Edit for context:
My view is transracial isn’t valid and this person is trying to dogwhistle. I’ve already blocked this person, and now they’re going after my friend saying my friend is transphobic because they disagreed with them about transracial being a thing (they’re purposefully leaving the context out so my friend looks transphobic when what my friend really said was transgender is valid but transracial isn’t)
The correct response is to consider what the correct way to synthesize the positions is, and go with that. There’s nothing wrong with adapting your position to handle possible inconsistencies. The goal is not to win but to be the most correct.
Typically, the assumption is that this is an argument that transgender is invalid. Perhaps there’s another way of looking at it. Perhaps a way people aren’t ready for, which is why your opponent went in that direction.
Alternatively, it can be pointed out that this is changing the topic, because it technically is.
I genuinely don’t know enough about what people who claim to be trans racial are even saying and why they’re saying it to form an opinion on it. My gut feeling is that it isn’t valid and they’re bad actors, but my gut has been wrong before.
So if someone told me “trans racial is just as valid as trans gender” I’d either not respond or just say “I don’t know about that.” and leave it at that.
Gentle reminder that if you believe someone is a bad actor and using dog whistles there isn’t a point in responding to things like this because you aren’t going to change their mind.
No race, no gender. No problems.
Gender anarchism and race anarchism. People be just people. Social constructs shall not be a dividing reason, let everyone behave however the hell they want as long as they don’t hurt others and be happy.
Also US race concepts are kind of weird in general. I suppose the history of slavery and segregation did a number on people’s perception of race.
This is exactly why I think “transgender” does more harm than good and I’ll die on this hill. What’s the point? The people who are going to accept the way you express yourself aren’t going to care if it conforms to gender stereotypes, and the people who aren’t won’t suddenly change their minds if it does.
All it does is reinforce the very same stereotypes that gave you gender dysphoria in the first place. It’s saying that gender norms are valid, you just got assigned the wrong ones. Live your truth, express yourself how you want, alter your body however you want, but don’t validate oppressive stereotypes in the process.
Literally the only rational answer. Stop giving a fuck about what people look like unless you’re explicitly looking for someone to fuck
This reeks of, “I don’t see color,” which is bullshit racists say to justify ignoring the plights of people of color in the US.
We need to see color if we ever want to possibly attempt to correct the deep, systemic problems we have with racism.
Also US race concepts are kind of weird in general. I suppose the history of slavery and segregation did a number on people’s perception of race.
There is no “did” here, it’s ongoing.
I get your point, but you’re missing the point of what the person is saying. They said that if no one cared about gender or race transgenders or transrace wouldn’t be an issue, it would be seen similarly to people who dye their hair or undergo plastic surgery to change something they don’t like on themselves, i.e. cosmetic changes that society in general doesn’t give a crap.
If society treated race the same way we treat shoe sizes, i.e. they exist, we recognize them when it’s needed but understand that outside of picking a shoe you don’t care about it (there are no toilets for people who use size 6, or a special door that only people with size 7, and people certainly don’t require your shoe size in your CV and use that as a decision point as to whether they will hire you). IF we could get everyone to think like this, then we wouldn’t need to worry about the plights of any group because they would be in the past. That being said, this is not realistic because people are habit creatures, and if you grew up being taught to be racist and are never confronted about it you will keep those beliefs, that’s why it’s important to break stereotypes, that’s why affirmative actions are important, not because it helps the individual break through a societal barrier (although that’s important as well) but because they help society break from the preconceived notions that have engrained in most people’s minds through centuries of oppression.
The ideal future is one where gender or race doesn’t matter, but the road there goes through recognizing the plights that each gender and race has to face and adjust society to compensate for them so they can live “similar” lives and that on the long run society walks towards a more diverse and inclusive group. It’s easy to have a prejudice against someone different from your “normal”, which is why it’s important to break “normal” views and extremely important to normalize taboo behavior.
This is absurd talk. I don’t want people generalizing me for my race or gender, and I wouldnt do it to someone else either.
You must go around treating every minority as if they are a victim of something. I’m sure they greatly appreciate your refusal to see them as an individual.
This race/gender anarchism would help trans people as the general public would stop giving a shit how people choose to behave and what they are interested in.
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Do you mean there is slavery and segregation still going on on the us?
This wasn’t really the point I was making, but yes actually. Regardless of how you try to restrict your definitions in a pre-emptive act of goalpost-moving, slavery still exists in the US under the thirteenth amendment as a form of punishment, and our prisons are full of them.
And yes, segregated schools (and even things like “segregated proms” within supposedly-integrated schools) still exist.
