# 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:** 8
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/141 "2021-02-05T16:47:04Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > TERFs _do_ claim that accepting trans women as real women does harm to them. Whether something cases harm does not depend on whether it has a biological basis or not. For example, many people think attraction to children is inborn, but still believe paedophilia is wrong because it harms children. > [@Riemann](#): > > How we vote _can_ certainly become more than a rational choice based on the merits of the ideas, it can become tribal - and when it does, that tendency should be challenged and resisted. It’s a _bad thing_ when our politics ceases to be about ideas, and becomes our identity. That kind of tribal identification that ignores the merits of the ideas should _not_ be accepted or tolerated in a civilized society. I agree, and this sort of tribal identification has become alarmingly common. But that is not what I was talking about. I meant that one’s general political orientation, liberal or conservative, authoritarian vs libertarian, is mostly inborn and not a choice. ETA: We’re probably getting off topic again here, though. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/142 "2021-02-05T16:50:22Z")
I just looked up David Reimer. He really does illustrate the difference between transracial and transgender. He was born male, reassigned female because of some injury or deformation(?), but knew he was male deep down. If you take a Brazilian person who was “born Black” in the US but raised in Brazil and considered white, they won’t have some deep-down feeling that they’re really Black. So, thanks for illustrating the essential difference. ---
**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 5, 2021, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/143 "2021-02-05T16:51:26Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > The bar for whether someone’s identity should be recognized and accepted isn’t “Is there scientific evidence of a genetic predisposition towards it”, it’s “does acknowledging it hurt anyone”. Whether someone was “born this way” isn’t relevant As a minor aside - the question of whether something is a choice vs whether it’s part of someone’s nature is not quite the same as whether it’s innate. For example, gender identity is usually firmly established in the first few years of life through some combination of genetics and early environment, but of course we don’t know exactly how it works. If we loosely talk about it as part of someone’s “nature” as opposed to a choice, that’s not an implication that it has an entirely genetic basis in the sense of nature vs nurture. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/144 "2021-02-05T16:53:29Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > You’re making my case for me. David Reimer (whoever that is) knew he wasn’t a girl. Maybe he didn’t have a name for transman or realize that’s what he was, but he knew something was different. There’s nothing equivalent to that when it comes to race. But he didn’t know. He knew something was very wrong, but not what. (And he wasn’t actually a transman, but his unfortunate situation is a useful model.) How do we know there aren’t people who feel the same about race but just don’t have a concept for it? ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/145 "2021-02-05T16:55:10Z")
Because race really is a social construct. You can see this in suicide rates for transgender people forced to live the wrong gender. I have never heard of a similar thing for people forced to live the “wrong race”. What would that even mean? When Irish people started being accepted as white, did they somehow feel they really were non-white deep down? ---
**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 5, 2021, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/146 "2021-02-05T17:03:48Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Whether something cases harm does not depend on whether it has a biological basis or not. But it makes an immense difference in what our attitude should be toward it. Given that trans women _are_ real women, even if we were to accept the dubious premise that their existence does some harm to cis women, the correct response is not to reject their very existence, because they _are_ real. ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/147 "2021-02-05T17:17:05Z")
I think it’s interesting how people can talk about “male and female brains”, as if that’s very important, abeit poorly understood, while downplaying the differences between “male and female bodies” which are plainly obvious and _very well_ understood and some of which NO amount of hormone replacements are going to change. This, disregarding the fact that there are a worrying amount of people that think it’s perfectly acceptable that simple identification is sufficient for competition without ANY “performance dehancing” measures taking place. A brain being in the “wrong body” has _nothing to do_ with physiological advantages, and should not entitle one to literally beat the hell of of a woman in a MMA match or dominate a sport they would be quite middling in, were they competing against members of the same biological sex. There’s a reason many sports are sex-segregated, and a small amount of women being superior to a small amount of men is not, imo, sufficient to say they’re interchangeable. To think Andy Kaufman, a physically average, not particularly strong, nor athletic man, wrestled and mostly humiliated 400 women was considered a ridiculous and even offensive joke, not too long ago. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/148 "2021-02-05T17:18:53Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I singled out this line because it seems to also support the idea of transracialism. That is, people of different races are as alike (or more alike) as people of different genders, biologically. I completely agree that on the broad scale of resemblance-to-cats-or-helicopters, racial differences between human individuals are even more trivial than sex differences. However, I don’t agree that that gets us any closer to making “transracialism” a thing. Because AFAICT, there’s no evidence for the existence of any innate self-perception as a member of a particular racial group. But there is a lot of evidence for the existence of innate self-perception as a member (or not) of a particular gender category, which does not perfectly correlate with biological sex or assigned gender category. I get your point that scientific evidence isn’t always 100% conclusive (certainly not on this issue, so far), and that past scientific findings on the issue of sex and gender and race have often been very biased. However, IMHO that doesn’t justify us in arbitrarily dismissing or ignoring the current level of scientific understanding that we do have. ---
