Dolezal and Jenner

[Faramond]

Why is Dolezal criticized by most liberal writers while Jenner is celebrated? Why is a person allowed to define his or her own gender regardless of biology and birth circumstance, but not allowed to define his or her own race regardless of biology and birth circumstances? Here are two articles that attempt to answer this question.

identity and authenticity

There is no comparison

I don't think they really answer the question. Some quotes and my responses follow.

“People who are transgender do not lie about their gender identity. Instead they acknowledge that the gender prescribed to them at birth does not match how they feel,” writer and gay rights advocate Danielle Moodie-Mills told me via e-mail. “Rachel Dolezal on the other hand is a white woman who lied about being black in order to elevate her professional standing as an Africana professor and activist.”

This argument assumes its own conclusion. Why is it a lie that Dolezal is black? Because she wasn't born that way? Then why is it not a lie that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman? If the answer is because that is what she feels herself to be, then why is this not a good enough reason for Dolezal, who feels herself to be black?

The really strange part is that if you want to use the way someone is born to criticize someone's transition its far easier to use this to criticize Jenner and less easy to use it to criticize Dolezal. Racial classifications have no real biological basis but gender classifications have a very strong biological basis. It's really strange to take the one that is a cultural construct and make that the one that is immutable at birth.

The fundamental difference between Dolezal’s actions and trans people’s is that her decision to identify as black was an active choice, whereas transgender people’s decision to transition is almost always involuntary.

This doesn't make any sense. A feeling of being the wrong gender may well be involuntary, but the decision to transition has to be an active choice. Or else Jenner would have transitioned long ago, right? -- as soon as he was aware of feeling female -- before the Olympics, even. Logically the transition is a choice, and the feeling -- well, that may or may not be involuntary. How does the author know that Dolezal has a choice in feeling black or not?

Dolezal made up stories about her life that served her well in bolstering her black bona fides.

A transgender person has never told lies to cover up his or her gender at birth? When this happens, who is blamed? Not the transgender person, not by 'enlightened' writers. Society is blamed for making the lies necessary. Maybe if people were less bigoted about transracial people Dolezal wouldn't have had to tell lies?

The people comparing Dolezal to trans people are depicting our actions as rooted in the same deceptions as hers: her apparent use of skin-darkening agents and products to change the texture of her hair are, implicitly or explicitly, likened to what “men” – to use a trans woman’s example – doing what we do to “deceive” people into thinking we are women.

Or maybe the comparison is to ask why Dolezal's actions are depicted as a deception.

Trans people transition in order to be the gender we feel inside

And maybe transracial people transition in order to be the race they feel inside. What I see here is that Dolezal is denied the right to her feelings of identity that transgender persons are allowed. There is an arbitrary judgement being made by these writers.

EDIT: Thread title changed by by Voronwë after I changed it

[yovargas]

Thinking about this topic hurts my brain. I can't handle it all anymore.

(Funny enough, years ago South Park had an episode with almost this exact same story. One of the kid's teachers gets a sex change. Upon learning that it's okay to get surgery to become "how you truly feel inside", the Jewish kid gets surgery to look more black. Much like the real life incidents, it was a story that left unable to decide how I felt about any of it and kinda just made me wanna give up trying.)

[Primula Baggins]

Maybe out trans people are a different population than not-out trans people, but among those who are out and celebrities, they certainly aren't trying to pretend that they were born with the gender identity they're living out. They don't dress and behave as a member of that gender as a disguise or a deception; they do it because they're certain that it expresses who they really are.

Is "transracial people" a thing?* Are there a lot of people assuming a new racial identity for psychological reasons, because they feel inwardly compelled to do so? I haven't heard of it before, and I edited an enormous explanatory manual on the DSM-5 last year—the current American Psychological Association list of psychological diagnoses and the detailed criteria for determining them. It doesn't make me a psychiatrist, but it means I read it closely from cover to cover.

*I mean in the same sense as "transgender." "Transracial" has other meanings.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I've never heard of a transgender person who lied about who their parents were.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

[Faramond]

Dr. V's Magical Putter

The above link is to a rather infamous story that ran on Grantland. There are links at the top of the story that go into the history of the piece and the problems with it.

Nevertheless, the story itself is accurate. The transgender person at the center of that story told many lies. I would guess that being in the closet usually leads to lies, one way or the other.

