Disagree. Gender is a social construct, whereas biological sex is not.
Could you elaborate further on what a “male brain” is?
We need to be clearer than just “gender” in our terminology here.
Gender presentation is obviously largely a social construct, nobody would dispute that.
Gender identity is another matter.
Male gender identity. The internal feeling that you “are” a man, whether cis or trans. The aspects of mental state that are, in general terms, sexually dimorphic.
Horseshit. Gender identity is one’s response to gender, the latter of which consists of socially shared notions and beliefs. We as individuals are not, however, tabula rasa who just blindly absorb whatever social crap is foisted onto us. There are a lot of social notions that we as individuals push back against.
We can have an individual nature that is antithetically inconsistent with the gender notions that are projected onto us, without having to have genders built in to ourselves. Think about it. Go talk to someone who identifies as agender if you wish.
IMHO, societal pressure is not a sufficient explanation. There are a lot of people that identify in various ways that society as a whole in their environment is hostile to. That doesn’t mean their identity has any biological basis or “ brain” at all.
What is a man, though; the thing that I internally feel that I am? Couldn’t I also have an internal feeling that I “am” black?
None of us can know what “a man” is except through social interaction and learning. You aren’t born knowing that there exist other people who are like you in ways “X”, “Y”, and “Z” and different from you in ways “A”, “B”, and “C”.
I should point out that this is true of cisgender people, in case that’s not obvious. It’s not just true that transgender women don’t know that who they are has stuff in common with the identities of other (cis and trans) women. It is also true that cisgender women don’t know that who they are has stuff in common (aside from bodies of a certain physical configuration) with the selves of other women. Except through observation and communication, at which point we are speaking of social.
Aren’t the people that “pass” as white “transracial”? Certainly some of them identify as white. Why are they “really” black, as some insist? Why are we just talking about the Rachel Dolezals of the world? IMO the only reason she got ANY press is because its socially unacceptable, at least in the US, for a white person to identify as, and try to “pass” as black (or any other race, for that matter - see: Elizabeth Warren).
You are jumping wildly between pushing back against two opposite extreme viewpoints, neither of which I hold.
The tabula rasa model says that nothing is “built-in”, that everything is entirely a social construct. Genetic determinisim says that everything is built-in.
The evidence is that gender identity is usually established very early in childhood, and (like sexual orientation) not usually subsequently malleable, not a “choice”, and not usually amenable to alteration by subsequent social pressure. It is an internal identity that is firmly established in the first few years of life.
So it’s clearly not accurate to describe the phenomena of gender identity as a social construct. It is usually firmly establish at an age when children have barely started to acquire language, let alone any understanding of the full complexity of social structures.
Nobody knows how exactly how identity or orientation are determined, but like pretty much everything in human nature there are undoubtedly both genetic and environmental contributions. But gender identity is established far too early in life for the environmental contributions to be accurately described solely as “social constructs”.
nm…
There are examples of legal discrimination based on gender that have no racial equivalent. For instance, in the military there are 2 sets of grooming standards and physical fitness standards, different terms of address, there are jobs that aren’t open to both genders, the are regulations about bunking/roommates based on gender, etc. On top of the “please refer to me as he/she” and which bathroom to use, a trans servicemember wants a certain set of regulations to apply to them based on their identified gender.
What’s the equivalent fight for trans-racial rights? If someone identifies as black, what changes? I suppose we can all be polite and acquiesce to including them on arbitrary lists of, say, “who are your black coworkers?” We can say, “Well there’s Byron, Janice, and Jim who identifies as black.” There’s probably no harm in that. But what other changes would we have to make to accommodate a trans-racial person?
The only example I can think of is race-based scholarships or diversity quotas, but I’m a little sketchy on the legality of those anyway. I know the UK has diversity hiring quotas, could they get away with hiring a white person who identifies as black? Does the UK even have a legal definition for racial minorities? It seems to me that since race isn’t a scientific concept but a social one, someone’s self-identification is pretty much the end-all anyway.
Sexual dimorphism is widespread in nature - males and females of the same species differing both physically and behaviorally. It perfectly consistent with everything we know about biology that there are some aspects of mental state that are associated with being male/female. We share the same genome except for the parts that direct us to the male/female developmental pathways, so there’s an obvious and plausible biological model for trans people - that the developmental triggers for the sexually dimorphic aspects of physical body and brain somehow go in opposite directions.
So I think there’s every reason to believe that trans people are not just engaging in some ill-defined fantasy - that trans people do literally have some aspects of the male version of the human brain in the female version of the body, or vice versa.
This seems to me qualitatively different, more substantial and grounded in objective reality, than a white person “feeling” that they are black. Especially so since “white” and “black” really are just somewhat arbitrary social constructs.
Hello,
Actual transgender person here. This question is good to think about, but also has been extensively discussed and written about already. I am beyond tired of having this discussion over and over. But yet, you certainly want and should get further info on this topic. Here are some articles to read.
In short, “transracial” is not, in fact, a thing. Transgender folks, however, have existed and been documented back to the very dawn of civilization, across cultures. This whole binary idea of gender and sex is a very modern phenomenon, that is mostly categorical laziness, rather than social or biological reality.
Meanwhile, here you are:
No. This is an overly simplistic view of the trans experience. The whole idea we simply “internally feel” we are x gender is a highly simplified view in popular media to break down something far more complex for cis audiences just getting started at understanding.
What it means for someone to identify as a gender is a personal experience and may not have any correlation to external references. If someone says they identify as gender X, then they identify as gender X regardless of any behaviors, actions, body differences, etc. It’s a state of mind that means something to them. It’s similar to how anyone can identify as a Christian, liberal, conservative, etc. In the general the people who identify as X will have a set of common traits, but those set of traits are not required to identify as X. Someone can identify as X even though they have none of the generally common traits of people who identify as X. (e.g. a Christian who doesn’t go to church, read the Bible, etc).
In that aspect, being transracial is similar. Someone who identifies as a race is mentally identifying as that race. That may mean that they see themselves fitting in much more with the culture associated with that race, they feel like their body should be more similar to that of another race, etc. I see Dolezal as sincere in her race identity in that she wasn’t doing it for fradulent purposes. Just like a trans person says “Hi. I’m gender X” rather than “Hi. I’m gender X. I was born gender Y.”, I see Dolezal as the same. She seemed like she really did identify as black. She may have found questions about her birth race just as offensive as a transgender person getting questions about their birth sex. Certainly some people may fake a race for something like a scholarship, but other people seem like they truly are identifying as that race. The biological reason for that transracial identification may be different than the biological reason for transgender identification, but it seems like there should be some acceptance of transracial identification if the person is doing it sincerely.
Michael Jackson was three transformations. From a poor black man to a rich white woman.
Four transformations. Started alive, ended up dead.
(Hypothetically assuming that transracial people are real) it’s possible that they have been more rare throughout history than transgender people, partly because there haven’t been that many mixed race societies historically.