Sunday, October 08, 2017

If we can change our sex, why can't we change our race?

The YouTube video below is from an English morning TV show. It shows an interview between the hosts, Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, and a German woman, Martina Big, who has begun taking medicines and undergoing surgery to transform herself into a black woman.



The hosts of the show have previously run interviews in which they supported primary school children making the decision to change sex. They claimed that people can be "gender fluid." This fits in with the liberal belief that what matters is that we self determine who we are rather than this being predetermined by qualities we are born into like our sex.

So you would think that the TV hosts would support Martina Big in wanting to be "race fluid" or transracial. It is difficult to see how what she is doing is any different in principle from those seeking to change their biological sex.

But in the interview Philip Schofield is clearly strongly opposed to what Martina Big is doing. He cannot find a liberal reason to oppose her, so instead comes up with a traditionalist one. At 4.15 he says to Martina Big, as a criticism of her:
But you understand that race and colour is much more than skin deep. It's heritage and pedigree and tradition and history and struggle. It's all of these things that you can't hope to get anywhere near with three tanning injections.

He expresses the thought very well. But it goes directly against the older liberal narrative. For decades Westerners have been told the exact opposite, that to identify with their race is wrong because race is only skin deep and therefore meaningless, with the accusation that those wanting to preserve their race are merely prejudiced.

What is happening here? There are several possibilities. First, that what Martina Big is doing is just too much for Philip Schofield to accept right now, but that he would change his mind later as the logic of liberalism rolls onward and public opinion changes. The second possibility is that blacks still have too much status as a "victim class" within the liberal world view for liberals to think that a white person might be allowed to access that identity (and escape from "oppressor" to "oppressed"). Another possibility is that Philip Schofield understands at some level the double standard that the leftist version of liberalism aims to dissolve white identity, but is not meant to undercut other identities in the same way - so that healthier traditional ideas can still be applied to the other races.

So the final question is this: is it likely that transracialism will be accepted in the future the way that transsexualism now is?

If white liberalism lasts for another 20 years then I think it will be accepted. After all, white women were once thought to be a high status victim class within the liberal worldview. But when it came to a showdown between feminists who wanted to keep the category of woman for biological women and transsexuals, the transsexuals won. Eventually, it is likely that those claiming to be transracial will be thought to have a higher political claim than those defending minority racial categories.

However, it doesn't look likely that white liberalism is going to survive the sea change in politics that is on the horizon. The changing demographics in the US is encouraging the radical left to base itself more squarely on the assertion of racial interests against the current white majority. The radical left has already started to demand that white liberals surrender to this new agenda. Many liberals will comply, perhaps some will break toward the right.

I'm not sure, in other words, if liberalism has that much more time to roll forward before it crashes into barriers it created for itself.

6 comments:

  1. Fundamentally, we have to see this for what it is: acting

    And self aggrandizement by denying reality. These people are poseurs, and you are the mark.

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  2. I believe it is your second reason. You won't be allowed to go from oppressor to oppressed as much as you might like to do so. Heck, my grandparents came to the U.S. from what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire (and is now Czechia) in the 1890s -- but I am an oppressor.

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  3. Big doesn't seem right in the head. Is it certain that she is for real? If so, someone should be looking out for her well-being.
    Rachel Dolezal is the real deal. She's the all-white women who for years maintained a tan and Afro-hair and passed as black. She was "a well-known local civil rights leader, university lecturer and head of the local chapter of the NAACP" in Washington state. She was married to an actual black man, who she says considered her "too black". They divorced. She passed off her adopted younger brother, who was actually black, as her son. Dolezal was a career black woman who sought and acquired black privilege.
    She was outed a couple of years ago, but she continues to identify as black.
    Apparently she's written a book: In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World . She's quoted as saying: "When I tell people I still identify as Black, they want to know why,” she writes at the end of the book. “I explain that Black is the closest descriptive category that represents the essential essence of who I am.” She adds: “For me, being Black isn’t playing dress-up. It’s not[hing] something I change in and out of or do only when it’s convenient. This is who I am.”
    Blackness is the "essential essence" of professor Dolezal. That's not unlike the claims of so-called "trans-whatevers". The essence of their essentials represents whichever psycho-sexual category they feel they're in.
    Big though, after a few more injections, might literally be black, but without an "essential essence".