And the accepted progressive response was that these lies don't change the legitimacy of what a transgender person feels, or make them 'inauthentic'. The response to the piece I linked was that it was intrusive and awful and never should have been written and published. In contrast, anything Dolezal has done or said seems to be fair game to paint her as inauthentic, a psycho, unstable. It's just hypocrisy, based on some arbitrary standard.


1. Just because you've never heard of something doesn't mean it isn't real. There was a time when most people hadn't heard of transgender, when it was outlandish and unreal. Maybe there are more people who identify as a different race out there but are too afraid to say anything exactly because of this aggressive response. And guess what -- now you have heard of it. It is really fascinating to me how progressives are abandoning their own logic that they use for transgender persons when it comes to judging Dolezal.

2. Of course there is a very good reason why a 'closeted' person who identified as a different race might have to lie about her parents where a 'closeted' person who identified as a different gender would not. It's sort of obvious, isn't it? I'm sure that a person who identified as a different race would never have to lie about what gender they were born with -- and what exactly would that prove?

[yovargas]

I would guess that being in the closet usually leads to lies, one way or the other.

Yup.

[Primula Baggins]

Please don't patronize me, Faramond. Of course the fact that I haven't heard of something doesn't mean it's not real. I was talking about the APA. They evidently haven't heard of it. And they certainly have known about transgender for a long, long time.

You seem to be arguing that the two situations are exactly equivalent and that liberals must respond in exactly the same way to both, or we're hypocrites. I can only say that I disagree, but also that you're welcome to your opinion.

Edited to reduce unintended snarky tone

[tinwë]

I do have to wonder, is this thread an attempt to discuss the very real and legitimate issues surrounding this story, or is it merely an attempt to paint progressives as hypocrites?

I don’t know if “transracial” is a thing in the same way that transgender is, at least not in terms of there being any sort of popular cultural movement associated with it. I have known people in my personal life who have closely self-identified with the cultural norms of a race or ethnicity that was not their own, but as far as I know none of them ever expressed the belief that they were in fact a different race.

Something that is very much in the popular discourse these days is the issue of cultural appropriation, and I have to guess that is part of what is driving the discrepancy in the reactions to Dolezal and Jenner. I confess that I do not understand much of the rationale behind the concept of cultural appropriation (isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery, after all?), but I know that part of it is due to the history of racism in this country. A large part of “black identity” is inextricably linked to a past of discrimination, oppression and outright brutality, as well as contemporary issues like racial profiling, assumption of guilt, driving while black, etc. The presumption is that a white person cannot be black because they cannot have lived with this unique combination of historical and current life experiences.

There are similarities between race and gender when it comes to discrimination and oppression, of course, but transgenderism and transracialism involve different sets of identity issues and the belief seems to be that gender identity issues are accessible to someone of either gender, while race identity issues are not likewise.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

tinwë, the issue of cultural appropriation is one that I have had some occasion to think about, given the time and effort that Beth and I have spent studying and performing West African music and love and respect that we have for that culture. We have encountered some African-Americans who are resentful of white people playing African music, and feel that it is there own province. We have not, however, ever encountered any Africans that were anything other than flattered and overjoyed that anyone would show love and respect for their culture.

Interestingly, when Mamady Keita first met Beth, and invited her to come to stay with him at his house in Brussels (back when he still lived in Belgium) and further her studies in a more advanced manner, he told her that he felt that she was an African in a white woman's body. By that he meant that despite the fact that she had not grown up inside of his culture, the way that she thought about things was somehow very similar to the way that his people looked at things. She took that has a very large compliment. However, it never occurred to her, and never would have occurred to her, to put herself across as being black. The idea would be a complete anathema to her, and to me as well.

I would guess that being in the closet usually leads to lies, one way or the other.

While that is true, I'm not sure what the relevance of it is to Dolezal's situation. She certainly is not in the closet in the way that a gay person who fears to come out because of the discrimination and scorn that LGBTQ people have tended to face. On the contrary, she seems to revel in the assertion that she has suffered discrimination as a black person. On the other hand, the only concrete example of her asserting a claim of racial discrimination is when she sued Howard University for discriminating against her as a white person, claiming that she was treated worse than African-American students (a suit that she eventually dismissed and was forced to pay Howard's costs of fighting it). Yet now she denies that she ever made such allegations (despite the fact that they are part of the public record) and goes so far as to say that she believes that "reverse discrimination" (e.g., discrimination against white people) is impossible. So it is hard for me to feel much sympathy for her.

