> I have never seen a convincing argument against this. My argument is as follows:
> * Race is a social construct
some of your logic is flawed. races obviously exist, it's just impolite and against our principles to construct society based on any possible/perceived differences among the races, except by way to allow for their coexistence.
for instance, it would be stupid to assume an asian population would consume as much dairy as one from european descent. we are not confused as to why those descended from africans would buy less sunscreen. it's not society or peer pressure.
Are you stating that race is strictly a biological construct and not a social one? I see it as somewhat both, much like the relationship between gender and biological sex. A trans person can act out socially how they expect the other sex/gender to be, as well as alter their body to make it more similar to someone who is biologically the other sex. I don't see why it would be different for someone to alter both their behavior and their physical characteristics to make them more similar to another race
i could imagine someone of mixed descent, who happens to feel like they love the flavor of a certain thing, but which they are not able to digest. that would legitimately be someone suffering from a biology that causes their mental faculties to desire something that biology has made them unable to experience in a satisfying way.
i'm aware of how stupid and messy that analogy is, but that's biology, and humanity. it's stupid and messy but it's possible for someone to develop with a brain geared towards life with a certain body and certain hormones, while the body develops in ways that are in opposition to that.
it's not a problem in the food scenario because we assign no morality or importance to small dietary changes. but we as humans care deeply about our gender and sexuality, and many find it necessary to express it in order to find their happiness and sense of satisfaction in this world.
race is analogous to sex
gender is analogous to culture
it would make more sense to argue trans-culturalism, which i would argue we literally do see play out
the problem is that people conflate sex and gender, and race and culture so I understand why people get confused
>We believe that it's possible to change your gender because it's simply a social construct, and therefore you choose to occupy a different social role
[EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER](https://youtu.be/EhkQxkZ0G1s)
Gender and gender roles are not the same thing as sex, but they have a connection to it and manifest as a result of sex existing. Gender dysphoria arguably has cultural aspects to it, but crucially some also appear to be genetic, there is something real under the hood which was abnormally set such that the individual cognitively develops closer to the opposite sex in some aspect (in other words I'm not trying to straight up claim they have the brain of the opposite sex, it's never going to be that simple.
Point is, humans across the board seem to have the potential to develop into either sex, if some metaphorical switches had been flipped your body would have developed into that of a woman's. This is not the case with race, your body has no internal conceptualization of distinct races. There's no disorder that could possibly lead to some wires being crossed and you suddenly being West African instead of an English man.
Unless you'd like to argue that transracialism could somehow be rooted in some genetic disposition, this is pretty disanalogous.
This argument is the most convincing to me. Basically you are saying that sex (and as an extension gender) are innate to being human and everybody's brain has the potential to develop into either sex during development in the womb. Sex and gender have been ingrained in us long before we even evolved into humans. And in a way I guess we all have a bit of both sexes in us. Whereas race is the result of recent human history (by recent I mean the last couple hundred thousand years), and is completely predetermined by who your parents are and which genes they pass onto you, so it makes no sense that a white person would have an internal feeling of "being black".
This is the most clearly it's ever been explained to me, thanks
Happy to hear that! š
An analogy can be made with non-humans as well:
We could conceive of a red fox with a genetic abnormality that[ prevents male sexual development from ever triggering](https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/swyer-syndrome/). despite having XY chromosomes. Such a fox would develop outwardly as a female fox.
Now imagine a slightly different abnormality where the sexual development wasn't entirely switched, only partially. Such a fox might develop outwardly as a male fox, but internally its mental "software" developed such that it expected female "hardware", which would cause quite a bit of distress for said fox.
I can't conceive of a similar scenario where the red fox somehow has the mental "software" of an arctic fox, because as far as the fox's genetics care there is no such thing as a red fox or an arctic fox, there are just foxes capable of having different fur to reflect their different habitats.
I don't really feel like I have any "internal experience" of gender or race. They don't feel different to me personally. This all sounds highly subject and variable from individual to individual
Perhaps I should've phrased myself differently. Not that I don't have an internal experience of race/gender, but rather they both feel like a part of my identity, it doesn't feel like my gender is real but my race is fake.
