A civil rights leader in Eastern Washington state has been passing herself off as black for years, her parents told local media.
When reached by BuzzFeed News late Thursday, Rachel Dolezal’s father, Larry Dolezal, said that he and her mother are both white.
“She’s our birth daughter and we’re both of European descent,” he said, adding, “we’re puzzled and it’s very sad.”
Rachel Dolezal has been the president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP since January. She also serves as chair of the city’s police oversight commission.
Rachel Dolezal has been the president of the Spokane, Washington, chapter of the NAACP since January. She also serves as chair of the city's police oversight commission.
facebook.com / Via Post removed from Facebook
She is also an adjunct professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University.
She is also an adjunct professor of Africana studies at Eastern Washington University.
EWU / Via ewu.edu
According to her staff biography, Dolezal received her master’s degree from Howard University, an historically black university in Washington, D.C.
“Her passion for civil rights is influenced by her years in Mississippi, where she advocated for equal rights and participated in community development,” the bio states.
Dolezal’s biography also states she has been the victim of at least eight “documented hate crimes.” No suspect has been identified.
Representatives at EWU said they did not have a comment on Thursday night.
But on Thursday, Dolezal’s parents also told local media outlets that their daughter’s heritage is Czech, Swedish, and German — including possible traces of Native American.
Larry Dolezal told BuzzFeed News he could not fully explain why his daughter might have wanted to pose as a black woman.
But, he added: “She has over the past 20 years assimilated herself into the African-American community through her various advocacy and social justice work, and so that may be part of the answer.”
He went on to say that Rachel cut off all communication with him and her mother, and “doesn’t want us visible in the Spokane area in her circle because we’re Caucasian.”
To her colleagues in Spokane, however, she identified a different man as her father.
facebook.com
According to the Spokesman-Review, Dolezal misrepresented herself on her application for the city commission, writing that her ethnicity included white, black, and American Indian. Officials told the Spokesman-Review they were investigating whether she violated any city policies.
And in an interview with KXLY 4, Dolezal did not answer when asked if she was African-American.
vine.co
Yet on her Facebook profile, Dolezal joked about being watched at the movie theater for the “black reaction” to 12 Years A Slave.
Yet on her Facebook profile, Dolezal joked about being watched at the movie theater for the "black reaction" to 12 Years A Slave.
Facebook: rachel.dolezal1 / Via Post removed from Facebook
The formerly straight-haired blonde also posted a photo of her “natural” curls.
The formerly straight-haired blonde also posted a photo of her "natural" curls.
Facebook: rachel.dolezal1 / Via Post removed from Facebook
Though rumors regarding her background had circulated for years, a recently reported hate crime prompted serious questions of Dolezal’s credibility.
youtube.com
Dolezal said she found a threatening package in the NAACP’s post office box in February, KXLY reported. The city of Spokane later sent out a press release that the package contained racist messages and death threats. The city statement reiterated that it was the ninth hate crime Dolezal had experienced.
“It is deplorable and shocking that Ms. Dolezal should be experiencing hateful and malicious threats. We stand strongly in solidarity with her, as a university and as a campus community,” Eastern Washington University President Mary Cullinan added in a statement.
But postal workers told police the envelope was not timestamped or canceled. The only way the letter could have gotten into the box was if it had been placed there by a post office employee or by someone who had the P.O. Box key.
Dolezal told the station she would never falsify something so serious.
In interviews and her writing, Dolezal often mentions her black sons.
In interviews and her writing, Dolezal often mentions her black sons.
facebook.com / Via Post removed from Facebook
The Coeur d’Alene Press quotes Dolezal referring to “my oldest son Izaiah.”
But Larry Dolezal said that Izaiah is actually Rachel’s adopted brother.
About five years ago, when Izaiah was 16, he opted to go live with Rachel, Larry Dolezal said, at which time she obtained guardianship. Still, he told BuzzFeed News that he and his wife, Ruthanne, remain Izaiah’s legal parents.
Larry and Ruthanne eventually lost contact with Izaiah, and on Thursday did not know where he was. Larry added that Thursday is Izaiah’s 21st birthday.
Rachel hinted to the Press recently that Izaiah was her brother:
Rachel Dolezal confirmed in a recent phone interview with The Press that Izaiah is one of her adopted brothers.
“He used to be my brother,” she said. “But I have full custody of him now.”
