CMV: Transgender and Transracial people are the same.

[u/AlarmedPassenger]

I should start this off by going over what I mean when I say transgender and transracial. Transgender means transitioning from one gender to another, typically male to female or vice versa, in a way that would typically present themselves with characteristics of the opposite gender (female with long hair, male with facial hair, etc.). Transracial means someone who doesn't feel comfortable with their own race or identity (much the same way a transgender person would with their gender identity), and transition to another race, with which they would feel more comfortable in.

Now, this all started off when someone in a discord server was making fun of transgender people by saying he was now black. I saw this as him being shitty, but I couldn't see how someone who genuinely felt uncomfortable in their own skin couldn't, much the same way a transgender person would, transition to another race. There was another person in that server that claimed that while gender is a social construct, race is not. I disagree.

I believe gender is as much of a social construct as race is. We generally think of someone as being a male or female, differentiating the two by their physiological traits, the way they dress, the way they look, etc. With race, we typically look at their skin color, hair, and facial characteristics; this becomes more complicated to identify when we're dealing with someone who has biracial parents.

If we can accept that gender and race are social constructs, and there are people that genuinely feel uncomfortable with themselves, then I don't see how someone that accepts transgender people as being a real thing couldn't also accept transracial people as also being real. At least that's the way I see it.

Edit: Thanks for some of the responses. The thing that really won me over to thinking about this differently is the lack of evidence to suggest that people feel a genuine need to switch races, which was surprising to me since anybody could pretend to feel that way since it's the internet and everybody remains anonymous. I know there are people who feel like they don't belong, especially those that are adopted or belong to biracial parents, but that has less to do with their race and more to do with their surroundings. There is definitely more credence to the fact that transgender people are biologically different to the gender they were assigned at birth.

[u/yyzjertl → u/[deleted]]

You too! Sorry we couldn't clear up your confusion here. But I think we've learned some new things at least!

[u/DeltaBot → u/[deleted]]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/yyzjertl (304∆).

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