The right to mis-define oneself

[bennyboy]

Don't we all "hide" our naughty bits? I'm about as stacked as kitten heels, but I imagine that if I walked down the street topless, I'd get a few looks, and maybe arrested.

Sorry; Benny, I'm just a little baffled.  You say you support people identifying with who they feel they are, but then you get all wrapped up in semantics and the "late reveal".  What point are you trying to make? I feel like it's gotten lost...

First of all, I support your right to walk down the street topless, regardless of their size.  I've seen men with freaking double-D's on a beach.  If I can survive that, I can survive seeing female breasts.

It's in the OP, and hasn't changed.  I believe there's a different between living AS something and BEING that thing.  I readily concede that gender is a complex issue.  However, the reality is that someone like Jenner, who has a penis and was born a man, is not equivalent to a natural-born woman.  Treating him with respect doesn't have to mean accepting that the Emperor is wearing fine new clothes.  You can choose to refer to Caitlyn as a woman, but the reality is that it's not the same thing as, say, my mother being a woman, or my daughter. I'm getting tired of being called a bigot, or it being claimed that I'm sexually insecure, or that I don't get the issues, just because I differentiate between a natural-born woman and a person who identifies as a woman, but whose body has male parts.

Identity issues don't just affect the free expression of someone's own identity.  They matter in a lot of legal and other areas, as well.  For example, should a person with testicles and the resulting high levels of testosterone during their developmental years be allowed to compete as a woman in the Olympics?  Jenner was a superior athlete as a man-- what if he had competed as a woman?  He could have won many, many medals, depriving natural-born females from the opportunity to win their deserved accolades.

In the OP case, which involves race, there are some real social benefits to being black-- special scholarships, for example, or preferential treatment in selection for specific kinds of posts (which the OP apparently held, actually).  Should her insistence on identifying as black allow her those special considerations? No. She's white, not black, and doesn't fall under the umbrella of special assistance granted black people in the US in order to help them equalize their opportunities. Her self-identification should therefore not be accepted by others.