m revolted at the number of people who don’t seem to be able to imagine how hard some situation is for someone else and can only see through their own bigotry. As for transrace, if someone can move to another country and become a proud, patriotic citizen of their new homeland, why not? But I don’t think that’s what happened in this case. The more I learn about this woman the more “cray” she seems. Actually “cray-cray” now that I think about it. It’s a story we are going to laugh about for years to come. It’s a bizarre anomaly, not a national trend and the media shouldn’t be treating it like it is.
posted by Stuart on
Isn’t the point of gay affirmative therapy that I should learn to accept the person I was created to be? I hated having homosexual attractions–I wanted to cut them out of myself. I was in reparative therapy for awhile–the premise was that I was born heterosexual and if I stuck to that identity, the gay would go away. Reparative therapy allowed me to choose an identity which I was more comfortable with.
Being trans is undergoing reparative therapy–you hate how you were created, so you pretend to be something you’re not.
I’m not talking about allies–I’m talking about heterosexuals who like the idea of being gay once a year, like they like being Irish once a year, or being a sexy witch once a year. Putting on a costume does not give you any understanding of what it’s like to be gay 365/24/7. Gayface is as offensive as blackface.
posted by Jorge on
Isn’t the point of gay affirmative therapy that I should learn to accept the person I was created to be?
Oh, puke! People have put too much weight on “identity” and “acceptance” these days.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), in its Standards of Care, writes that one of the roles of mental health professionals in working with children and adolescents who present with gender dysphoria is to assist clients in exploring their gender identity, alleviate distress associated with their gender dysphoria, and ameliorate any other psychosocial difficulties. I think that’s a good framework all-around for working with GLBT people.
Can “acceptance” be a boon to people? Sure. But not to everyone. It’s like forcing a diligent person to leave work early. You have to account for those pious people who would believe in self-denial anyway. You can reduce people’s self-burdens and make people’s lives better without forcing them to have a personality or ideology of “I love who I am.”
Reparative therapy allowed me to choose an identity which I was more comfortable with.
Having an homosexual identity and having a homosexual attraction are two different things.
A gay person’s identity is the result of their moral response to their homosexual attraction. It is their way of giving meaning to both their sexual orientation and their deeper internal being.
Being trans is undergoing reparative therapy–you hate how you were created, so you pretend to be something you’re not.
No, sir, you have it backwards. It is not about self-hatred. Gender dysphoria is simply a belief that one’s gender does not match one’s sex. Negative thoughts feelings are a common result, not a cause, of gender dysphoria. It is just the same as your experience: you claim you had homosexual attractions, and that this caused you to hate something about yourself. You didn’t wake up one day, decide to hate yourself, and conclude you were gay. Get with the program.
posted by Stuart on
“(Y)ou claim you had homosexual attractions, and that this caused you to hate something about yourself. ”
Is the best response to this self- hatred
A. Choosing to identify as straight because it allows me to like myself?
or
B. Coming to terms with my feelings and who I was created to be?
posted by Jorge on
We are not talking about your self-hatred.
We are talking about the fact that you are using your self-hatred as a crutch to adopt the first definition of transgender that enters your mind, just because it sounds like you, even in spite of evidence and logic to the contrary.
I have already told you. Gender dysphoria has nothing to do with self-hatred. You choose not to even acknowledge that I have written this. I do not continue conversations with people who ignore me.
posted by Jorge on
No transwoman will ever have to deal with… be physically smaller than potential rapists
That one’s a misfire.
to not have a room of one’s own.
Isn’t bathroom anxiety making national news now? This one’s even more of a misfire.
posted by JohnInCA on
Long story short: don’t confuse trend lines with individuals. Yes, *many* people of “X” group won’t have “Y” experience. But when you move from “many” to “all”, as you did in your sweeping generalizations, you lose track that not all people fit into your expectations.
Long story long:
“There is more to being a woman that merely putting on a dress and makeup.”
Correct. But you’re the one trying to reduce transwomen to “a dress and makeup”, not them.
“No transwoman will ever have to deal with experiencing her first period; deal with the risk of pregnancy;”
Not all women have working uteruses either, ya know. Things happen. Sometimes before puberty.
“be physically smaller than potential rapists; be quietly shuffled out of math and science classes; etc.”
First, not all women experience that. Second, some transwomen *do* experience that. Yes, those things are trends. But individuals are not trends.