**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 5, 2021, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/149 "2021-02-05T17:21:49Z")
> [@Ashtura](#): > > I think it’s interesting how people can talk about “male and female brains”, as if that’s very important, abeit poorly understood, while downplaying the differences between “male and female bodies” which are plainly obvious and _very well_ understood and some of which NO amount of hormone replacements are going to change… This discussion is not remotely about the rights of trans women to compete in sports. You are in the wrong thread. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/150 "2021-02-05T17:28:56Z")
**Modnote** : This post is very off subject. Bringing up the sports debate into this thread is threadshitting. Don’t do this again. Next time will be a warning. _This is just a guidance, not a warning. Nothing on your permanent record._ **Riemann** , please leave the modding to the mod staff. Flag it next time as someone else did. Thread briefly closed to give posters in mid-post a chance to not get warned. Will reopen in 5 minutes. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/151 "2021-02-05T17:29:02Z")
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**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/152 "2021-02-05T17:33:59Z")
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**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/153 "2021-02-05T17:38:40Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Because AFAICT, there’s no evidence for the existence of any innate self-perception as a member of a particular racial group. But there is a lot of evidence for the existence of innate self-perception as a member (or not) of a particular gender category, which does not perfectly correlate with biological sex or assigned gender category. This is a very good point. I just wonder how much of the lack of evidence is due to most of it being hidden in the closet. > [@Kimstu](#): > > However, IMHO that doesn’t justify us in arbitrarily dismissing or ignoring the current level of scientific understanding that we do have. I think we should be really cautious about using the _lack_ of scientific evidence to reject personal claims. It’s one thing to say that scientific evidence _supports_ something (like transgender), so we shouldn’t ignore it, but another thing to say that a lack of evidence means we should reject it. 100 years ago someone who claimed to be transgender would be trivially dismissed with something like “Well, medical science is pretty sure we know what a penis is”. And that wouldn’t have even been some kind of horribly racist/sexist science like phrenology, just a complete lack of a concept for gender separate from sex. My impression is that there’s really no evidence either way on whatever transracialism is (we’re even struggling to come up with a clear definition here) because it’s pretty new and thinly observed and studied and there are _a lot_ of individual and institutional incentives to _not_ spend your time researching something like “innate brain differences between races”. But there is a guiding principle that we can follow now and would have worked for that transgendered person 100 years ago too, that doesn’t rely on our current scientific knowledge: “I’m not sure if that’s a real thing, but it doesn’t seem to hurt anyone, so sure.” ---
**Author:** ![Ashtura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ashtura/32/2963_2.png) [@Ashtura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashtura)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/154 "2021-02-05T18:02:38Z")
_Hidden as mod instructions were ignored, resulting in a warning. Do not reply to this post._ What Exit? > **Summary** > > Okay, lets put it this way. A middling athlete might observe that black people are disproportionately (by population) represented in many sports. However, such person cannot simply identify as a black person and dominate in a sport. Whereas, it _is_ possible for a transgender person to do that, under certain circumstances. That _is_ a difference between transracial and transgender, and that is not even a humble opinion, it’s a fact. I apologize in advance if that is an uncomfortable truth. If you wish to warn me for pointing this out, I accept your warning in advance without reservation > > It is possible for some “transracial” people, Rachel Dolezal included, to benefit from “passing” as another race, but those are mostly societal. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/155 "2021-02-05T18:05:41Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > […] my impression of the thread so far is that it’s been about why transgender is a real and valid thing that we should accept and support, but transracial is not. It’s a lie or a delusion that we should reject. Caveat: I think my position on this overall has been not so much that transracialism is intrinsically “a lie or a delusion”, but rather that our current social understanding of race does not include the concept of, so to speak, “cis” and “trans” options for racial identity. As I and others have noted, there are plenty of social categories (nationality, religion, etc.), where we do generally recognize a sort of “cis/trans” duality. This generally refers to whether one’s “born into” that nationality/religion/etc. or voluntarily adopts it later in life. And I don’t see anybody trying to argue that such “transnational” or “transreligious” identifications are “a lie or a delusion”. But the point is that we don’t currently extend that concept to racial categories. And we don’t have neurobiological evidence for the existence of innate “transracial identity”, as we do for the existence of innate transgender identity. So IMHO these are valid arguments against “transracial identity” currently being a “real thing”, although I’m not asserting that we could never possibly have a social construct of race in which transracial identity is a real thing. But I definitely don’t think that we can get there via white people, in particular, arbitrarily claiming the concept of “transracial identity” to justify their choice to identify as a member of a historically oppressed racial group. