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transrace
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you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
you unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered User regular
I was cooking dinner earlier today, and my girlfriend was watching the Tyra Banks show. On it they had an an African-American of extremely dark complexion who bleaches her skin in an attempt to look whiter, a practice which Tyra admonished. (Which, in itself is ridiculous, considering that Tyra's success as a model is party because of her incredibly light skin, which is emphasized on the show by very soft and white lighting.) She said that she felt even when people called her pretty, she thought that there was some paradigm which she could never reach; Tyra told the lady she should respect herself because her skin makes her who she is and is a part of her, which the audience roared on in assent.
In an age of transgender and transsexual philosophies, in an age where we elect a mixed-race president, does your skin really define you? And a deeper, more jarring question: can a black woman really identify herself as a white woman to the extent that she wishes to become one? Race is presumably an artificial construction, but just like Gender it can leave lasting and impressing marks upon a subject.
So maybe we shouldn't be so hard on weeaboos after all. :P
In an age of transgender and transsexual philosophies, in an age where we elect a mixed-race president, does your skin really define you? And a deeper, more jarring question: can a black woman really identify herself as a white woman to the extent that she wishes to become one? Race is presumably an artificial construction, but just like Gender it can leave lasting and impressing marks upon a subject.
So maybe we shouldn't be so hard on weeaboos after all. :P
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We know what we know about gender identity dysphoria from the aggregate experiences of thousands of people who have had to suffer through it, for whom solace has only come by living as the desired gender. For me, empirical data - even if, in this case, "data" may just be plural for "anecdote" - trumps theory. It appears that people have a sense of self, that this sense of self is deeply rooted in gender, probably to the point of being classifiable as "nature" in the old nature vs. nurture conundrums.
I don't see any evidence to suggest that there is a similarly deeply rooted sense of race. The person described in the OP above appears not to be striving towards a particular sense of self, but a particular standard of beauty. Until & unless there is evidence that thousands of people of race [X] will feel out-of-sync with their true selves until they see race [Y] in the mirror, I don't think that there is a "transrace" condition that is analogous to transgender.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I maintain that it's a screwed up artifact of times more racist that we consider people like Tiger Woods and Barack Obama "black," since one of their parents was black. Half of Obama's parents were white, how is he more "black" than he is "white?"
The Black Panthers might disagree with you. A bit tongue-in-cheek, but most popular racial theory is that the color of your skin IS your identity. I recently read something where most black women felt that they were more black than they were women. I'll try and dig it up.
I had Obama's book in mind when I was making the OP -- how he felt it was essential to understand his Africa-heritage to understand himself, even though he seems to understand his white-heritage very well from its omnipresence in his upbringing and culture. He does, however, seem to identify himself as more black than white.
Well then they can show me some white kids who suspected by the age of five that they were actually black, or vice versa.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I suppose it's just because that's how they differ from the norm. I imagine (though I may be wrong) that in Africa they'd consider a half-white-half-black person to be white.
Have you never heard of wiggas?
He doesn't have much of a choice - how many people do you think would agree that he's a white man?
Good point, although I think that even if he was talking to a group of liberal arts professors he would still say in all honesty that he identifies himself with his African-American side.
Because he chooses to self identify as black.
Can you demonstrate that there are wiggas who knew themselves to be wiggas as children, whose wigga-ness was lifelong, leading to extreme depression and depersonalization when they tried to live as white people?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Half my parents were women; this transgender thing could get an awful lot easier for me.
I would venture whole heartedly that if someone attempted to do a case study that they would find myriad cases. Whether or not such an attempt has been made is unknown to me, but I'm a googlin'
Is the x chromosome dominant?
You don't think there is a bit of pressure for him to do so?
I don't really understand what you mean here. The only real difference that isn't sociological is hair type and melanin count.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCXdc22t_C8
I'm saying that I don't want to discuss people who feel that they're race is a hindrance because of historical and sociological prejudice; rather, I want to discuss the possibility that someone can be born into one (constructed) race and truly identify themselves as belonging to a different (constructed) race.
I find it extremely questionable that relatively minor genetic differences that evolved long after the emergence of our species would be as inexorable from peoples' identities as would a chromosomal difference that affects development from the sixth week of fetal gestation.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Most likely. And he isn't really ambiguous enough to have that much of a choice in the matter. It's still the case, though.
