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this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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No Stupid Questions
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I'm no expert on either topic. But I believe humans basically start off as female in the womb, and either become male or don't. And there are many intersex conditions. The body responds to hormones typically associated with either sex. So gender is fluid in a biological sense. If someone transitions to male, female or nonbinary, they already kind of contained that potential.
However, race is a social construct, usually based on heritage as well as biological appearance. So it's hard to say how much biology is really involved. Does the human body contain the ability to be any race? Or to cultivate an appearance that prompts other humans to socially categorize you as one race or the other?
Maybe for people who are mixed race, there is a sort of spectrum available to them. They likely know how to present themselves in a way that gets them categorized as one race or the other.
But otherwise, not really. If you're White, and you say, "I identify as Black," the question might be: do you have Black heritage? If you don't, you can't really create it out of thin air. There wasn't a situation while you were in the womb where various hormones could have influenced you to appear more Black than you do. If your parents are both White, they were going to have a White baby, no matter what. Race is a social construct, but it's based on appearance and heritage. It's about belonging to a group, not about being an individual, the way gender is.
If you're assigned female at birth, and you say, "I identify as male," then cool! Your body already has the capability to become hormonally male. You can socially identify as male. Any human, of any race, has this potential. Any two parents could have a baby that is any sex or gender, depending on various factors.
So, as a white person, I cannot pass as black, so I can never expect people to treat me like I'm black?
Don't get me wrong, I think the idea is silly, but all the arguments I've seen in this thread are a word-swap away from being a bad argument against transgender people.
What's the essential difference?
Assuming race, As a white person you are going to struggle to get others to see you as black. Cause those are social constructs. YOU do not get to decide what others see you as when it comes to a social construct. Because the very point of a social construct is that it's the general social frame work used to see others as.
Ethnicity on the other hand, as a white skin tone person if you grew up in Africa in a tribe of indigenous people then you would be an indigenous person. Ethnicity only cares about the facts.
To mirror that to transgender.
Gender is a social construct, it's what others see you as and how you categorize into a given communities framework. This differs between communities. For example what defines a male gender in ancient Rome is different then ancient Scotland. Both having male genders that quite literally just do not exist in one or the other.
While sex is the physical only caring about the factual biological. The actual flesh and reproductive organs. You either have them, or you don't. Primary or secondary. You can alter them with modern medicine sure, but even after alteration. It still only matters what you have. Are you a male producer or female reproducer. Are you functional or not. Do you have both sets? That's basically it, sex just cares about the facts it's not socially constructed. You can't argue that someone with a penis does not have a penis.
Ethnicity tho, doesn't have a modern medicine equivalent. It just is what it is. You can't change facts, so your rather stuck with it. Unlike a penis.
Some of this makes a bit of sense, but it still leans heavily on perception by others, rather than respecting what people know about themselves. This does not seem to be what many transgender persons want.
I'll think about it.