The study found that minority students became more isolated and less exposed to whites within a school although districts were statistically more integrated.[44] Another 2013 study found that segregation measures increased over the previous 25 years due to changing demographics.[29] The study did not find an increase in racial balance. Racial unequality remained stable.
[…]
A 2013 study corroborated these findings, showing that the relationship between residential and school segregation became stronger between 2000 and 2010. In 2000, segregation of black people in schools was lower than in their neighborhoods; by 2010, the two patterns of segregation were “nearly identical”.[46]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_segregation_in_the_United_States#Segregation_since_the_1960s
And even still, they’re openly moving to bring it back more widely: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/02/us/louisiana-justice-department-desegregation-order
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/02/us/louisiana-justice-department-desegregation-order
That said, what I was referring to was the lingering effects that are very real, even if they are not immediately evident to an outside viewer. I could tell you’re not from here, because if you were, you’d understand what I’m talking about. Just because the letter of the law says something, does not mean anything about what things are actually like in practice. 400 years of chattel slavery, Jim Crow, etc. doesn’t just vanish overnight. Especially when not a single fucking thing is done to try to rectify or repair it.
“Shut up.”
The best way is asking: what’s your point? Is it that transgender shouldn’t be accepted or that transrace should?. And proceed from there to either defend transgenderism or criticize transracism accordingly.
First let me start by saying I strongly dislike the race therminology, but I’ll use it here for consistency, although normally I would call it ethnicity.
The difference between those lies in that gender is a social construct, and race is not. Race has some biological meaning, just like sex, people can’t change their sex (yet), they can’t change their race (yet).
Gender is a social construct, it’s things that have nothing to do with biology but that we as a society attribute in general to a specific sex. A similar concept for race would be culture, a person can be of the sex male but prefer to wear clothes usually associated with female sex, just like someone can be of the white ethnicity but prefer to hear music usually associated with black ethnicity. I wouldn’t call Eminem or Michael Jackson transrace, what would that even mean?
Does it really matter if someone is either
Depends if I have time and I want entertainment at that moment, I know they are trolling and don’t care and usually people just want to get me angry at them so I calmly responded to everything they say as it’s a real legitimate question, treat every question as if there truly caring about it. Most people will just back off after a bit because they can’t get me all angry and pissed off. It’s quite entertaining watching them get angry and wound up because I was trying to answer them honestly and nice way. Doesn’t always work but it’s just something I do I learned really pisses off those kinda people
Block them.
The best way to respond is to disregard them, block and move on. Transracial is an actual thing, but it refers to people of one race adopted by another. Transracial ala Dolezal is just a troll to attack trans people, no different from attack helicopters.
It’s not even a race, it’s usually a community with a different culture, so the entire term is invalid. And humans are one species with no races, despite this we keep the divisions that the less educated from history created.
transracial adoption doesn’t imply that the child’s race is being changed but that the adopting family is of a different race than them. it’s usually meant to highlight the way white parents adopt Black children to be used as slave labor.
we keep the divisions
who’s we? this is dangerous and is implying that the only reason racism keeps being an issue is because Black people refuse to move on. only we as whites have the privilege to ignore the racial caste system and pretend like nothing is going on
Don’t even know if I’d call that transracial, that’s just a person who is of one ethnicity but was raised in a different culture than one might expect for someone who looks like them. There’s no “transitioning” happening there.
Transracial doesn’t exist because “Race” in the context that they want to use it doesn’t exist.
Genetically there’s only one “race”; that’s the human race. If they want to identify as a different culture, it’s purely a cosmetic cultural thing, not biological or genetic. Whereas as being Transgender is biological. Therefore, you can safely tell people like Rachel Dolezal to fuck off and go back to fifth period science class.
Gender isn’t biological. You’re conflating with sex
Well trans people, if they medically transition, quite literally change their sex.
If they don’t, they’re still transitioning their gender. Exactly how much they decide to change themselves doesn’t matter. That’s the point of the term.
Trans people transition BOTH their sex and their gender. The term “transgender” is a broad umbrella term. But most people under that label do seek to physically change their bodies. You’re arguing semantics, I’m arguing the lived experience of living breathing human beings.
The it sounds like you should be arguing for different semantics. Ones that match the experience of living breathing human beings.
white people stop acting like we live in a post-racial society challenge!
also, being trans was never biological, that’s called bio-essentialism
Saying that race isn’t real is not the same as saying that we live in a post-racial society.
it is actually because how could racism exist without race? the only people who claim race isn’t real are white
If the earth isn’t flat, how can there be flat-earthers?
