Thora
Differently Ethical
I would imagine babies/young children are treated differently due to their perceived/assigned race.
Why do some feminists hate transgender people?
- Thread starter D'wards
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littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
No. One reason being because she herself doesn't respect it. She didn't say, 'oh, I was born white but I feel myself to be black, so I've blacked up'. No, she just lied about it. Why? Because she must have known that nobody would have taken her seriously.
And yes, I think there is a difference, one that is more comparable to sexual orientation - 'for as long as I can remember, I've been gay'. If Dolezal says 'for as Iong as I can remember, I've felt myself to be black', a. that doesn't mean anything, and b. she's lying.
Thora
Differently Ethical
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Not by their parents, and depending on where they grow up, not by anyone else either for quite some time. Many young children only become aware of race as a thing at an older age, while they are beginning to become aware of gender right from the start.
Agreed. So what the construct consists of does matter.
Do you think people have always taken transgendered people seriously? The point about her lying is not very significant.
bimble
floofy
I am interested in what it consists of, yeah. But thing is, if I met a cis man or cis woman who told me they believe that innate essential gender differences exist, men are like this women are like that etc, then I'd feel free to question them about what they mean, why they think that.
But I wouldn't feel it's ok to question a trans person about this though, because that would probably come across as a personal attack on them and their right to self define, which would not be my intention at all.
Thora
Differently Ethical
That's a very sweeping statement. I'm sure some children, especially in families with members of different perceived races, may well be treated differently from birth (I remember reading an article a while ago by a white mother about how differently she felt about her white children vs. her black child). Young babies are often in childcare where they may well be treated differently depending on their perceived race. Is a 6 or 12 month old baby in nursery aware they are a different race to other children or the carers? Are they aware they are of a particular gender? Does a black toddler growing up with a white mother and siblings feel they are black or white?
ETA: I also think babies and toddlers can experience racism just as they can experience sexism.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Fair enough. It seems to me that stella, for instance, is determined to find a scientific proof that she was born different, and so is jumping on any shred of evidence to show that. But she is all the proof she needs - if she has felt this to be the case from as long as she can remember, that's her evidence. The nature vs nurture debate is mostly outdated anyhow - it's always nurture of nature, and the two are normally impossible to separate in a satisfactory way.
That doesn't mean we have to also accept things such as Dolezal as equivalent, when they're clearly not.
I would be the same. And yet I would question Rachel Dolezal about her black identity. This is because there are certain assumptions about the Dolezal case that are safe to make. And that's that she is immitating being black and that immitation derives from stereotypes (albeit liberal, positive stereotypes) of blackness. I don't think you could make similar assumptions about transgendered people.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I think you're reaching, tbh. Gender is something that gets reinforced in subtle ways from the moment you're born. Race isn't.
It's also quite possible - and in many cases normal - to grow up not feeling any kind of racial identity at all.
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revol68
what, fucking what?
see that's just it, Greer is not the essentialist here, she is holding that man and woman are gender constructs based on socialisation from birth and as such surgery can't change a man into a woman, the argument that it could is in fact a form of medically augmented biological essentialism in so much as it's responses to issues with people not fitting within their imposed gender is to realign the body to map to the gender they more closely identify with.
This the valid point that gets lost among the accusations and shouting down. I mean I'm not a terf but I find it hard to celebrate 12 year olds being given hormone blockers as some sort of liberation, it's not it's a reinforcement of gender norms under a neo liberal ideology.
Thora
Differently Ethical
I don't know enough about how racial identity develops to say one way or the other. But lets say most children have an awareness of their "race" by 4. Most children have an awareness of their gender by 4. Personally I don't remember very much before then anyway, so that is "for as long as I can remember". I don't find it unbelievable that a person could feel they were a different race to their perceived race for as long as they could remember.
But you've just said "who cares what the construct is based on". So for you it shouldn't matter that the Dolezal case is not an equivalent. I pick the Dolezal case because it is a clear cut case of nurture not nature.
toggle
wobbly
which is generally associated with your race being considered the normal(as opposed to other) thing to be where you live.
now if we follow that analogy, are girls/women more gendered than men, because of the way society treats male as normal and women as other?
Of course race gets reinforced in subtle ways. And some not so subtle ways.
revol68
what, fucking what?
I don't think in many ways the comparison between trans race and trans gender holds, but the one vital area it does is that many of the left have moved from being gender critical to embracing it as personal affirmation, no longer a structural formation but a celebratory expression of some innate self. If you reduce gender to a subjective affirmation then why can't you do the same with race? The celebration of racial diversity and self affirming gender ends up only further cementing race and gender, it basically is a means of allowing the discourses enough to slack as to not break under their own weight.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
There is growing evidence that we are born with a propensity to look for certain things in certain kinds of ways. Often these are based on dualities - a morality with two categories 'right' and 'wrong', for instance, which we do appear to be primed to look for right from birth. Gender would fit this, and given the ubiquity of gender across human societies, it would be surprising if some kind of selection for looking for it hadn't happened.
The same does not apply at all to race.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
By parents from birth?
Sometimes yes. Absolutely.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Perhaps. But you're stretching - I would say mostly not. They're not equivalent kinds of thing.
Thora
Differently Ethical
I don't think the argument is about whether they are strictly equivalent - your claim was a young child cannot have an internal sense of their race.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Don't know. I don't think the analogy works, tbh.
Really? I'm actually quite astonished you are saying this.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
My argument would be a lot stronger than that. If a young child is unfortunate enough to be made aware of race as a thing at a very early age and treated differently for it, the most likely outcome will be a sense of internalised contradiction - this external thing says I'm different for this reason, but I don't feel that difference at all. That's one of the evils of racism - it fucks people up.
revol68
what, fucking what?
let's not be silly gender is much more insidious than race in how it is reinforced and imposed from birth, even at the height of slavery and the racism that justified it, it was much more an externally imposed matter, whereas gender is much more internalised. That's not to say there isn't internalised aspects to racial subjugation nor external impositions to gender but by in large gender is much less questioned, seen more as a natural expression of biological differences than a violently imposed ideology. I mean I've had arguments with women who've argued women don't like sport because of their biology, you'd have to go a long way these days to find say a Jewish person arguing the same and that's because largely racism as a biological ideology is dead in the water, a taboo in the sciences, whilst genderist shit still rides high, so much so that serious scientists will talk shit about gendered brains.
Surely this is the case. "Boys" clothes are gender neutral. But you wouldn't dress your boy in a skirt and blouse.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
If pushed, I would say that it is very likely that we are born with a propensity to look for something like gender. That is absolutely not the case with race.
The content of that gender identity is then a socially constructed thing.
bimble
floofy
I think this is the sad thing. If everyone is busy focussing on the rights of individuals to self define their identities (even if using regressive binary gender stereotypical ideas to do so) then those terms, which generations of feminists worked to deconstruct, are unintentionally being resurrected, entrenched, like a sort of collateral damage.
I'm not saying there are no differences... Again I raise the comparison in order to contrast.
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