I guess I'm just not understanding the constructed race part. Race is a phenotypical development as well as a sociological one. As Quid said, there aren't any real guidelines or boxes to check in order to qualify as one race or another, but they still exist.
Jane has epicanthoid folds.
Jane is Asian.
Those are two very, very different statements. Having eyes that are traditionally characterized as asian is a physiological statement; they can be corrected. If someone gets them removed, can they still be Asian -- if, like you said, a phenotype determines race.
Ethnicity really isn't a race. I was disappointed.
Though there are people who think they're half-animal and stuff. I think it becomes a mental sickness, even in cases of transgender there are those who have a genuine need to be something they weren't externally born as, and there are people who are just fucked up and use it to externalize something else in their lives.
I've actually known people who were gay and blamed their gender, got the sex change so they could be with the appropriate partner and have it last about four months before they started dating their (new) same sex.
Long prior to the evolution of the human species it would have been necessary for sexual organisms to identify their own sex and the sexes of others in order to choose mating partners. Consequently, whether you believe that there is the functional equivalent of a sex 'organ' somewhere in the brain or if you believe that transgenderism is a reversal of one's ability to identify self vs. other, there appears to be an instinctive ability inherent to every mammal to compare its own sex to the sexes of those around them.
This is not gender essentialism. Gender essentialism states that certain gender roles such as submissiveness or dominance are essential components of being a certain sex. There is a significant difference between saying "I am male" and saying "Masculinity is [insert characteristics here]" and further saying "I am male therefore I demonstrate masculine characteristics."
To contrast, the traits we know as race serve comparatively very little biological purpose. Melanin, epicanthic folds, malaria resistance, etc. are latecomers to the evolutionary development of our species. They emerged sometime within the last two hundred thousand years (as opposed to two billion) as minor anatomical adaptions to environmental pressures. They are not categorical, or if they are, such categories are entirely coincidental. Comparing them to sex is based entirely on a spurious sociopolitical analogy: since both sex and race have been used to identify victims of political oppression, then there is a temptation to take any social problem that applies to one set of characteristics and apply it to the other even when there's no connection to the two.
If there is a deep, biological, evolutionary need to identify as black even if one is white, is there also one to identify as Irish? Jewish? Polish? Kurdish? Roma? Could a child wake up in the Amazon basin and think, "I think the real me has curly red hair and light skin?" Is it conceivable that they would feel deeply disconnected from themselves without curly red hair or light skin? Conceivable, perhaps, but also absurd.
A far more reasonable hypothesis is that the described phenomenon of a black woman bleaching her skin to feel beautiful is responding to a standard of beauty that values light skin and stereotypically white features.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Multiple phenotypes determine race. Changing one may result in a more ambiguous ethnicity or it may not.
So, it depends.
Personal anecdote: my polish girlfriend often says that I do stuff as because I'm Irish, and I often can't fathom the stuff her Polish family does.
Is it really that absurd? If we identify ourselves, it is often because our identity is given to us. Truth does not necessitate permanent objective presence. For instance, there can be a lack in the Amazonian child which is not filled until they interact with a person of Irish descent and they go "this person acts and thinks the way that I do!" and then finds out that lots of Irish people act this way.
Really! This surprises me. Like, intensely.
I had assumed the essentials of sexuality were sex I think I am and sex I am attracted to, and that the comparatives were generated externally. Hmm!
Sexual orientation is often constant across sexual reassignment.
In other words, it is not uncommon for a heterosexual man to undergo sexual reassignment and become a heterosexual woman. I don't remember what proportion of cases this occurs in, but it's a sizable minority.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Wow, that's pretty fascinating! Let me know if you ever find the data/reports.
Isn't this essentially asking, "What is the difference between a role and an identity?" If I act like a duck, does that make me a duck?
I don't think it necessarily follows that it does.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Here's one. It's a small study, 20 people. 6 reported their preferred gender changing after reassignment:
Daskalos, C. (1998). Changes in the sexual orientation of six heterosexual male-to-female transsexuals. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 27, 605-614.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'd formulate it under the question of existential alignment vs. categorical alignment. I would posit that as a categorical human being I can exist as a man or woman or asian or latino, but I cannot exist -- it is outside my possible limits -- to exist as a duck, no matter how close in the logical space of identification I stand to duckhood.