Race can be pseudo-scientific bullshit, and still have a bunch of racists around. The idea of race is, at its core, a racist idea.
I don’t really think I can come up with a more concise way of summarizing the idea than anthropologist Audrey Smedley did on the first result of the Google search “race social construct”
Race is a culturally structured systematic definition of a way of looking at perceiving and interpreting reality.
I would recommend you read something like “Feminism and ‘Race’” from Oxford Readings in Feminism or some of bell hooks’ work to understand the idea better.
extremely simple question for you, if bell hooks believed race isn’t real then why does she call herself Black? do you seriously believe she means that in a “race doesn’t exist” way? 🤦♀️
You do not need to believe race is a biological reality to acknowledge that the perception of others as you (+ your ancestors) being a member of a race has materially affected your identity
so I never said it’s a biological reality, just that it’s real because white supremacy is real. seems like we agree
“Race” was invented by racists. There was a lot of fake science here in Germany in the 30s to “prove” that not only “human races” exist, but even so that they have different worth.
So this is what I always still hear when someone is using the word - and commonly they are racists.
I do understand where you’re coming from, and I totally agree that there are a fucking lot of supremacist people and yes - if I had been a teenager in the 30s, people would have seen I’m blonde, blue-eyed and tall. So I would have that privilege and still it is a privilege in the modern world.
Prejudices about skin color exist, I absolutely agree. Racists exist, I agree. Just “race” - every time I hear that, it’s like something out of the Nazi textbooks my grandfather had to use at school.
OK, so at least you’re conscious that the word race makes you uncomfortable. and I’ll ask this in good faith, why do you think that is? maybe because acknowledging that your white phenotype, something you have no control over and could never change, gives you privilege over non-white people?
I promise you that the words you use or don’t use won’t make racism go away, confronting internalized racism will. and that’s what white privilege is, the opportunity for us to go our entire lives without ever having to acknowledge race still exists, white supremacy is commonplace, and we’re part of that system because of societal brainwashing that begins at birth and is lifelong unless we deconstruct said programming.
Uhh while gender is a social construct that’s existed in countless forms though out all of history.
Sex and transsexual are VERY much a biological thing.
You can’t just say trans isn’t biological. Transgendered isn’t, but gender isn’t biology.
Sex IS biology and transsexual IS biological.
You need to be specific if you want to get into actually defined scientific terminology.
“You are wrong. Gender and race are two different things. Transgender people have been around since time began, transracial was invented few years ago to appropriate and diminish transgender people’s experiences. it’s not transphobic to be against something that was recently invented to invalidate transgender people. ciao”
but tbf it seems like that person’s tryna start shit so I’d just block and report em
It’s nonsense because race is a social construct.
But so it’s gender, so this isn’t really a good argument is it?
white people, we learn one sociological term and run it into the ground. it doesn’t mean what you think it does.
“A social construct is an idea, category, or framework that gains meaning through collective agreement within a society”
The racial lines of division are arbitrary and different in each society. Therefore, a social construct.
Remember, it wasn’t THAT long ago that Italians weren’t considered white. Now they are.
Sounds like someone just looking to pick a fight. Disengage.
That said, I reckon as long as they’re not hurting anyone, people can be whatever they like. Mind your own business. It’s a slippery slope to start considering whether a fellow human is ‘valid’ or not.
Their argument indirectly hurts transgender people. It’s akin to when BLM (the movement, not the corrupt organization) was big and to counter it, conservatives parroted All Lives Matter. I’d say using the term transracial is arguably worse, because it’s all bullshit, while technically All Lives Matter is true, but it’s bad faith argument. I personally feel it’s the duty of rational people to fight against that sort of speak.
And you don’t engage with bad faith arguments. Just tell them to fuck off and grow a brain.
I’ll say fuck off without saying fuck off as to not get my shit removed, but bad faith arguments still need to be refuted so that ignorant people don’t only see something like that and believe it’s true. The amount of effort put into that only needs to be enough so that there exists a counter point.
I would say never disengage. We’ve all lost so much disengaging especially if the argument is difficult. It leaves the argument unchallenged and if you can’t answer it and you feel strongly about trans issues what did you think someone casually viewing it would think.
We need better arguments and we need honesty. If it’s a good argument, it’s a good argument denying it out of feels only weakens the entire thing.
Lemmy is filled with people who gave the right a red carpet treatment. Probably the last place we should ask questions about engagement to.
It’s like asking r/relationship about relationship advice. It’s a terrible idea
You can’t rationally debate someone out of a position they didn’t reach through rational consideration.
