Question

I want to preface this by saying that we have a zero tolerance policy for transphobia. Your comment will be removed and you will be banned if you spout transphobia here. Our existence is not up for debate.

That said, how do you differentiate being transgender and being trans racial?

I'm curious how to answer this question in a good faith debate with someone. Emotionally I know that they're not the same and that one is wrong and the other is not wrong, but I'm unsure as to why that is and am curious if anyone else has given any thought about it.

48 comments

I don't understand the question - race and gender are fundamentally different concepts.

25
- Absolutely. I guess I can see how someone might make a bad faith argument about "born X transition to Z is fine for gender, but a white person can't identify and transition to Afro-American? ThEy'Re BoTh GeNeTiCs!"
  
  I was trying to think of a good car analogy, but it wasn't coming to me.
  I guess the idea is that if you can change your gender identity, why not your racial identity, but to me that's absolutely absurd.
  
  Edit: besides gender is a pretty broad spectrum even ignoring the topic of transitioning.
  
  12
  
  Race is an overloaded term like sex/gender used to be. Are they talking about phenotypes? Genetic ancestry? Family ancestry (including adoption and found family)? Culture? Nationality?
  
  If people are arguing they're culturally one thing, but people respond "but genetics", that sounds incredibly similar to " you're not that gender because genetics!". I can't claim to be genotypically female, but I am a woman, so perhaps there's room for something similar regarding race. I'd have to ask people who identify as transracial though.
  
  6
I'm not trans so my opinion may be different on this, but I don't think anyone asking you this is participating in good faith debate.

23
- I have had people IRL who just don't know better and ask questions about this, not knowing much about either topic and I can see why they might superficially think they could be similar.
  
  In particular I had a white liberal friend ask about Rachel Dolezal's experience and how that compares to a transgender experience.
  
  What helped clarify things was to examine where Dolezal's transracial feelings came from:
  
  Dolezal was born at home in 1977, “on the side of the mountain” in rural Montana, to a pair of white Christian fundamentalists called Larry and Ruthanne; they entered “Jesus Christ” on her birth certificate as the only other witness to her birth. From a young age, Dolezal and her older brother Joshua were put to work on the family homestead, weeding vegetables, foraging for berries and hunting elk; in full-length homemade dresses and dog hair sweaters, she “looked like something out of Little House On The Prairie”. Dirt poor and uneducated, her parents lived by the Bible, spoke in tongues and beat her.
  
  “I felt like I was constantly having to atone for some unknown thing. Larry and Ruthanne would say I was possessed and exorcise my demons, because I was very creative and that was seen as sensual, which was of the devil. It seems like everything that came naturally, instinctively to me was wrong. That was literally beaten into us. I had to redeem myself,” she says with a light, mirthless laugh, “from being me. And I never felt good enough to be saved.”
  
  Blond and freckled, “like Pippi Longstocking”, she recalls choosing brown crayons to draw pictures of herself with dark skin and curly hair, like the Bantu women she saw in National Geographic. She would hide in the garden, smear herself in mud, and fantasise that she had been kidnapped from Africa. What she describes as a profound sense of not belonging followed her to school, where the other children wore trainers and had Doritos in their packed lunches, not elk tongue sandwiches. She did everything she could to fit in, picking huckleberries to earn money to buy Nikes, “but I knew I wasn’t one of them. I was always on the fringe.” The only person who really understood her life was Joshua, but he was the favoured child, the son, and her relationship with her brother grew increasingly uneasy.
  
  source
  
  I walked my friend through the story of Dolezal's formation of an African identity as a form of fantasy escapism while living under extremely brutal and abusive conditions, and how this kind of transracial identity seems to have more to do with her psychology and the need for that identity as a coping mechanism than something truly innate or biological. It at least seems like a plausible explanation for where her transracial identity comes from.
  
  Furthermore, you can point out that transracial identities are not a common cross-cultural phenomenon, and scientists have not found a physical basis for anything like a transracial identity, and even further, race itself is not biologically real, so it's unclear what it would mean for someone to have an innate sense of race.
  
