RE: The right to mis-define oneself
June 13, 2015 at 10:43 pm
(This post was last modified: June 13, 2015 at 10:52 pm by Regina.)
I can't understand why people are coming for Caitlyn Jenner so much, it seems unfair to me. "Transgender" not one of these special snowflake tumblrina identities that never existed before Tumblr was a thing, she's hardly the first transgender woman to walk the Earth. Gender dysphoria is a real thing, Doctors haven't pulled this shit out their ass.
And whatever you think of her and her "condition", is it really going to kill you to call her by her preferred pronouns? No, it isn't. Just call her a woman, it won't kill you.
I don't know if race dysphoria is a thing, it's bordering on some quite racist undertones to say "I was born white and identify as black". It's like saying there's only one way to be black, and that's based on racial stereotypes. You might think "my lips are too small, they're not like a black person's" but not all black people have full lips, that's a stereotype. If you're a white person trying to "blacken" yourself, anything you do to make yourself seem more black is based in stereotypes of black people. The idea that you can feel you are born "the wrong race" suggests you think these "races" are fundamentally different from eachother, which is almost the textbook definition of what racism is.
That's not the same as Bruce becoming Caitlyn, whereby she can safely assume that, as a fact, most women have some form of a vagina, breasts, and female hormones. "Women have vaginas, breasts and female hormones" isn't a stereotype in the same way that "black people have wide noses and full lips" is.
And whatever you think of her and her "condition", is it really going to kill you to call her by her preferred pronouns? No, it isn't. Just call her a woman, it won't kill you.
I don't know if race dysphoria is a thing, it's bordering on some quite racist undertones to say "I was born white and identify as black". It's like saying there's only one way to be black, and that's based on racial stereotypes. You might think "my lips are too small, they're not like a black person's" but not all black people have full lips, that's a stereotype. If you're a white person trying to "blacken" yourself, anything you do to make yourself seem more black is based in stereotypes of black people. The idea that you can feel you are born "the wrong race" suggests you think these "races" are fundamentally different from eachother, which is almost the textbook definition of what racism is.
That's not the same as Bruce becoming Caitlyn, whereby she can safely assume that, as a fact, most women have some form of a vagina, breasts, and female hormones. "Women have vaginas, breasts and female hormones" isn't a stereotype in the same way that "black people have wide noses and full lips" is.
"Adulthood is like looking both ways before you cross the road, and then getting hit by an airplane" - sarcasm_only
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
"Ironically like the nativist far-Right, which despises multiculturalism, but benefits from its ideas of difference to scapegoat the other and to promote its own white identity politics; these postmodernists, leftists, feminists and liberals also use multiculturalism, to side with the oppressor, by demanding respect and tolerance for oppression characterised as 'difference', no matter how intolerable." - Maryam Namazie
