Hello Empty Closets! I'm a straight man who recently had a guy friend become a she, and this, along with recent stories in the news, have led me to become curious about the foundations of gender. I was hoping I might find some insightful thoughts here. ---- My question starts with a story that I'm honestly tired of hearing about, but that also raises a lot of questions to me. Rachel Dolezal is a biologically white woman who strongly identifies with African-American culture and thus identifies as black. Her situation mirrors my perhaps limited understanding of transgender life: she is biologically different from a culture that is generally defined by the biological traits of those in it. But instead of sex, its race. Many of my African-American peers condemn her because they see what she's doing as unfair appropriation enabled by white privilege. Since she is not biologically black, she is innately separated from the unfortunate race issues that are a large part of being an African-American. Notable commentators in the media have also vocalized this opinion. Meanwhile, I have the impression that transgender people face a similar dilemma. A biological male who identifies as a woman must, to some extent, base that identity on something other than her male biology (e.g. gender roles). But women, like black people, are in many ways unfairly disadvantaged in American society. The parallel to this corollary is that a male-to-female transgender person supposedly cannot sympathize with some of the underlying experiences that unite most women (e.g. fear of rape, workplace discrimination, objectification, etc.), and that identifying as a woman without biologically being a woman is a slight against women at large. I am very conflicted on this issue, and I'd be very interested in hearing some insights that might resolve my conflict to some extent. What do you think? And if you are a transgendered person, how do you feel about this argument?
Well, I'm not transgendered, but I can see many differences between being transgender and transracial. Transgender people feel trapped in their biological sex, and therefore are discontent their entire lives. It's way deeper than just wanting to be the other gender. It's a proven mental thing. On the other hand, I think being "transracial" is a choice that really has no reason to exist. Why couldn't Rachel Dolezal just be a white person in favor of black rights? We have plenty of important straight allies in the LGBT+ community. It doesn't make sense to be transracial to me because all it is is culture, nothing as fundamental as gender. While some parallels can be drawn, I think it's unfair to compare the two.
Being transgender isn't based on gender roles. Trans people are usually uncomfortable with the biological sex of their bodies, and things like pronouns, and feel like they should be a different sex than the one they were born as. There's evidence that being transgender has biological/neurological causes. Also, trans women do face a lot of the same fears you listed for women, such as rape, objectification, and discrimination. Transgender women are especially vulnerable to violence and discrimination. I don't see how they are slighting cis women by identifying as a woman, it's not a choice, and it's not done to appropriate women's experiences or anything like that. I consider the Rachel Dolezal situation very different from trans people because to me it seems like she's lying about her race either for attention, to further her career, or because of an interest in the culture, whereas transgender people are born that way. As I mentioned earlier, there's scientific evidence supporting the existence of gender dysphoria (the medical term for it), whereas there's no evidence that someone could identify as another race.
Gender dysphoria or being trans seems to originate in some sort of birth defect that lead to a situation in which a person's brain is wired to be female or male while their body is of the opposite sex. This leads to the brain pretty much rejecting the body resulting in a a growing feeling of disconnect from your body caused by painful bursts of intense discomfort about your gender. The only way to solve this is to align your body and mind by transitioning. In other words, someone who is trans transitions because the alternative is living an empty life in which you feel lost and feel a constant sense of discomfort with your body that often becomes worse as time goes by. In comparison, Rachel decided for one reason or another to identify as black and created an elaborate story to support her desire which included lying about who her parents really were... as very few really understand what someone who is trans goes through it seemed like a good story to compare the situation of people who are transgender with Rachel's situation despite the fact that they really have nothing to do with each other. (Rachel's story is closer to someone lying about being a doctor so others would treat her differently...) One other thing to keep in mind is that all Rachel did was put on fake tan to become black... someone who is trans often goes through major operations and takes medication for the rest of their lives among other things to transition as well as having to cope with severe prejudice and discrimination and the risk of losing their family and friends. Taking all of this into consideration, imagine how much you would need to suffer to choose to go down such a path by choice... for many of us its either going through all of this or pretty much giving up on life...
I am not trans but I personally don't think being trans has to do with gender roles. You can be a guy and like to be submissive and wear dresses (and some trans men even do those things!). It's more about the brain psychology and dysphoria you feel within your body. Race isn't even comparable.
Being trans is for me a gut feeling. A gut feeling plus the accompanying symphony of dysphoria and dreams of future transition. Being biologically male doesn't mean I don't fear rape. Not at all if you get what I mean. If it would be a "slight against other women" for me to be a girl regardless of my body, then fuck 'em. It isn't though. Assumptions are tools to be weighed with care, lest you would offend someone. As Fallingdown said, race/ethnicity isn't comparable. I suggest you read up a bit before continuing your discussions. That might also benefit your friend a lot.
My understanding is that the best research today (as indicated by the AMA in advocating treating transsexualism as a medical condition, rather than a psychological one) indicates that the condition arises from brain structure differences. There are structural differences between male's brains and female's brains (for example, one is designed to process estrogen effectively, where the other designed to process testosterone effectively). And in virtually all species with male and female sexes, biologists have noted male individuals with female structured brains, and vice versa. In these cases, the individuals tend to conform to behavior patterns of the brain sex, rather than the genetic sex. To the best of my knowledge, there are not structural differences amongst people of different races. I'm not saying this isn't possible...just saying I've never heard of any such discoveries, and it sounds pretty far-fetched. Each human innately carries the potential to be either male or female; they do not innately carry the potential to be Caucasian, African-American, Asian, etc. So the notion that a person's racial identity should somehow be encoded incorrectly in the brain at birth just sounds...far-fetched.