  Meanwhile, transgender people have existed throughout human history and across cultures, and scientists acknowledge they are a natural part of human variation, with physical evidence of correlated genetic markers and autopsies of brains that have found consistent differences in trans brains. Furthermore, the current evidence is that gender identity is a biologically real thing, and not able to be altered by psychological and social influences (so you can take someone like Dolezal and make them a different race, but you can't change her gender identity; one is biological, the other isn't).
  
  My friend seemed satisfied with this kind of answer because it clearly delineates why transracial identities are not like transgender identities, and there just wasn't much left to discuss at that point. She just hadn't ever considered it and didn't know much about either topic.
  
  That said, online it is clear that people who want to debate transgender folks with topics like transracial are usually not acting in good faith, so I don't want to dismiss your intuition - I just wanted to offer my experiences with a person IRL who was well-meaning but by coincidence did ask about transracial identities.
  
  14
  
  It may be worth pinging OP or posting this as a top level comment. This is very well thought out.
  
  3
  
  @cowboycrustation@lemmy.blahaj.zone hoping you see this comment ^
  
  1
Transracial is only brought up by racists who try to deny transgender rights. I personally wouldn’t entertain that topic of conversation because it’s a waste of energy.

15
Race is, like gender, a social construct. That said, race isn't typically something it is normal to consciously perform, the way gender is. I never do anything to make sure people know what race I prefer to be regarded as, but I dress and act my preferred gender more often than not.

Being transracial (to me) seems therefore necessarily ideological, and living one's life according to the tenets of a racial ideology seems like something only terrible people do.

12
- I think this is the actual answer- one is performed by the actor and one is assumed by the audience. Culture isn’t race, so eating soul food or reading James Baldwin is not performing a race.
  
  2
  
  I think both being social constructs of social animals, there is probably same shared neurology or biology, or psychology in our actions around our gender, culture and race.
  
  However, as a construct, we don’t deem a white person who grows up in black culture to be black. We don’t consider a tomboy, who climbs trees with boys to be a boy (despite the name).
  
  We know that people change their accents and language subconsciously around different subcultures, like code switching.
  
  From a biological standpoint, we don’t really understand the purpose of being trans or gay. There are theories about nurturing and village raises a child etc. However, we know that transition gives better lives to trans people, similarly, we know gay people don’t respond well to conversion therapy. For someone like Rachel, it seems to be a fantasy and the general thinking around that is enabling it feeds into the fantasy and encourages unhealthy thought processes, rather than the opposite in transition for trans people. However, I’m. It sure that psychologists or psychiatrists would agree, or if that’s just pop psychology.
  
  That doesn’t make her beliefs invalid. However, they are not common enough to have a recognised course of action. In the end, as it’s all a construct, can’t we just let her be who she wants to be if it’s not hurting anyone and we don’t know any better? I’d agree that those who are using her for comparison aren’t doing so in good faith.
  
  1
I feel like there's a point to be made about the historical use of the term transracial, which described the experiences of people who were adopted into families of a different race than oneself as a child. In these cases, even though there may be superficial differences present, the culture the person was raised into is that of the adoptive family, and as a result it's what they tend to identify with based on lived experience.

I think there's a difference between idolizing a different race or its culture thereof, and having formative experiences as a member of that community, even if there were indicators that marked you as an "other" both to those within and without. I don't know if it's really worthwhile to tell people how they can and can't feel about their identity in this way, but there are definitely nuances that make racial identity experiences distinct from gender identity experiences.

9
Race is external, it’s something imposed on you, while gender is internal

7
- My experience of gender is not purely internal
  
  8
  
  The internal component is probably the most important, but yes, there is a social element. We tend to use the internal component to justify changes in the social component (like telling people to use the right pronouns).
  
  2
  
  Mine isn’t either. I was talking about where it gets its definition. My own gender is defined by me, it’s something I’m working out internally with myself. The experience is both internal and external, but the knowledge of what I want or what I am comes from within.
  
  1
- Isn't gender both external and imposed on you at the same time though?
  
  5
  
  There are expectations imposed on you, but ultimately what defines your gender is internal. Race was invented by European courts to justify the slave trade.
  
