In the whole scrum about Rachael Doezal a few weeks ago one comparison which some people made was the juxtaposition of the cases of Caitlyn Jenner and Rachael Dolezal and asking how can you applaud one as brave and scold the other as being brazenly co-opting, exploitative and in bad taste if they are both earnest cognitive decisions about how you want to express your identity regardless of how you were born?
Some like Elinor Burkett made a similar complaint about Jenner’s transformation in that he was effectively trying to co-opt being a woman without having paid an adequate social price.
This theme that Dolezal’s and Jenner’s representations are in essence pretty much the same thing (to the extent I have overheard these conversation taking pace) has gained an appreciable amount of steam in people’s casual conversations in workplaces, bars, lunchrooms, parties etc.
Assuming you want to engage people holding these views with the opposite perspective how are they fundamentally different? Physically inter-sexed and hermaphroditic people aside how do you make the argument that a man who is a genetically perfect man from head to toe deciding to be a woman is different than a woman who is born with racial markers identifying her as white deciding she “feels black” and taking that identity?
It’s a “state of mind,” in that there are physical differences between male and female brains, and studies have shown that trans people have the brain structures of the gender they identify as. So far as I’m aware, no one has identified any differences in brain structures between white people and black people.
The social costs argument is ridiculous. Very little trumps the social costs of being transgender. Not to mention the personal ones. It’s not something one decides one is for chuckles and/or to defy one’s family.
And even those who in good faith think they have are permanently labeled racists and likely have to change careers.
I’ve been meaning to find a way to work this in between threads, so let me offer it as an example. There’s a thread about “has any woman made the roster in men’s pro sports,” and of course, more than one thread about gender identity and Ms. Jenner.
Since Jenner has made it clear that she thought she was a woman back to early adulthood, including her stint in the Olympics*… exactly how do we phrase, in this new dialectic, that a woman actually won the 1976 men’s decathlon?
And her champions, and gender-identity hardliners, agree that “she” is the now-correct pronoun to use when discussing that event.
“Caitlyn Jenner (then Bruce Jenner) won the Men’s Decathlon.”
We’ve been handling this with women’s names changing when they get married for a while now. It really shouldn’t be this confusing.
I also see a big distinction between Jenner’s change and the steps she’s taken to bring it about, and Dolezal showing up at a meeting with a black man and telling people he’s her dad, and showing up with her foster brother and telling people he’s her son.
This is a Hulk vs. Superman question. There is no such thing as being ‘black’, and transgender people alter their appearance and body chemistry in a way that suits them. People’s self identification shouldn’t be open to question from others in this way. I don’t understand why people want to self identify in some way, nor do I care. I don’t understand why they want to permanently mark their bodies with ugly drawings or pierce their anatomy, nor do I care. I don’t understand why people watch soccer or golf or drink coffee, nor do I care. No good comes out of these comparisons of completely subjective perceptions, and it is certainly unbecoming when people engage in victimhood pissing contests.
Didn’t see this or I would have folded it into my reply to Ethilrist.
I am neither debating nor criticizing the linguistic issues, knotty and sometimes absurd as they are. I completely concur with Jenner’s right to identify by any name or assumed gender she wishes, and other than the humor aspects, I don’t have a negative thought of any kind about it.
But if she says she was really a woman in 1976, by self-thought and self-identification… was it a man or a woman who won the medal? No semantic shuffling should be needed here, but there’s only one answer. Which is it?
Whereas apparently “being” black is about whether others observe you to be black. Barack Obama, for instance looks like what people think black people look like, so he is the first black U.S. President, in spite of one of his parents not being black.
Your gender is based on your personal perceptions of yourself. Your race is based on other people’s perception of you.
To me, the issue is that Dolezal specifically lied about something for personal gain. IOW although they may not come out and say it the NAACP probably wants their president to be African-American. So she deliberately passed herself off as black for decades with this career goal in mind. Which if that’s the case, is unethical in my mind.
I don’t think the bolded part is entirely true. If gender were truly removed from other people’s perceptions, then there would be no need to present yourself in a way that falls in line with gendered expectations, right?