So you allow them to influence other people with their ideas?
It’s stuff like this why people in real life all share the same opinion on trans issues and other right wing issues. It’s this stuff that has allowed their arguments to spread. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what you were supposed to be doing. You gave them a red carpet and helped contribute to the spread of their propaganda by disengaging. Changing their opinion was not ever said as a goal. You need to challenge their opinion to show it is badly formed. If it isn’t then you need to evaluate yours.
So you allow them to influence other people with their ideas?
No, absolutely not. I run instances to give gender diverse folk safe spaces. I ban transphobes the instant they appear, I don’t debate them. Offline, I’m visible, active and proud. I am an volunteer at my local parkrun, I’ve spoken openly with people at my workplace, I’ve hosted a queer community radio show, I host a vodcast, and I used to be active in organising events for my local gender diverse community. Because what gets people to change their minds, is an emotional connection with the group they’re targeting. When they start to see us as people, just the same as them, then they start to make choices that aren’t harmful to us, and they start to wind back their own arguments.
Pushing back is incredibly important, but debating them isn’t effective. Like most people, when confronted with debate points in regards to a topic they hold on to for emotional reasons, they will shift goal posts, and only see the things that validate what they already believe, whilst ignoring the things that challenge it. When they get to the point where they’re ready to challenge their ideas (because their emotional position has shifted) then, lots of the talking points you would normally debate become relevant, but by that stage, it’s a discussion, not a debate.
Thanks for all you do Ada, you continue to be an inspiration.
Disengaging does not help spread propaganda. Engaging and giving horrible ideas a platform does help spread propaganda.
Your “debate bro” advice is about ten years out of date.
You’re wrong. Completely wrong on so many levels. This is all about engagement. That whole “too enlightened to engage” attitude is exactly how the right managed to take over so much of the online space. Right-wing think tanks and PR firms invested in engagement, nonstop posts, repetition, platform saturation. And it worked.
People see the same ideas echoed over and over again, and eventually it shapes how they think. That’s why regular, everyday people, people who aren’t even political start parroting right-wing talking points. Even my kids and their friends are saying this stuff.
It’s not because they believe it. It’s because that’s what they see. All the time.
The reason it’s gotten this bad? A whole chunk of people on the left thought disengaging was smart. That if they just ignored it, it would go away. It didn’t. It spread. And now we’re here.
People see the same ideas echoed over and over again, and eventually it shapes how they think. That’s why regular, everyday people, people who aren’t even political start parroting right-wing talking points. Even my kids and their friends are saying this stuff.
You are 100% correct on this part.
The problem is, arguing with them magnifies that effect, it doesn’t challenge it.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t push back. I don’t mean smile and agree, or just ignore them. Deplatforming works, protests work, proud visibility works, civil disobedience works. Responding negatively works. Making it so that there is a social cost to being a transphobe works.
But debating them isn’t any of those things. Debating them is engaging with them, and in the act of arguing with you, they actually solidify the beliefs they already hold, and this is especially true of heavily polarised issues. Here’s some research on it https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-023-01623-8 (PDF link), and an article that goes in to the topic a bit https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/why-is-it-that-even-proven-facts-cant-change-some-peoples-minds
As much as it feels right to argue with them, all you are doing is strengthening their already held beliefs when you do. It might feel like its helping, but it isn’t. You’ll read my response, and you’ll likely go “screw that, you’re wrong, I’m going to keep arguing”. And that’s the exact effect I’m talking about at play. Every time you argue with someone, they have that same internal reaction to your comments, no matter what you say, or how strongly you believe it.
So you allow them to influence other people with their ideas?
I’m prepared to trust other people’s intelligence to see through it, and if they can’t, fuck them as well.
Part of being intelligent is being social. Being social means we mirror and sometimes go with the crowd. That’s just how it is. Which means if you think people are intelligent, it means it also should understand they will be susceptible to certain things like this. I think it’s a sign of intelligence to be susceptible to certain things like this because these tactics are built on the idea that groups of people share similar social habits. Shared social habits is a sign of intelligence. It’s anti social people who failed to socialize that are harder to manipulate.
Absolutely. If people like the idiot this post is referring to are allowed to spew bullshit without push back, then other idiots will believe it and spread it. These people need to be shamed and publicly corrected for their bullshit stance that can hurt others. I say hurt others, because an idea like this can be used to delegitimize transgender people.
I remember a study once showing that you can skew the views of any group if only 10% of that group change their opinion.