  7
I'm gonna try and level the same benefit of the doubt that I wish people would give us: this would be a matter between a patient, their community, and their health providers, and if transition would in fact improve someone's quality of life to the extent that gender transition does, I wouldn't oppose it. This is the same conclusion I came to about transabled identities once I thought about it for a while.

I'm skeptical of it in concept, but it's not really my place to cast judgement as someone not familiar with the experience (also white) and I'm sure someone willing to come out as transracial is going to hear a lot of arguments against their existence already. they probably wouldn't need one more from me.

Tbh, I'd honestly just be really interested to talk to them about it to the extent they'd be willing. I haven't heard from anyone I can trust is being earnest and genuine about it but I won't assume they can't possibly be out there. I can't think of a source of dysphoria for transracial people that wouldn't be steeped in false racial hierarchies dreamed up by white people, but just maaaayyyyybe someone out there has a different experience. No way to know without hearing from em directly I guess is my point.

5
the only people who care about race are racists, it literally does not matter what race you are (if you insist it does because society treats different races differently, then that's a racist sentiment that you should not hold), it does not affect your life as a person, except in ways imposed by racists.

gender is something that will affect your life as a person no matter what, sure there are also societally imposed notions about gender that on a surface level could be compared to race, but they function very different on a fundamental level.

think about it this way, if we lived in a society with no racism or sexism then what color your skin is would not have a significant impact on your life, where as the gender you have would have a significant impact on your life.

edit: i want to clear up some confusion, our society is fundamentally built on racist ideals, im not trying to erase that or suggest that it isnt a reality anymore, or that we, as a society, can just stop being racist, that isnt how this works of course.

im not trying to say that you should not care about being oppressed by racists, or that your life isnt affected by people holding racist ideals, only that it shouldnt be this way. this is idealistic and not the reality we live in, but the reality i want to live in.

instead of saying "it literally does not matter what race you are (if you insist it does because society treats different races differently, then that's a racist sentiment that you should not hold)" it would be more accurate for me to have said that "saying racism matters because racist say it matters is stupid".

this is more in line with the intent i wanted to convey to the reader, however i can see how my original statement could be interpreted very different than i intended. thanks everybody for helping me state my argument more effectively

4
- if you insist it does because society treats different races differently, then that's a racist sentiment that you should not hold
  
  Is it racist to acknowledge my white privilege?
  
  5
  
  I'm sure it's possible to be racist about it, but I think your actions are up to you. I don't know you.
  
  my point was you have to choose to engage in racism for it to be a thing, it doesn't exist if we don't let it, unlike gender.
  
  1
- hm I dunno, if someone wants to change the color of their skin, or the shape of their eyes, or their culture etc, I dont see a problem with that at all
  
  2
  
  I'm not saying you can't do that if you want to, body modding should be the norm not the exception like it is currently. people should be able to look how they want.
  
  1
huh why is one wrong and the other not? :p

4
Can you clarify what you mean by trans-racial and transgender?

I think it would help if you wanted to compare the two by first describing what you think they are.

4
Racial identity seems to be heavily tied to culture from what I gather from people, so I assume transracial means changing what culture you identify with.

Immigrants that culturally assimilate are an interesting case to look at. Suppose I, a white American, moved to China and assimilated there. Would you call me white? American? Chinese? If "race" means phenotypical characteristics, then we shouldn't care about race and "transracial" is stupid, but if it means like your culture, then it is worth caring about and "transracial" seems more understandable. I don't know what definition people use in practice though, probably a mix of both (because things can never be simple). A difference from gender is that culture isn't a purely internal thing, you kind of have to be a part of it IRL.

I don't have good language for this, all the terms are overloaded and confusing. It feels kinda like talking about gender/sex without having distinct words for them. Without distinction, we blend conceptually different things and then get confused when we mix the concepts in edge cases.

4
Well for one, it's all up to chance whether I was born with a dick or a pussy. I never coulda been born white

3
Can certain aspects of what constitutes ‘race’ be performative? I.e. are their certain clothes, behaviours, voice characteristics, words, body movements that make someone a particular race?

Or is race physically defined?

If it’s the former I can see a case for transracialism.

If it’s the latter it’s more difficult for me to see it being possible.

3
Does someone being either really matter?

3

You've viewed 48 comments.