“The last we heard he was either attending pre-law at the University of Idaho in Moscow, or through the branch campus in Spokane or in Coeur d’Alene,” Larry said.
He also denied claims made by Rachel to local media that she had been abused by her parents.
In addition to herself, Rachel told the Press that Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal had abused her siblings as children. She also maintained that she was black.
“They can DNA test me if they want to,” she told the newspaper.
She wrote a regular column on issues surrounding race for the Inlander, an alternative weekly.
Is this a modern version of the "White Saviour" Trope?
Psienesis wrote: I think it raises an interesting question, though:
Do you have to be a person of color to advocate for the advancement of people of color?
I don't think so, no. That said, the issue is not so much that, after all, the NAACP has gone out and said that it doesn't require it. My issue is with the strange deception going on here. I mean, there is no racial requirement, so why is she putting up this false front?
While there is no evidence to point to it one way or another, it calls into question some of her experiences, such as the anonymous hate letters. Not to diminish them in the slightest on my end, mind, but she undermines herself with this.
Psienesis wrote: Do you have to be a person of color to advocate for the advancement of people of color?
No, and even her parents said that. The problem is that lying is lying, which is what she did and continued to do. The question is did she lie to get ahead or is she flying rodent gak crazy? Maybe a bit of both, but in the end the problem has to do with dishonesty.
Psienesis wrote: Do you have to be a person of color to advocate for the advancement of people of color?
No, and even her parents said that. The problem is that lying is lying, which is what she did and continued to do. The question is did she lie to get ahead or is she flying rodent gak crazy? Maybe a bit of both, but in the end the problem has to do with dishonesty.
Wait...
Help me out here.
What's the difference between Rachel Dolezal and Bruce Jenner?
I mean... people *can* choose which race to identify with... Right?
At what point is it ethically wrong? I guess that line has to do with whether you've taken some benefit that was designated for others (ie, Black Privilege???).
I think it's more complicated than "just dishonesty". I think there is some mental issues going on with this woman. I think she has a genuine identity crisis going on. It could be even worse than that, I really hope it doesn't end up being that she made those threats up to gain false sympathy.
To Psienesisisisis' question "Do you have to be a person of color to advocate for the advancement of people of color? "
Certainly not. That's not really what this is about, though.
As to the lady in question, from her face book posts where she claims to be with her oldest son that is really an adopted brother, where she talks about sitting in the back of the theater while watching 12 years a slave so that white people don't look for black people's reactions, and other stuff... She sounds like she's either a little liar or a little off her rocker or some of both.
This one is just plain silly.
This is her brother. The Coeur d’Alene Press quotes Dolezal referring to “my oldest son Izaiah.”
Psienesis wrote: Do you have to be a person of color to advocate for the advancement of people of color?
No, and even her parents said that. The problem is that lying is lying, which is what she did and continued to do. The question is did she lie to get ahead or is she flying rodent gak crazy? Maybe a bit of both, but in the end the problem has to do with dishonesty.
Wait...
Help me out here.
What's the difference between Rachel Dolezal and Bruce Jenner?
I mean... people *can* choose which race to identify with... Right?
At what point is it ethically wrong? I guess that line has to do with whether you've taken some benefit that was designated for others (ie, Black Privilege???).
She didn't go "I identify as black even though my parents are white" she went "my dad is black look here he is" *picture of her with her black neighbour*
Yeah, this is really not about what one identifies as. This is a more serious issue of a woman who has lost touch with reality. I don't want to just toss them aside, but I have to call the validity of the 'hate crimes' she's had against her into question at this point.
Psienesis wrote: Do you have to be a person of color to advocate for the advancement of people of color?
No, and even her parents said that. The problem is that lying is lying, which is what she did and continued to do. The question is did she lie to get ahead or is she flying rodent gak crazy? Maybe a bit of both, but in the end the problem has to do with dishonesty.
Wait...
Help me out here.
What's the difference between Rachel Dolezal and Bruce Jenner?
I mean... people *can* choose which race to identify with... Right?
At what point is it ethically wrong? I guess that line has to do with whether you've taken some benefit that was designated for others (ie, Black Privilege???).
She didn't go "I identify as black even though my parents are white" she went "my dad is black look here he is" *picture of her with her black neighbour*
Not quite...
How, exactly is what Rachel did any different than what Jenner is currently doing?
She's not black, and Bruce (Caitlyn) Jenner is not a woman (he still has XY chromosomes and his junk is intact).