I do have to wonder, is this thread an attempt to discuss the very real and legitimate issues surrounding this story, or is it merely an attempt to paint progressives as hypocrites?

I think it is fair to wonder that, but perhaps the answer is that it is some of both? Certainly the very real and legitimate issues surrounding this story are worth discussing, and I appreciate the opportunity to do so. On the other hand, this forum is (as has been well documented in the past) strongly dominated by progressives and there has been plenty of criticism of conservatives, some valid and some less so (which I am probably as guilty of as anyone, at time). A little balance isn't going to hurt anyone.

[axordil]

The more that I learn of Dolezal's upbringing--and of how the skeezoids responsible for that upbringing have been instrumental in releasing information about her, and why--the more inclined I am to let her define herself however the hell she wants.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfem ... rents.html

[Lalaith]

I read that article today. REL made the comment on the page we both saw it on that the article was full of wild leaps and speculations, and I do agree with him. That being said, there's probably enough there to wonder what her life was like and to feel like it was probably rough. It sounds like abuse was present, so I have sympathy for the woman.

However, I think the thing that bothers me about this case is that Dolezal seems to have used this for her personal gain. I don't know. It's very late, and I should probably wait till the morning to type up something coherent. But this feels like she has taken advantage of people and lied. Like Prim said, this isn't even recognized as a legitimate thing.

[yovargas]

Are we only expected to accept transgenders because the DSM told us we should?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It's hard to be too concerned about Rachel Dolezal one way or the other, after what happened in Charleston last night.

[Primula Baggins]

[Frelga]

Nine people!

[River]

Sadly, yov, if there weren't some sort of medical/biological recognition for transgenderism it probably wouldn't get any serious recognition at all. In Western culture, that is. In other cultures, transgenderism is just a part of existence and has been for a very long time. The "lady boys" of parts of Asia and the "sworn virgins" of the Balkans are examples. In some societies, if you're a woman but feel you must be a man or the other way around there is a defined place for you, just as there is for the cis-gendered. And it's not "freak show on the talk show circuit" which is how Caitlyn Jenner's story is playing out. In my view, at least. I know, public figure, blah blah blah, but it seems like this is a very personal thing that really isn't up to the public to pass judgment on. Then again, there is good that can come from this for the trans community much as there was good that came for the homosexual community when various celebrities started coming out.

But this feels like she has taken advantage of people and lied. Like Prim said, this isn't even recognized as a legitimate thing.

Yeah, I think this hits the nail on the head with Donezal. She even made up stories about hate crimes against herself. It makes a mockery of people who actually went through what she claimed to go through and it reeks of attention-seeking. Sort of a bizarre twist on people who fake terminal illnesses for attention. That said, because so much of race is a cultural construct, I could see how someone with one skin tone could "feel" like they ought to have the other because they were adopted into a family of that other race (and the accompanying community). But that's not Donezal's story. I'm not sure what she was after. At this point, I think the best thing to do would be to ignore her.

[Faramond]

I'm not surprised at all that someone hijacked the thread by inserting the church murders into it. I am very disappointed, though. Of course that's more important than this story, but what does one thing have to do with the other? Do all other threads cease when something awful happens? If you want to honor those murdered people and lament what happened, at least have the respect for them to do it in a new thread, or one specifically set up for racist violence.

Just lock the thread, and finish what you started.

And then start a real thread for the church murders, for goodness sake.

[Frelga]

Hijacked?

[Jude]

If you feel this is a discussion worth having, why not just ask Voronwë to split off the posts related to the massacre, rather than just abandoning it?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I had, in fact, intended to come back and split off the posts about the Charleston racial shootings, after some reflection. However, I was unfortunately in a meeting (ironically with a person of color alleging claims of discrimination) and was not able to do so right away. I do, however, believe that the two issues are closely related, and I am puzzled as to why you believe they are not. In my view, they are two sides of the same coin, and together they help demonstrate how untrue the narrative that we are in a post-racial society is. On the one hand, whatever Rachel Dolezal's motivations are, there would be no reason for her or anyone to assert that they identified as a certain race in a post-racial society. And, of course, we would not be having someone attack a historic black church, killing its pastor and eight others and declaring that he was there "to shoot black people" in a post-racial society.

I do think it would be good to have a separate thread on the Charleston shootings, but at this point it would be very difficult to separate out the posts that have been made. And I certainly am not going to lock the thread, since it has generated a good and productive discussion.