Rachel Dolezal, faux black NAACP chapter president — Page 6

Those people are, frankly, assholes.

"If you're going to say it's ok for one person to say they feel different and want to be represented as such, than who are you to say another person can't feel that way?" Jordan, I am going to take you at your word when you say you are interested in this as a topic and how people come to think about it.

I'm surprised to read that you didn't know the issue of transwomen has caused a real schism among many second wave feminists (the women on the front lines doing the hard work in the '60s and '70s) and subsequent waves of feminists. Those happen to be the women I learned at the knees of during 1980s AIDS activism. [SIDE NOTE: I just realized how wary I am to put this kind of thing out here anymore because of one troll's tendency to hold onto the details for years but whatever... ]

Those who came of age in the '80s had a unique vantage point because not only did they read the canonical feminist texts but also read the feminist critiques that were published in their aftermath. Those critiques called the second wavers on instances of supreme lesbianphobia as well as classism and racism. Years passed and many feminists incorporated the evolving ideas of gender fluidity and the continuum of sexuality.

However, it was the second wave feminists who created a lot of separatist feminist spaces such as the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival where for two weeks women could live and learn and be free of men in a sort of utopia. This has become Ground Zero of the schism on transwomen. In the late-'80s the festival announced it would be for womyn-born-womyn only. Meaning MtoF transexuals were banned.

As you can imagine, this caused problems. And as every year new women come into their feminist consciousness with more fluid ideas about gender and sexuality, the die-hards who cling to the "if you weren't born a woman you aren't a woman" dogma have truly become dinosaurs. And they are fading away. This summer's music festival will be the 40th and final one. Even the organizers realize they can't go on because, and this is key to this discussion: The world is changing fast.

I just want to point out, that when a person has a gut reaction and uses that as a response to an issue, that is a "reactionary" viewpoint. It in no way can take in and account for the thought and scholarship and evolution that has gone on with a given topic. I say this as somebody who had completely reactionary responses to the emerging trans culture in the past few years (I probably drove poor nanmartin off this site by being reactionary about the issue).

It's important also to realize something Sarah Schulman pointed out today on Facebook:

Folks, transwomen are a small and powerless group. They are not responsible for corporate or legislative inanities and cruelties and they are not driving the subjugation of women or Black people in America. Lay off!!

I feel like over the past few weeks I've watched you go from being enraged by Bruce Jenner's politics (which outrage me as well) to feeling oppressed by some sort of enforced support of Caitlyn Jenner. But there is no such thing. And, you know, I've posted this before in threads you've been in that I keep my fingers crossed that Caitlyn's politics will ALSO transform away from Bruce's. But you don't seem willing to take anything else about it in.

And now this link between the woman who passed as black, which is specious. Modern history is rife with white people who identify with black culture. Think of Eminem or The Beastie Boys for obvious examples. But you know, they didn't put on black face. (And PLEASE don't ask why that is wrong if someone chooses to put on blackface because that's who they identify as, that's just your reactionary impulse again.)

So I hope you DO read some of the feminist writings that draw a line and state a case against trans acceptance. You just need to know that they are a dwindling number that is well on its way to dying out. Their writing is very very similar to right wing conservative writing on the issue. This is not the first time some second wave feminists have found themselves aligned in this way. Andrea Dworkin and Katherine McKinnon were SO anti-pornography that they worked with Jerry Falwell to draft anti-porn legislation, even though Falwell hated everything else they stood for.

I'd also caution you on making equivalencies like, "If you have to accept transwomen you have to accept a white woman putting on spray tan and letting everybody around her presume she's black." Because no. You don't. And let's not pretend the small and powerless group of transwomen in this country have any clout at all.

Also, the Elinor Burkitt op-ed in the Times is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. That's not the contemporary feminist take on this at all. This is the second wave feminist equivalent of the people who are CLINGING to the notion of marriage being a "one man and one woman" contract because the world is changing too fast for them, they don't see the world as progressive and they give in to their reactionary impulses.

