# Transgender - transracial. What is the essential difference? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 3, 2021, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117 "2021-02-03T10:45:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2021, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/321 "2021-02-09T21:54:09Z")
But I am NOT judging, I’m simply stating, they want to be recognized as women, within their circle of friends, without having any of the downsides that being a woman grants. And, by the way, retaining male privilege in their conversation styles, their space awareness, and the rest of it. So the argument you have presented, that white people claiming black identity retail all the privilege and that doesn’t hold for trans women, is not true in all cases in my experience. And while closeted is a good word for it, if you aren’t living your life as a woman, and have no intention to ever live your life as a woman (both of these young women have stated an intent to always present as male), that means self identification is the only thing that matters in declaring a gender. Which is fine - but why is that not ok with race? So why judge someone who is transracial? Every single argument that has been made has had to have been twisted so that one is ok and the other isn’t. Someday, I really believe we will look back at this and think “wow, were we wrong.” Race, like gender, is too fluid, with too many connotations both internal and external, to be put in a box. But I admit, I come from a weird place, with an Asian son who is really quite white on the inside (and as an Asian, doesn’t face nearly as much systemic racism as a black person) and a non-binary kid who looks like a woman, but is not. And I’m someone who’s great grandparents made a decision to pass over a century ago, giving me increased opportunities, but denying me a cultural heritage. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2021, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/322 "2021-02-09T22:02:41Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I’m only slightly joking, but “I don’t know what being White feels like” is possibly the Whitest thing a person could say… I don’t think you have any authority or experience to make such a claim and I certainly have no ability to judge the truth of it. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2021, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/323 "2021-02-09T22:13:54Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > The difference is in the difference between gender and race. They’re not the same things. They have very different histories and roles in society. Apples and helicopters. Why on Earth would they be treated the same? Are they really so different? they are both traits that historically have lead to discrimination and prejudice, they are both social constructs. I’d suggest that issues arising from questions of gender are absolutely treated in similar way to those arising in relationship to race. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2021, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/324 "2021-02-09T22:18:24Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > So why judge someone who is transracial? So far, every supposed “transracial” person that has become prominent has turned out to be a lying grifter. I think it’s fine to judge lying grifters as lying grifters. Maybe someday there will be one who isn’t a lying grifter – if so, then my mind remains open for them. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2021, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/325 "2021-02-09T22:41:46Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > So why judge someone who is transracial? Before we can start talking about how we should treat people who are transracial, can we establish that they actually exist? So far, “transracial” people seem to fall into one of two groups: hypothetical people invented to question the validity of trans gender identities, and Rachael Dolezal. If someone can find me an actual transracial person who is not also involved in demonstrable fraud for financial gain, I’m willing to at least give them a fair hearing. “_If_ trans racial people exist, _and_ they make this particular argument to justify their identity, then you have to accept them like you do trans gender people,” is two hypotheticals further than I’m willing to entertain this question. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2021, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/326 "2021-02-09T23:31:43Z")
When I read Dolezal’s story, it doesn’t seem like she was doing it for fraudulent reasons. She mentions feeling black from a young age. “As long as I can remember, I saw myself as black.”, she says. No doubt she was perpetuating a fraud by hiding her past, but she didn’t create this whole thing as a lie in order to be a teacher and spokesperson. There are some similarities to a transgender person who hides their gender. Recently a Navy Seal came out as a trans woman. I don’t fault her for keeping that secret, but she was able rise to some high levels that are typically held by cis men. By presenting as male and selecting “M” on the military forms, she was able to achieve a lot without having the sexism or transphobia that would have dogged her otherwise and likely held her back. Even though transracial and transgender are different at a fundamental level, there are some similarities. If there was not bigotry against transracial, I would suppose that Dolezal would not lie about her past. She might say she was trans black or just black the same way that a transgender person would say they are a trans woman or just a woman. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2021, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/327 "2021-02-09T23:40:04Z")
Dolezal was convicted of fraud, IIRC, after lying about the income from the book she wrote about pretending to be black. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/328 "2021-02-10T00:06:48Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > If there was not bigotry against transracial… But is there, though? ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/329 "2021-02-10T05:22:19Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > So far, every supposed “transracial” person that has become prominent has turned out to be a lying grifter. Your too focused on the present. There is a long history of individuals “passing”. Often they were mixed heritage, but sometimes by adoption or marriage. It helped that communities, especially rural ones, were very small, so that once they were accepted, they were no longer “other”. Of course modern America is very different. But I expect there are transracial people today who simply avoid attention, which is another way of saying they’re passing. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/330 "2021-02-10T05:57:06Z")