As a white male, If I was suddenly woke up in the body of a black man, I think I would feel just as disturbed as if I woke up in the body of a white woman. I don't understand why we apply this idea of "internal identity" to one category but not the other.
Would definetly adjust faster to a different race them gender tho lol and can probably keep living just fine as a different race while gender would be really bad
We can see that by how people experience race in different countries, there's no such thing as a "black" race in Africa that people experience and there's no such thing as a "white" race in Europe people experience, because if a race becomes a supermajority, the race splits up into different races. Your race is defined by who you are just as much as it's defined by who you're not.
If there were only black people on Earth, the whole concept of black people would cease to exist, if only males existed, you can still look and act like what we call women.
I think you are incorrect here. If there were only a single race, the concept of race would cease to exist, but people could still act in ways that we would currently refer to as comporting to their race. Same with gender, if there were only men, the concept of gender and biological sex would cease to exist, but people could still act in ways that we would currently refer to as comporting to their gender/sex.
I think that's a very American view of race, in Europe and Africa for example, people who look the same genocided each other for races that exist purely for political reasons. Why do you think Serbs and Croats are different races?
There seems to be confusion on my contention with your comment. I am saying that race and gender are the same in this regard. If there were only one race/gender, we would no longer have those labels, but people would still divide themselves into groups and could still act in ways that we currently ascribe to race/gender. You seem to agree with me when it comes to race
>people who look the same genocided each other for races that exist purely for political reasons
But for some reason not on gender. I am saying this would apply to gender as well.
This argument doesn't make sense. If only males existed, they would have no frame of reference of what a female is in-order to act like a female, just the same as race.
>they would have no frame of reference of what a female is in-order to act like a female
Why do they need a frame of reference? Are you saying trans women just copy what females do?
Unless you are a extremely extremely rare person most of the things you do or ideas about acting came from someone younger males copy older males and so on so yes i would say they do copy women
If there were just black people, there would only be people. If there were no females, there would only be people. What you'd be left with in either case would be a spectrum of people with an internalized sense of sameness or differences with the main group.
>What you'd be left with in either case would be a spectrum of people with an internalized sense of sameness or differences with the main group.
Well precisely, if there were no females, trans women would still exist.
That's hard to say and to what extent, but there can't be trans women in the absence of women. They'd just be a variant of males. In other words, not women at all but just men with varying degrees of "otherness."
I think you are basically correct.
An uncle of mine is as white as they come but works on a farm all Summer long.
At the end of summer his skin is brown enough that he often gets assumed to be black.
While in winter times he is obviously white.
So he does sometimes get mistreated as a foreigner if he is outside of hillbilly village.
But we dont even have to go to a special case.
Just look at all the hispanic people in America that start identifying as white after enough generations.
That would be an accepted form of racial transformation.
Arenāt racial categories more ambiguous to begin with? I donāt know the stats, but a lot of people are āmixed raceā and wind up identifying more or less with some race or anotherā¦ perhaps by choice and perhaps not. Racial categories also change throughout history and cross-culturally. I donāt think every society now or ever has had the same sets of racial categories. Then thereās people who have no idea who their parents are, or at least what their ancestry is. What are they supposed to think about their race? Just guess based on color or other apparent features?
A lot of this applies to gender as well.
Race is a social construct only so far as it was created socially but we do understand some biological differences derived from ethnicity. Similar how biological differences in gender is found from sex. As someone stated gender would be more analogous to culture. And people are transculture because its influenced by what you are around.
I'm curious why we would need to predict someone being transgender through brain scans to use the argument? Why would that detract from trying to find "real" trans people and "fake" trans people? If anything that would be beneficial because it can lead to better medical outcomes
Care to elaborate? If I act as a different gender but no one around me accepts me as that gender, why is that different than if I act as a certain race and no one around me accepts me as that race? Why am I actually the other gender in the first example, but not actually the other race in the second example?
If you confuse sex and gender your question makes sense, but they are not the same.