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  4. Schofield is out of step with modern feminist philosophy.
    In "In Defense of Transracialism" (Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, spring 2017 edition) Rebecca Tuvel, an untenured assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College, argued that "[s]ince we should accept transgender individuals' decisions to change sexes, we should also accept transracial individuals' decisions to change races."
    Shortly after the article's publication an open letter urged that the article be retracted. Its publication had sent a message, the letter said, that "white cis scholars may engage in speculative discussion of these themes" without engaging "theorists whose lives are most directly affected by transphobia and racism".
    The very next day one of Hypatia's associate editors posted an apology for the article's publication on behalf of "a majority" of the associate editors. In 3 days the open letter garnered 830 signatories (including two members of Tuvel's dissertation committee). The journal's editor-in-chief, Sally Scholz, said that she stood by the article. Hypatia Inc.'s board of directors confirmed that the article would not be retracted.
    The academic community, including Tuvel's own philosophy department, responded with support for Tuvel.
    Clearly Schofield doesn't realise that his position refutes the "race is a social construct" mantra of the left.

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  5. The pleasure that academics get from their group intellectual masturbation is meant to confound the non-academic, while titillating and inspiring aspiring young academics. They're not just intellectually dishonest, they're incestuous liars devoted to an unshakable faith in a shared scheme that provides that no matter what they propose or argue, that they will always have place at the table. No matter how stupid or dishonest you are, if you write it properly, then you're welcome to feed the beast, because the academic beast is what feeds them all.
    Western society's academics and intelligentsia aren't falling down the rabbit hole, they're diving in head first as the giddy politicians cheer them on.
    Tuvel can't get out of her own way. She's a befuddle of indecision and contradiction, just like most of her ilk. She says so in her own words. She says that you can lie all you want and she won't challenge you. She'll "consider" anything that you have to say.
    I don't believe that she or many of them believe what they say. They're after something other than the truth. It's a perverted desire for adulation or some sort of intellectual gamesmanship or showing off. They need to keep the ball rolling. They all have to keep the ball rolling. Agree or disagree, but please, keep the ball rolling; If the ball stops rolling, their careers stop rolling, and their worthless carcasses might have to do some honest work.
    Why all the tortured convulsive machinations over nonsense that common sense destroys? They're getting something out it, for themselves. Academia rewards the creative who expand and enlarge the institutions.
    Picture them all, after hours, out back, toasting and boasting; Tuvel, Dolezal, Shofield, Big, etc., having a laugh at civilization's expense. Big would either be the butt of the joke, or the one behind it, but she'd still be laughing like an idiot.
    White people can not become black people. Period. They all know this.
    But, they can, by law, be made black.
    Males can not become females. Period. They all know this.
    But, they already are, by law, being made female.
    ALL so-called "trans-whatevers" are same-sex attracted homosexuals. Period. They all know this.
    But, they can, by law, prohibit anyone form referring to them as a homosexual.
    These so-called "trans-whatevers" are the only authentic homophobes. Consciously, or not, they can't tolerate or accept being or being seen as a homosexual, so they claim the legal status of female. Some claim that they're trapped in a male body, some that they are otherwise somehow unfairly or mistakenly born with the wrong genitalia, some mystery or accident in the womb, without their legal consent.
    Dolezal rejects any notion that she ever yielded voluntarily to the imposition of a white genetic condition at birth, to which she did not, and does not consent.
    Academics will supply the language that current and future legislators will use to properly fashion laws that will establish the formal right to reject any genetic imposition misaligned with an unconstructed self-identification not currently consented to.

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    Replies
    1. If the ball stops rolling, their careers stop rolling, and their worthless carcasses might have to do some honest work.

      Yep, you've nailed it there. This madness is driven by the same force that drives the green madness - money. Money and status. All academics (including scientists) are whores.

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