“No transwoman will ever know what it’s like to not have a room of one’s own.”
Aren’t you standing here telling transwomen that (A) they don’t exist and (B) they have no room of their own?
“No white person will ever have to find their heritage in a list of slaves.”
People forget that slavery wasn’t always a racist institution. It used to be fairly egalitarian in who it targeted, both in America and abroad. That said… the first slave in the 13 original colonies was a white man in (IIRC) Massachusets.
“No white person will have had ancestors legally and publicly lynched simply for their skin color. No white will have spent their lives being picked up for minor traffic violations not knowing if you are going to be killed.”
Again, you’re generalizing from a trend line to “all people”.
“Can a straight man be trans-gay? All the glitter, but none of the discrimination?”
Seeing as femme men, gay, straight or otherwise, *do* face discrimination, I think the answer is “probably not yet”.
“Wouldn’t gays be offended if someone said, “I don’t find men attractive, and I’ve never been beaten up, but I love your parades?””
I’ve known plenty of straight people that get a kick out of pride parades and gay bars. The only way I see this being a problem is if they either (A) try to crowd us out of our own spaces or (B) follow it up “it’s all lovely. Such a shame you’re all sinners going to hell” or something equivalent.
posted by Stuart on
Have you ever taken a course in feminist studies, race studies, or queer studies? You’d find that most of your answers are ill-informed and offensive.
posted by tom Jefferson 3rd on
The conversation about transgender people seems to treating sex and gender as tge same.
Often they are used as meaning the same in common speech, but in the topic of transgender issues, they have distinct meanings.
I guess a white person could really admire “black culture” (I think that such an admiration may he based on stereotypes ) but that wouldnt change the white persons own ethnic or racial heritage.
Straight people (women) may love gay men and gay bars, but that dosent change their sexual orientation.
posted by Houndentenor on
Those terms are confused currently because for decades our sex-negative culture caused people to say gender when they meant sex. People also bought into multiple false binaries (male/female, gay/straight) that work for many but not everyone. Some of this has been widely discussed by researchers for several decades now.
posted by JohnInCA on
Call my a cynic, but I’m never quite prepared to believe someone who says “that’s offensive!” but unwilling to enumerate the offenses.
If you wish to persuade me that anything I said was actually wrong (nevertheless offensive), you’ll need to do better then a generalized statement. Which, amusingly enough, was a refrain in my critique: you regularly over-generalize.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
I would certainly agree that people have often said “gender” because it was seen as being far more “polite” then actually saying, “sex”.
Although, I seem to recall reading some once about the Equal Rights Amendment — when it was a possibility.
One of the ways that the opposition helped to kill support for the amendment was to depict it as a LGBT rights issue. One of the ways this was done was by carefully replacing the amendment’s “sex” and replace it with “gender” in advertising and the like.
posted by Lori Heine on
Sex is not just about making whoopee. It is a biological term. Gender is a grammatical term. Both have been politicized to Pluto and back.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Lori;
I was not suggesting that “sex” only refers to making “Whoopee”. I simply stated that when talking about gender identity issues, “sex” and “gender” are not the same thing, even through they are sometimes treated as one and the same.
If you have attended any educational seminars on transgender issues, one of the issues that is talked about is the difference between sex, gender, sexual orientation and sexual behavior (typically, each one is placed on its own bar).
posted by Lori Heine on
I was not arguing with you; I was agreeing with you.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Rachel Dolezal comment about “relating” to transgender people is insulting to transgender people. It implies that transgender people want to go through the process of therapy and gender reassignment surgery because its “really neat-to” or want to “slum it”. Again, a sign of how people confuse sex with gender.
I saw one interview with her parents who said that the family had a blend of white European and native Indian ancestry. Although most of the subsequent reports do not mention the native Indian ancestry, so perhaps it is not accurate or is accurate, but not sufficient to warrant interest beyond a bit of family lore.
However, Rachel Dolezal is not really a serious news item, beyond the fact that — having been exposed for lying, she is probably hoping to become “famous for being famous” or some such thing.
Her adoptive brother(s) has been seen in the news. Just the parents. If that actually means anything.
I am not really sure why she lied — she may really believe her own lies or, again, is hoping to become a tabloid-reality TV star.
Had she been honest about her ancestry, she still could have worked on behalf of civil rights issues.
IMHO I do not think she lied to get “special privileges”, I think she is what some of my British friends would call a “nutter”.