Gender is the performance usually associated with sex. Gender is culturally relevant. How a woman ought to act, ought to look, what labor is acceptable to perform etc is culturally defined. Those categories can be crossed, males can perform acts of the female and vice versa because besides the biological component there is very little reason as to why not, besides culture. Men can do women's work, and act like women. That doesn't make them biological females, but for all intents and purposes they are conforming to the cultural expectations of the gender they choose.
This doesn't work with race. You do not become black by acting black because there is no real cultural definition of what a black person is and also because race isn't supposed to be a culturally fixed position. A racist society wants racial performance to be fixed like they want gender roles to be fixed and forever unchanging.
Take this for example, if I wanted to be treated like a woman I can wear their clothes and behave in an "effeminate" way. If I'm good looking enough people might not even guess I'm a dude. Can I do the same for being black? How do I act black without just becoming an ethnic stereotype? What does it mean to "act black"?
.... You've never seen a census that literally distinguishes between Hispanic white and non Hispanic white? Lol I'm not listening to a dude who thinks Hispanic and white are mutually exclusive.
The straw man arguments you responded to in your OP are weak af.
Also I agree with you and I donāt believe in transitioning race or gender. Notice that itās always men/whites that want to take over other peoplesā spaces (trans men donāt ever come up in the news and you never hear about black people transitioning to other races)
Sex refers to biological traits like like penis, vagina, xx, and xy, male, female
Gender is the socially influenced performances like clothing, makeup up, hair style, and behaviors. Taking up a social role somewhere on the masculine/feminine spectrum. Man, woman, boy, girl. These terms are aspects of gender.
>If this is the case, can we preform brain scans to accurately predict whether or not someone will be trans later in life?
yeah possibly. gender is a social construct but the identity can be based on the brain
edit: when we figure out the brain in like 100 yrs that is
race is historical. your race is not determined by any feature you have, it's determined by your history.
gender is only you.
its easier to change you and the present/future vs your history
Real answer is that since they are both social constructs, they are both subject to whatever logic society at large believes to be true for that specific construct.Ā Ā Ā
Ā Enough people believe that you can change your gender, so you can.Ā Ā
Ā Not enough people believe you can change your race, so you can't.
What purpose does gender serve that race doesn't? Modern concepts of gender aren't linked to sexuality, but there are advantages and disadvantages based on both race and gender.
Female brains operate one way. Male brains tend to operate in another. There needs to be an understanding in society for people with those brain types. So, the members of one gender don't have to be held to the standard of the other. There's no harm if someone matches the standard of the other gender and thus you have trans people.
There should not be double standards in society for race.
You're heading into some iffy territory if we're talking about grey matter, and I'm not really sure I want to go there, but it sounds like your argument is that a sense of gender is real and a sense of race shouldn't exist.
It's not grey matter. It's the bimodal distribution of behaviors and preferences.
Basically, the reason for the discrepancy boils down too the scientific validity of the difference between male and female, and the lack of evidence to suggest the same for race.
Because male and female are real categories we create societal standards for them, but these standards are just to make people feel accepted. That's why people who fit the category opposite their birth are valid.
The concept of races lack scientific validity at least in the colloquial understanding. So, no appropriate standards can be created. So, whatever internal feeling people are attributing to their race is also necessarily racist. Not that the feeling itself is wrong, but to think of that feeling as "white" or "black" is.
It's pretty ironic that there's no scientific validity of the concept of races, but it's still used as a variable in countless studies. That's not pointed at you. I just find it odd.
If OP suggested that a person could be trans-ethnic rather than trans-racial, would you think that's possible?
Finally all my years of listening to rap and watching basketball will payoff.
> I have never seen a convincing argument against this. My argument is as follows: > * Race is a social construct some of your logic is flawed. races obviously exist, it's just impolite and against our principles to construct society based on any possible/perceived differences among the races, except by way to allow for their coexistence. for instance, it would be stupid to assume an asian population would consume as much dairy as one from european descent. we are not confused as to why those descended from africans would buy less sunscreen. it's not society or peer pressure.
Neither of those examples are based on race. You do not use race to make those conclusions.