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/156 "2021-02-05T18:33:02Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Caveat: I think my position on this overall has been not so much that transracialism is intrinsically “a lie or a delusion”, but rather that our current social understanding of race does not include the concept of, so to speak, “cis” and “trans” options for racial identity. Earlier, you said > [@Kimstu](#): > > But when, say, a white woman explicitly asserts that she’s a black woman, with all the denial of historic realities of privilege vs. oppression that that implies, that is making a deceptive claim. “A deceptive claim” sound a lot like “a lie” to me, although I see there are some nuances here. > [@Kimstu](#): > > But the point is that we don’t currently extend that concept to racial categories. And we don’t have neurobiological evidence for the existence of innate “transracial identity”, as we do for the existence of innate transgender identity. > > So IMHO these are valid arguments against “transracial identity” currently being a “real thing”, 100 years ago, were there “real” transgender people? Society didn’t have a concept of it. I don’t disagree that society doesn’t really accept the idea of transracialism. But my argument in the whole thread is “maybe we should?”. The fact that people in the past didn’t accept transgender seems like a fairly poor basis on which to reject it, so why is it a better argument now for transracial? ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/157 "2021-02-05T18:36:51Z")
I’m still at awe at the Cirque-du-Soleil-level gymnastics to claim that a Y-chromosme, a penis and testicles do not make you a man (unless you feel like one), but one protein on your skin absolutely and indelibly make you black (even if you don’t feel like one). ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/158 "2021-02-05T18:42:03Z")
Maybe one problem is that there is only one term ‘race’, while we have separate terms like male/female for biology and man/woman for gender. The terms male/female are more about biology and genetics, while man/woman are more about personal identification. I don’t think there’s something like that for race. If a race X person is raised in a culture of race Y, we don’t have words to say their biological race is X but their cultural race is Y. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2021, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/159 "2021-02-05T18:43:19Z")
Wait until you read the thread and you get to the example of a family from Brazil who was considered white there and black in the US! That will really blow your mind, and also negate the last part of your sentence. Maybe you should revisit that. Also, most of the women in this picture have X and Y chromosomes: [Androgen insensitivity syndrome - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrome#/media/File:Orchids01.JPG) Are you further in awe? ---
**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 5, 2021, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117/160 "2021-02-05T18:47:13Z")
> [@Paul\_was\_in\_Saudi](#): > > …since all people are more or less identical racially, a person may choose to be whatever race they might like. Americans have long had an understanding that one may be whatever they wish to be. > > Sure some choices seem unwise. Some puzzle the rest of us. There are awkward moments. But we really ought to mind our own business and let others get on with their own lives. > [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > But there is a guiding principle that we can follow now and would have worked for that transgendered person 100 years ago too, that doesn’t rely on our current scientific knowledge: “I’m not sure if that’s a real thing, but it doesn’t seem to hurt anyone, so sure.” _Of course_ it’s true that if (a) someone’s identity (in whatever respect) does no harm to others; (b) everyone in society has a civilized live-and-let-live attitude to other people’s choices when they harm nobody …then all of this debate is moot and we can all live in peace and harmony. But neither (a) nor (b) correspond to reality. Even a civilized society is in constant ebb and flow of competing interests, and some aspects of personal identity _do_ cause harm to others. And even when there’s no actual harm, our society is not civilized, a majority do not have a live-and-let-live attitude and would seek to impose their own values on what they judge to be “wrong” choices. Faced with this reality, the notion that all that matters is whether someone is _sincere_ is just pie in the sky. When faced with the reality of conflict and misery, we _do_ need to distinguish clearly between aspects of identity that are part of a person’s intrinsic nature (gender identity, sexual orientation) and aspects of identity that are chosen, and that are fair game for criticism and potential rejection on their merits - whatever our value system. There is a qualitative difference between someone with a prudish and judgmental moral value system criticizing someone for (say) general promiscuity, and condemning someone for being gay or trans. While I don’t personally agree with a moral value system that condemns promiscuity, I accept that such moral value systems can exist. But there is no defensible moral value system that would condemn someone for what they intrinsically _are_. For similar reasons, I think it _does_ ultimately matter whether there is some underlying substantial biological reality to being “transracial”. If (hypothetically) transracialism were in the same conceptual category as gender identity, an intrinsic part of someone’s nature, then I don’t think it’s morally valid to condemn it. And if it does harm we must just do our best as a society to find ways to mitigate that harm. If, on the other hand, being “transracial” falls more into the category of something someone _prefers_ to do as a matter of choice, then it’s fair game for criticism on its merits as an _idea_, and we can consider the calculus of harm vs benefit. It is a moral _possibility_ to reject it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transgender-transracial-what-is-the-essential-difference/932117.md?page=9)