Updated On: 6/13/15 at 08:46 PM

We live in a society in which macroscopically discernible and community based racial identity inspires both negatives, widespread discrimination, and legally dictated, strategically corrective positives, i.e. forms of affirmative action. Both aspects are unavoidably part of the debate growing around this woman's actions -- which are either a mere series of intellectual decisions (and the resulting identity construct) or a delusion, perhaps even a psychotic one. To me, when we argue that self-identification of race is a "right" we cannot do so in a convenient vacuum. White privilege is very real and endemic to most of our institutions.

We now provide myriad avenues to compensate for centuries of discrimination, formal and informal, avenues designed to offer real time reparations to the aggrieved and their descendants. We can't simply ignore that critical historical context for self-identifying, and the ways white privilege here allowed an identification as an option (the reverse not available to people of color), and then a co-opted, fabricated racial profile may have facilitated remedial actions to correct an imbalance in privilege -- an imbalance that was never there. (To that point: does anyone believe the NAACP would've hired her, knowing what they know now? Their loyalty to diversity in their own ranks may be commendable; yet would they having knowingly hired a white woman to head the chapter? A white woman who had carved out an African-American identity through acquired attributes rather than a presumption of genetic identity?)

So why is this woman's behavior creating such a response? She used her advantaged early life to choose a different identity, and then exploited that identity to carve out a community position otherwise earned through an authentic experience. To me, it's the correlation between authenticity and earned platform that is the core issue.

Auggie, that is terrific (and I have not officially applauded in too many threads you've been posting great things in lately) and Jordan I *do* trust you're trying to hash this out, if you were somebody I didn't trust I would never have written all that stuff out in the post!

I think you're right that people WILL ask those questions, but I think they're being reactionary and nobody particularly owes them a response. It's so not coverable by a sound byte and people who throw up the "if THIS is true then THAT is true" syllogisms aren't interested in learning, they are looking to label complexities as inconsistencies and therefore flawed logic all around. They're looking to be able to keep things as they are, not adapt, not find new language that doesn't hurt people, not grow.

Updated On: 6/13/15 at 09:10 PM

So, you know, both Auggie and I posted about the big differences between those things. This is where I get the hunch that you don't want to take anything new in about the topic. These hypothetical people who are going to be asking about the the theoretical difference between transgender and transracial (which is not a thing!) people are setting up an equivalence where there is none.

No, I get that. I honest to god do. And while I am playing a bit devils advocate here, when I suggest that people are going to need answers, I'm not saying they're going to be asking me. I am actually at work right now and having this conversation with you guys and sharing it with two trans people here (one MTF, one FTM) and I think they're maybe getting my points more since we're having an actual discussion here about this now.

But yes, in order for any of this to be considered "normal" by the mass public, people are going to have a lot of questions that should be answered. A "because I said so" isn't going to educate people.

So Namo, I think this is one of those discussions where a message board forum isn't really getting my full intentions across regarding my statements. But even if what I'm saying isn't coming across the way I entirely mean it to regarding these things, there are still a lot of people who do and who will have those questions for people.

I think I would like to wake up Asian tomorrow. Good night, all.

Absolutely not, this will always be a junior high gym shower joke to Mike Huckabee until he finally keels over and dies.

This was my favorite part. Especially the part where he dies!

I see it as a brightly colored cartoon with a birds flying in a circle over his head and greasy Chik-fil-A napkins strewn everywhere.

They talked about this on Melissa Harris Perry yesterday.

^"...The of achievement of blackness..."

I will enflame some further, but to this thin-skinned liberal the strained, convoluted conversaton on Perry's show, at least as excerpted here, played like an SNL parody of liberal doublespeak.

This comment jumped out at me: "Given that she is authentically transblack, If I call Dolezal an Uncle Tom, have I committed a microaggression? If so is it because I called her a man when she's not? Or because I called her black when she's not? Would it have helped if I had called her an Uncle Thomasina? And who gets to decide these things?"

Rather in the spirit of this thread anyway.

I'm aiming for the achievement of Broadwayworlddotcomness.

Updated On: 6/14/15 at 08:02 AM

Today, I'm Japanese. Please speak to me only in Japanese. I may not respond because I don't speak Japanese, but that is something I don't feel comfortable discussing with any of you. My Asian-ity is between me and the Asian community only.