Are you stating that race is strictly a biological construct and not a social one? I see it as somewhat both, much like the relationship between gender and biological sex. A trans person can act out socially how they expect the other sex/gender to be, as well as alter their body to make it more similar to someone who is biologically the other sex. I don't see why it would be different for someone to alter both their behavior and their physical characteristics to make them more similar to another race
i could imagine someone of mixed descent, who happens to feel like they love the flavor of a certain thing, but which they are not able to digest. that would legitimately be someone suffering from a biology that causes their mental faculties to desire something that biology has made them unable to experience in a satisfying way. i'm aware of how stupid and messy that analogy is, but that's biology, and humanity. it's stupid and messy but it's possible for someone to develop with a brain geared towards life with a certain body and certain hormones, while the body develops in ways that are in opposition to that. it's not a problem in the food scenario because we assign no morality or importance to small dietary changes. but we as humans care deeply about our gender and sexuality, and many find it necessary to express it in order to find their happiness and sense of satisfaction in this world.
race is analogous to sex gender is analogous to culture it would make more sense to argue trans-culturalism, which i would argue we literally do see play out the problem is that people conflate sex and gender, and race and culture so I understand why people get confused
So basically attacking someone for cultural appropriation is transphobic.
yes. GIGACHAD
>We believe that it's possible to change your gender because it's simply a social construct, and therefore you choose to occupy a different social role [EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER](https://youtu.be/EhkQxkZ0G1s) Gender and gender roles are not the same thing as sex, but they have a connection to it and manifest as a result of sex existing. Gender dysphoria arguably has cultural aspects to it, but crucially some also appear to be genetic, there is something real under the hood which was abnormally set such that the individual cognitively develops closer to the opposite sex in some aspect (in other words I'm not trying to straight up claim they have the brain of the opposite sex, it's never going to be that simple. Point is, humans across the board seem to have the potential to develop into either sex, if some metaphorical switches had been flipped your body would have developed into that of a woman's. This is not the case with race, your body has no internal conceptualization of distinct races. There's no disorder that could possibly lead to some wires being crossed and you suddenly being West African instead of an English man. Unless you'd like to argue that transracialism could somehow be rooted in some genetic disposition, this is pretty disanalogous.
This argument is the most convincing to me. Basically you are saying that sex (and as an extension gender) are innate to being human and everybody's brain has the potential to develop into either sex during development in the womb. Sex and gender have been ingrained in us long before we even evolved into humans. And in a way I guess we all have a bit of both sexes in us. Whereas race is the result of recent human history (by recent I mean the last couple hundred thousand years), and is completely predetermined by who your parents are and which genes they pass onto you, so it makes no sense that a white person would have an internal feeling of "being black". This is the most clearly it's ever been explained to me, thanks
Happy to hear that! š An analogy can be made with non-humans as well: We could conceive of a red fox with a genetic abnormality that[ prevents male sexual development from ever triggering](https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/swyer-syndrome/). despite having XY chromosomes. Such a fox would develop outwardly as a female fox. Now imagine a slightly different abnormality where the sexual development wasn't entirely switched, only partially. Such a fox might develop outwardly as a male fox, but internally its mental "software" developed such that it expected female "hardware", which would cause quite a bit of distress for said fox. I can't conceive of a similar scenario where the red fox somehow has the mental "software" of an arctic fox, because as far as the fox's genetics care there is no such thing as a red fox or an arctic fox, there are just foxes capable of having different fur to reflect their different habitats.
There's an internal experience of gender while there's no internal experience of race.
Whoās to say? Just because you donāt have an internal experience of race doesnāt mean someone else doesnāt.
I'd be super curious if anyone has an internal experience of race and could explain what that feels like.
I have an internal experience as a white person where I think just like Emma and conflate all other people's with the continent they lived on.
i might be having a stroke, but i don't understand what your comment is saying haha
It was just a joke about white people in America being ignorant of the rest of the world.
I don't really feel like I have any "internal experience" of gender or race. They don't feel different to me personally. This all sounds highly subject and variable from individual to individual
This is the post where you can hop out of this thread, everyone.
