The correct response is to consider what the correct way to synthesize the positions is, and go with that. There’s nothing wrong with adapting your position to handle possible inconsistencies. The goal is not to win but to be the most correct.

Typically, the assumption is that this is an argument that transgender is invalid. Perhaps there’s another way of looking at it. Perhaps a way people aren’t ready for, which is why your opponent went in that direction.

Alternatively, it can be pointed out that this is changing the topic, because it technically is.

The best way is asking: what’s your point? Is it that transgender shouldn’t be accepted or that transrace should?. And proceed from there to either defend transgenderism or criticize transracism accordingly.

First let me start by saying I strongly dislike the race therminology, but I’ll use it here for consistency, although normally I would call it ethnicity.

The difference between those lies in that gender is a social construct, and race is not. Race has some biological meaning, just like sex, people can’t change their sex (yet), they can’t change their race (yet).

Gender is a social construct, it’s things that have nothing to do with biology but that we as a society attribute in general to a specific sex. A similar concept for race would be culture, a person can be of the sex male but prefer to wear clothes usually associated with female sex, just like someone can be of the white ethnicity but prefer to hear music usually associated with black ethnicity. I wouldn’t call Eminem or Michael Jackson transrace, what would that even mean?

I genuinely don’t know enough about what people who claim to be trans racial are even saying and why they’re saying it to form an opinion on it. My gut feeling is that it isn’t valid and they’re bad actors, but my gut has been wrong before.

So if someone told me “trans racial is just as valid as trans gender” I’d either not respond or just say “I don’t know about that.” and leave it at that.

Gentle reminder that if you believe someone is a bad actor and using dog whistles there isn’t a point in responding to things like this because you aren’t going to change their mind.

Does it really matter if someone is either

This thread clearly shows that people are naturally bigoted. There is trace community on reddit. There are a lot of trace people who are also trans. They have dysphoria. They are suicidal. The hate their body. They are not accepted by society. They get death threats. Arguments used against trace people are the same as arguments against trans people. So, we are actually the same.

Why not ask more questions about it? And if they insist it does no damage, it wouldn’t matter either way

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.

Yeah fuck it, it’s 2025

No race, no gender. No problems.

Gender anarchism and race anarchism. People be just people. Social constructs shall not be a dividing reason, let everyone behave however the hell they want as long as they don’t hurt others and be happy.

Also US race concepts are kind of weird in general. I suppose the history of slavery and segregation did a number on people’s perception of race.

Look, understanding and relating to someone of a different race is one thing, but if you think that you somehow are that race then there’s something wrong in your brain, one way or another. It’s better than being like “I’m really a wolf” or similar nonsense, but only because at least you’re not claiming it believing that you’re a different species. Instead you’re on the sliding scale of delusion/dog whistle and either way I’d rather just not be around you.

someone said that in a thread on lemmy early, i cringed. it seems the only people that think transracial is a thing is primarly done by white people. i wonder if thats the same person were talking about.

and yes i was thinking about rachel dolzal. or white people claiming they are native american, because they have less than 1-5% of thier dna, your still a white asf guy

Transracial doesn’t exist because “Race” in the context that they want to use it doesn’t exist.

Genetically there’s only one “race”; that’s the human race. If they want to identify as a different culture, it’s purely a cosmetic cultural thing, not biological or genetic. Whereas as being Transgender is biological. Therefore, you can safely tell people like Rachel Dolezal to fuck off and go back to fifth period science class.

“You are wrong. Gender and race are two different things. Transgender people have been around since time began, transracial was invented few years ago to appropriate and diminish transgender people’s experiences. it’s not transphobic to be against something that was recently invented to invalidate transgender people. ciao”

but tbf it seems like that person’s tryna start shit so I’d just block and report em

Transgender is more comparable to Naturalization.

You can become an American, British, Canadian, German, Japanese, or Chinese, in terms of Citizenship/Nationality, but you can’t just magically change from White to Black or to Asian, or vice versa.

I’d respond, “Rachel Dolezal was never shot by the police” and “Michael Jackson did not become an honorary white person just because he tried to be one.”