I think this is really important here because if you’re on an social media and you see nothing but right wing views, I think it does influence lots of people. This is why I get so mad seeing attitudes suggesting we should all just ignore it all like it’s a waste of time.
My second paragraph covered that, I thought.
someone said that in a thread on lemmy early, i cringed. it seems the only people that think transracial is a thing is primarly done by white people. i wonder if thats the same person were talking about.
and yes i was thinking about rachel dolzal. or white people claiming they are native american, because they have less than 1-5% of thier dna, your still a white asf guy. and a white guy pretending that he is filipino, because he drives a tuk tuk.
They don’t appear to understand the difference between cultural and gender identity. I’d try this:
“If a white person of european descent were raised from birth by a Sentinel Island tribe, would they be culturally european?”
The answer is obviously no, illustrating that the cultural identity of a person depends on the culture the person was raised in. I don’t know how gender identity works, but clearly how someone is raised has little to do with it.
Edit: Disclaimer that I have absolutely no idea what I am talking about.Problem is that “race” isn’t just cultural. How you will be treated definitely depends on how other people perceive your “race” and subsequently it will shape your life reality.
That person you gave as an example? In the US, Canada or most European countries he will be treated better than an actual Citizen born and raised in the respective country who is perceived as “black” or “brown”.
Problem is that “race” isn’t just cultural. How you will be treated definitely depends on how other people perceive your “race” and subsequently it will shape your life reality
But surely how you will be treated definitely depends on how other people perceive your “gender” and subsequently it will shape your life reality?
Everything you described up there sounds exactly like “cultural.”
Social constructed concepts are applied by others to you. Those concepts and frameworks are build up by the community over time. So where your born matters a lot as what framework your raised in is going to be the one you adopt naturally and use to also see yourself though.
That’s fundamentally the problem. Race and gender both, it doesn’t matter what you choose or think of for yourself. You don’t get to decide what others see you as. And since it’s communal you as a single person can’t change it for everyone. It takes many people working together over long periods of time to change.
Which is why it’s such problem, humans are fundamentally a social animal. We WANT to fit in, so when our self perception doesn’t align with what others see us as we become distressed.
So with in the social framework others see us as, we try to realign ourselves to be perceived as what we want. This removes the misalignment of self perception with social perception.
Fundamentally this is one of the biggest aspects of transgender body dysphoria. That social misalignment vs transsexual body dysphoria and it’s physical misalignment.
Tho transsexual body dysphoria can also play a role here or none at all.
As transsexual body dysphoria tends to be rather detached entirely from the social construct. People are able to have one or the other and both. Transsexual body dysphoria is very self driven and almost if not entirely based on ones own perception of their own body.
Remember gender is made up and fluid based on the culture. Sex is biological and rooted in the physical.
That makes gender more like “ethnicity”/“race” rather than “culture” don’t you think?
I’m advised that there is no scientific or genetic basis for race. I’m a little unclear on how “ethnicity” is different from “race.”
All of them seem to be social constructs.
social construct isn’t a synonym for “doesn’t exist”. just because scientific racism is illogical it doesn’t mean that white people don’t behave as if we’re superior to others, whether consciously or not. you can’t say racism is ethnic oppression because even comparing between white Latino and Black Latino there’s a statistical difference in police brutality based on anti-Blackness
culture and ethnicity have nothing to do with race. race is based on perceived phenotype
I’d say that a lot of race is based upon shared experiences with other members of the group, and being seen as part of the group. Many people from the Middle East and North Africa see themselves as white. A lot of white Americans and Europeans disagree. I would say that being perceived as a member of an in group is more important than actual color. For example, some lighter skinned African-Americans were able to be perceived as white, thus being treated significantly better. Were they black? Of course they were. They made a conscious decision to pick which experiences and culture they wanted. But they definitely had experiences where they didn’t pass, and had experiences according to their given race.
what you’re talking about is proximity to whiteness. AFAIK passing was not a choice which makes Dolezal’s actions even more violent. lighter Black people benefit from colorism but they’re still at risk of lynching because of their race. white people doing blackface is a way to mock that powerlessness felt by victims of white supremacy and make money from clout.
as for non-white SWANA people assimilating into whiteness, that’s a way to harness the colonial power structure to their own benefit by distancing themselves from Black people. this is all a trauma response and survival mechanism from centuries of European genocide like colored South Africans with the same phenotype as indigenous Africans claiming they’re not Black.
If one was assumed to be white, then they could either make the choice to correct them, or not. Dolezal is fucking ridiculous, and definitely just trying to sow discord and violence, especially towards transgender people.
