The right to mis-define oneself

[bennyboy]

I'm not talking about whether people should be accepted or respected.  I'm talking about whether people get to declare that they are what they are not.  I can't just get a tan and dreadlocks and start telling everyone I'm an African prince.  Because I'm not one, and reality matters.

I agree. But if as you claim you're not ignorant of transgender issues, then don't bring them up in this discussion. They're irrelevant. Transgenders are not declaring themselves something they aren't, rather they are recognizing what they are.

It's equating being transgendered to the Dolezal case I'm arguing about.

Okay, I'll concede that.  In my defense, you'll see that a couple pages back, I directly stated that gender issues are more complex, as gender identity is largely psychological.  Race, however, is normally used to refer to the geographic and/or genetic background of a person.  That being said, I think a person with a complex gender identity should be described multi-axially: genetics, physical makeup, and psychological identification.  Jenner, for example, was clearly born male, is currently mixed male/female anatomically (if you accept silicone breasts as "real"), and clearly is not a typical male psychologically.  In a sense, you could say he's all of male, female, both and neither.

I think trying to squeeze the many gender-definining characteristics into a single label is the source of most of the sour grapes about Jenner and other transgender people. But my point of contention isn't what someone identifies as: it's whether someone is allowed to impose their view or definition of a word on other members of the society. Does the fact that Caitlyn wants to be seen as a woman automatically mean that everyone else has to pretend Caitlyn is as much a woman as, say, your mom?