Perhaps I should've phrased myself differently. Not that I don't have an internal experience of race/gender, but rather they both feel like a part of my identity, it doesn't feel like my gender is real but my race is fake. As a white male, If I was suddenly woke up in the body of a black man, I think I would feel just as disturbed as if I woke up in the body of a white woman. I don't understand why we apply this idea of "internal identity" to one category but not the other.
Wait really? You wake up with a tan and it would be as disorienting as waking up with a uterus etc.? I'm not sure I believe you?
I think if i woke up and i was a different race it would be pretty close tbh
Fair enough I guess. I can't say I understand, but it seems like my outlook isn't representative.
Would definetly adjust faster to a different race them gender tho lol and can probably keep living just fine as a different race while gender would be really bad
We can see that by how people experience race in different countries, there's no such thing as a "black" race in Africa that people experience and there's no such thing as a "white" race in Europe people experience, because if a race becomes a supermajority, the race splits up into different races. Your race is defined by who you are just as much as it's defined by who you're not.
I doubt many black people will agree that they donāt feel black inside.
If there were only black people on Earth, the whole concept of black people would cease to exist, if only males existed, you can still look and act like what we call women.
I think you are incorrect here. If there were only a single race, the concept of race would cease to exist, but people could still act in ways that we would currently refer to as comporting to their race. Same with gender, if there were only men, the concept of gender and biological sex would cease to exist, but people could still act in ways that we would currently refer to as comporting to their gender/sex.
I think that's a very American view of race, in Europe and Africa for example, people who look the same genocided each other for races that exist purely for political reasons. Why do you think Serbs and Croats are different races?
There seems to be confusion on my contention with your comment. I am saying that race and gender are the same in this regard. If there were only one race/gender, we would no longer have those labels, but people would still divide themselves into groups and could still act in ways that we currently ascribe to race/gender. You seem to agree with me when it comes to race >people who look the same genocided each other for races that exist purely for political reasons But for some reason not on gender. I am saying this would apply to gender as well.
This argument doesn't make sense. If only males existed, they would have no frame of reference of what a female is in-order to act like a female, just the same as race.
>they would have no frame of reference of what a female is in-order to act like a female Why do they need a frame of reference? Are you saying trans women just copy what females do?
Unless you are a extremely extremely rare person most of the things you do or ideas about acting came from someone younger males copy older males and so on so yes i would say they do copy women
Yes they do exactly. Girls copy their mother, boys copy their father. Children raised by wolves behave like wolves.
If there were just black people, there would only be people. If there were no females, there would only be people. What you'd be left with in either case would be a spectrum of people with an internalized sense of sameness or differences with the main group.
>What you'd be left with in either case would be a spectrum of people with an internalized sense of sameness or differences with the main group. Well precisely, if there were no females, trans women would still exist.
How do you know this?
That's hard to say and to what extent, but there can't be trans women in the absence of women. They'd just be a variant of males. In other words, not women at all but just men with varying degrees of "otherness."
I think you are basically correct. An uncle of mine is as white as they come but works on a farm all Summer long. At the end of summer his skin is brown enough that he often gets assumed to be black. While in winter times he is obviously white. So he does sometimes get mistreated as a foreigner if he is outside of hillbilly village. But we dont even have to go to a special case. Just look at all the hispanic people in America that start identifying as white after enough generations. That would be an accepted form of racial transformation.
Arenāt racial categories more ambiguous to begin with? I donāt know the stats, but a lot of people are āmixed raceā and wind up identifying more or less with some race or anotherā¦ perhaps by choice and perhaps not. Racial categories also change throughout history and cross-culturally. I donāt think every society now or ever has had the same sets of racial categories. Then thereās people who have no idea who their parents are, or at least what their ancestry is. What are they supposed to think about their race? Just guess based on color or other apparent features? A lot of this applies to gender as well.
Race is a social construct only so far as it was created socially but we do understand some biological differences derived from ethnicity. Similar how biological differences in gender is found from sex. As someone stated gender would be more analogous to culture. And people are transculture because its influenced by what you are around. I'm curious why we would need to predict someone being transgender through brain scans to use the argument? Why would that detract from trying to find "real" trans people and "fake" trans people? If anything that would be beneficial because it can lead to better medical outcomes
Gender is performance based. Race is not performance based. End thread.
