Comment on What's the best way to respond to someone who says "transracial is just as valid as transgender"?
WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
The differences between the sexes is much less than people like to pretend. Every cell in your body has different modes it can operate in. Many, perhaps most, cells have estrogen-dominated and testosterone-dominated modes. If you change the dominant hormones in the body, every cell in the body switches between these modes. Trans people who medically transition are simply taking advantage of the body’s existing mechanism of secondary sex characteristics.
Ultimately, any person could have a male- or female- typical phenotype. If you put the right hormone injections into a fetus at the right time of pregnancy, an XY fetus would be born with a vagina and a uterus. And the opposite is true as well. These conditions sometimes happen naturally with intersex conditions. Every human body has the potential to develop along a male- or female-typical path. It’s just a matter of what hormones are passing through the body at what stage of development.
But race? There’s no comparison. Cells don’t have different expression modes that correspond to different racial phenotypes. There are no “black hormones” that a white person could take to gain many of the characteristics of black bodies. There is simply no equivalent to the medical transition process many trans people undergo. There is simply no equivalent to the fundamental rewiring of the body that occurs on a cellular level with trans medical treatments.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Are you saying hormone injections or other medical measures are necessary for you to consider someone transgender? I’m pretty sure most people wouldn’t agree with that. Correspondingly why would that be required to be transracial? TBH it sounds the same as the anti-trans argument that goes like, “cuz it just don’t make sense.”
seralth@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I feel like your over focusing on the medical aspect
I took to mean like how you compare say breeds of dogs. Both a golden retriever and a German Shepard are both dogs,.both k-9 members of the space species.
All fo them have the biological ability to be both male or female as it’s a secondary trait controlled by hormones.
While race is basically genetics and your DNA. You can just edit your DNA and rewrite your body to express characteristics of another race.
You can’t just make your body suddenly become a red head, or grow an afro. You can’t just suddenly force your nose or cheek bones to rearrange themselves.
You can’t just shrink to lengthen your bones.
Most of what makes up human “races” is just the breeding of our ancestors.
In the future we may be able to change all of this and custom design out bodies. But that wouldnt be a natural change unlike hormone therapy.
Instead of taking advantage of a natural ability of the body, you would be entirely overruling it and entirely creating something new that isn’t natural.
Basically you would be performing eugentics. For good or bad.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I feel like we’re not even having the same conversation here. I explicitly object to the argument that medical measures are necessary to validate a trans concept. You say I’m focusing too much on that, then explain that being transracial isn’t valid because of exactly that.
Saying you can’t make your body change in the various ways you list invalidates being transgender - you can’t make your body naturally produce the hormones you want, you have to artificially take them. But again, I don’t think that’s relevant - if you’re trans then you’ve always been trans, you just might not have understood it. To me the transracial concept seems equally valid, and I don’t see your biological objections differentiating them. I mean, you’re not even being accurate - people do modify themselves in all the ways you list. Cosmetic surgery and body mods are more than a $100 billion/year industry in the US alone. I just don’t see how you’re making a point.
WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Those who seek outrage will find it every time. Yes, obviously there are some trans people that don’t seek out medical transition. That’s why I said “trans people who medically transition.” But language can be overly inclusive. We don’t need to start every single writing on trans people with three paragraphs describing every exception and caveat. Obviously when you talk about a group, any group, you have to talk in generalities. If you insist on starting every comment about trans people with paragraphs of caveats and provisos, you make actually getting to the point impossible. You water down the language to the point of uselessness. At at time when trans rights are under assault on all sides, I don’t mind focusing most trans discussions on the material realities and needs of most trans folks.
Most trans people want to medically transition. Are those that don’t somehow invalid? No. But we also don’t need to start every discussion with a thousand caveats describing every sub-category within a group. There are atheist Jews and there are gay Muslims. That doesn’t mean every discussion of those faiths is centered around these rare exceptions.