I don’t see what passing, which was about survival in a white supremacist society, has to do with innate and inborn identity. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/331 "2021-02-10T06:09:08Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > I don’t think you have any authority or experience to make such a claim Better me, or any other PoC, than any White person. You realise it’s an judgement statement only an outside observer can make, right? > [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > I certainly have no ability to judge the truth of it. That would be true. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/332 "2021-02-10T06:11:05Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > There is a long history of individuals “passing”. People who are “passing” don’t actually think they’re the race they’re passing for. It’s a phenomenon I’m intimately familiar with. I have family members doing it right now. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/333 "2021-02-10T07:20:14Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > If gender identity isn’t what you believe about yourself then what is it? > [@DemonTree](#): > > You have a person who has always believed they are a woman, lived as a woman, etc, and at some later time they now believe they are a man. My question is, did this person’s gender identity change? If not, then gender identity cannot be ‘the gender you believe you are’, so what exactly is it? Read my post above #212 & #213 on what it means for something to have a genetic basis, or to be established as part of someone’s nature through some combination of genes and early environment. In the toy example I gave there, suppose that being good at crossword puzzles has a strong genetic component. If someone is born in a country where people don’t do crossword puzzles, this will never be apparent. If they later move to a country where crossword puzzles are part of the culture, they may participate in this culture and gradually discover their natural ability later in life. The phenotype is only realized in an environment where it is a cultural _possibility_. Historically, the _possibility_ of being a trans person has not usually been widely recognized or acknowledged. Still today, in many cultures it may not be an immediate obvious possibility to a maturing child. A maturing child may have some sense that something is wrong, that they don’t fit comfortably into the gender roles typical for their sex-assigned-at-birth, but they may not know exactly what that means, they may not themselves yet know who they “are”. Depending on the culture, It is surely an obvious possibility that someone who is a trans man or trans non-binary might for a long time think they are a woman with something ill-defined “wrong” about themselves that they themselves don’t fully understand. In a modern culture that more openly acknowledges the possibility of being trans, the opposite may also be true of course - someone immature may _think_ they are trans and discover they were mistaken as they mature. _Everyone_ cis or trans in _any_ culture refines their identity and preferences to some degree as they grow and mature, as they experience their social environment with respect to gender and come to understand more about themselves. You seem to be working from the same misconception that I debunked in post #212, the misconception that if something is in someone’s nature, that means in an empty universe it must somehow always magically emerge from nothingness regardless of the environment. To the contrary, something that is in someone’s nature _requires_ an environment to be realized. Something may be intrinsic to someone’s nature from an early age yet may still take time to develop and be fully realized and discovered as someone interacts with their environment. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/334 "2021-02-10T08:39:30Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Better me, or any other PoC, than any White person. You realise it’s an judgement statement only an outside observer can make, right? no, I I don’t accept that at all. You aren’t aren’t able to properly judge the validity of a persons internal feelings. No-one can. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/335 "2021-02-10T08:43:42Z")
I haven’t commented on their feelings. Just their utterances. I don’t doubt them when they say they have no idea what being White feels like. It’s _exactly_ the kind of thing Whiteness would engender in someone. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/336 "2021-02-10T08:48:59Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I don’t doubt them when they say they have no idea what being White feels like. It’s _exactly_ the kind of thing Whiteness would engender in someone. Then why the sneering racist response? Accept them at their word and move on. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/337 "2021-02-10T08:56:38Z")
Nothing racist about pointing out peak [Whiteness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteness_studies) when I see it. But feel free to continue this conversation in the Pit. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/338 "2021-02-10T09:04:08Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Nothing racist about pointing out peak Whiteness when I see it. You are clearly making a value judgement on feelings or comments based on race. It is _obviously_ racist. If I were to say that your response to me was peak (whatever race you are), what would your response be? ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/339 "2021-02-10T09:16:27Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > You are clearly making a value judgement on feelings or comments based on race. No, I’m making it on Whiteness. > [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > If I were to say that your response to me was peak (whatever race you are), what would your response be? “that’s White fragility for you” ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2021, 9:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/340 "2021-02-10T09:56:53Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > No, I’m making it on Whiteness. I’ll let people read the wikipedia entry to decide for themselves if it is a race-based term or not (spoiler…it is) and whether is represents anything other than poor thinking and circular reasoning (it doesn’t) and whether is presents the valid means of its own falsification (it doesn’t). In any case having a wiki entry for something doesn’t actually give it validity (hence the “[Courtier’s Reply](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_reply#:~:text=The%20courtier's%20reply%20is%20a,any%20sort%20of%20criticism%20whatsoever.)”…yep, see what I did there?) Of course if that term is race-dependent then my accusation of racism on your part stands. If not, then you are allowing for non-white to be “white” and white people not to be “white” which only goes to suggest at least a degree of transracial self-identity. I don’t think you actually get to impose an identity on anyone, but apparently you do. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117.md?page=16) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117.md?page=18)