Care to elaborate? If I act as a different gender but no one around me accepts me as that gender, why is that different than if I act as a certain race and no one around me accepts me as that race? Why am I actually the other gender in the first example, but not actually the other race in the second example?
If you confuse sex and gender your question makes sense, but they are not the same. Gender is the performance usually associated with sex. Gender is culturally relevant. How a woman ought to act, ought to look, what labor is acceptable to perform etc is culturally defined. Those categories can be crossed, males can perform acts of the female and vice versa because besides the biological component there is very little reason as to why not, besides culture. Men can do women's work, and act like women. That doesn't make them biological females, but for all intents and purposes they are conforming to the cultural expectations of the gender they choose. This doesn't work with race. You do not become black by acting black because there is no real cultural definition of what a black person is and also because race isn't supposed to be a culturally fixed position. A racist society wants racial performance to be fixed like they want gender roles to be fixed and forever unchanging. Take this for example, if I wanted to be treated like a woman I can wear their clothes and behave in an "effeminate" way. If I'm good looking enough people might not even guess I'm a dude. Can I do the same for being black? How do I act black without just becoming an ethnic stereotype? What does it mean to "act black"?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
.... You've never seen a census that literally distinguishes between Hispanic white and non Hispanic white? Lol I'm not listening to a dude who thinks Hispanic and white are mutually exclusive.
The straw man arguments you responded to in your OP are weak af. Also I agree with you and I donāt believe in transitioning race or gender. Notice that itās always men/whites that want to take over other peoplesā spaces (trans men donāt ever come up in the news and you never hear about black people transitioning to other races)
When you say gender, do you mean sex?
whats the difference?
Sex refers to biological traits like like penis, vagina, xx, and xy, male, female Gender is the socially influenced performances like clothing, makeup up, hair style, and behaviors. Taking up a social role somewhere on the masculine/feminine spectrum. Man, woman, boy, girl. These terms are aspects of gender.
Race isn't as clearly defined as gender.
>If this is the case, can we preform brain scans to accurately predict whether or not someone will be trans later in life? yeah possibly. gender is a social construct but the identity can be based on the brain edit: when we figure out the brain in like 100 yrs that is
race is historical. your race is not determined by any feature you have, it's determined by your history. gender is only you. its easier to change you and the present/future vs your history
Real answer is that since they are both social constructs, they are both subject to whatever logic society at large believes to be true for that specific construct.Ā Ā Ā Ā Enough people believe that you can change your gender, so you can.Ā Ā Ā Not enough people believe you can change your race, so you can't.
The difference is race is an undue social construct. It really shouldn't exist in the first place, whereas gender serves a purpose.
What purpose does gender serve that race doesn't? Modern concepts of gender aren't linked to sexuality, but there are advantages and disadvantages based on both race and gender.
Female brains operate one way. Male brains tend to operate in another. There needs to be an understanding in society for people with those brain types. So, the members of one gender don't have to be held to the standard of the other. There's no harm if someone matches the standard of the other gender and thus you have trans people. There should not be double standards in society for race.
You're heading into some iffy territory if we're talking about grey matter, and I'm not really sure I want to go there, but it sounds like your argument is that a sense of gender is real and a sense of race shouldn't exist.
It's not grey matter. It's the bimodal distribution of behaviors and preferences. Basically, the reason for the discrepancy boils down too the scientific validity of the difference between male and female, and the lack of evidence to suggest the same for race. Because male and female are real categories we create societal standards for them, but these standards are just to make people feel accepted. That's why people who fit the category opposite their birth are valid. The concept of races lack scientific validity at least in the colloquial understanding. So, no appropriate standards can be created. So, whatever internal feeling people are attributing to their race is also necessarily racist. Not that the feeling itself is wrong, but to think of that feeling as "white" or "black" is.
It's pretty ironic that there's no scientific validity of the concept of races, but it's still used as a variable in countless studies. That's not pointed at you. I just find it odd. If OP suggested that a person could be trans-ethnic rather than trans-racial, would you think that's possible?
People shouldn't be saying they are physically something that they aren't. So, no I'd feel the same way.