Rachel changed her wardrobe, her makeup, spray tans and her hair do not make her black. Pretty much everyone seems to agree on that...
Right?
And yet, we're supposed believe that Bruce Jenner can become a woman by…changing his name, his wardrobe, his makeup, and his hair??
I don't really care if Racheal wants to *be* black or if Bruce wants to be *called* Caitlyn. Out of courtesy, I'll refer to Bruce as "Caitlyn" and treat Rachel as if she's "black" (which is exactly no different than how I treat someone else of different enthicity).
However, nothing going to make me NOT acknowledge that Racheal is biologically white and that Caitlyn is truly a male species of the Human Race™. Nor do I think it's something 'heroic' or 'brave'.
her race identity is black, and she obviously is a black woman trapped in a white womans body.
stop being so transphobic you cis-whitey / cis-black people
the black dad is her identity dad, whatever race/gender we want to be, or whoever we want to be our parents, is our parents now.
also, taking things like *reality* into account, IE her parents are not black ergo she is not black, akin to saying you were born with a penis(or male DNA chromosomes), ergo you are a man, which is considered trans phobic.
to call her out as a liar just because she isnt genetically black, is to call out any trans gender person who claims to be the gender they identify as instead of their genetic one.
to call her out as lying about who her real parents are, is to call out transgenders for *lying* about their true genitals/gender
ie
those arnt your real parents how dare you claim they are!
vs
those arent your real boobs, how dare you claim they are!
easysauce wrote: her race identity is black, and she obviously is a black woman trapped in a white womans body.
stop being so transphobic you cis-whitey / cis-black people
the black dad is her identity dad, whatever race/gender we want to be, or whoever we want to be our parents, is our parents now.
also, taking things like *reality* into account, IE her parents are not black ergo she is not black, akin to saying you were born with a penis(or male DNA chromosomes), ergo you are a man, which is considered trans phobic.
to call her out as a liar just because she isnt genetically black, is to call out any trans gender person who claims to be the gender they identify as instead of their genetic one.
to call her out as lying about who her real parents are, is to call out transgenders for *lying* about their true genitals/gender
ie
those arnt your real parents how dare you claim they are!
vs
those arent your real boobs, how dare you claim they are!
ahhh 21st century problems
I just going to..go out...this door here...Frazzled runs through wall, lands on other side in pile of rubble and runs away.
Ahtman wrote: The conflation of gender and ethnicity is certainly something, but I think Frazzled has the right idea.
Why is that?
I mean... the biggest difference between the 2 cases is that Bruce has been open and honest about his transformation.
He's not trying to fool anyone. He has a bloody reality show!
Rachael, on the other hand has weaved a complex web of lies and deceptions for many, many years. If she had been open and honest about being a white person who identified as being black, would she be where she's at now????
Who knows.
And yet... at the end of the day, one isn't black, and the other isn't a woman.
Ahtman wrote: The conflation of gender and ethnicity is certainly something, but I think Frazzled has the right idea.
Why is that?
I mean... the biggest difference between the 2 cases is that Bruce has been open and honest about his transformation.
He's not trying to fool anyone. He has a bloody reality show!
Rachael, on the other hand has weaved a complex web of lies and deceptions for many, many years. If she had been open and honest about being a white person who identified as being black, would she be where she's at now????
Who knows.
And yet... at the end of the day, one isn't black, and the other isn't a woman.
technically, true, but being technically true in the case of trans gender is considered trans phobic in that if you are to call Kaitlyn Jenner a man, you are a trans phobic person for not acknowledging her identity.
maybe we should enforce some sort of skin dye post op procedure to discern between legitimate trans-racials and illegitimate ones?
I only have one good trans friend, but she is a she, and refers to herself as such in all respects and will deny every being a man or born with a penis ect ect.
to her its not a web of lies, but who she really is, so where do we draw the line between what is "true" or not?
I mean, what is the determining factor on our acceptance of someones identity?
that someone is born male/female, or black vs white?
Or that they have undergone a specific *process* (ie open vs closed, surgery vs just dressing differnt, ect) to show the outside world this identity?
Ahtman wrote: The conflation of gender and ethnicity is certainly something, but I think Frazzled has the right idea.
Why is that?
I mean... the biggest difference between the 2 cases is that Bruce has been open and honest about his transformation.
He's not trying to fool anyone. He has a bloody reality show!
Rachael, on the other hand has weaved a complex web of lies and deceptions for many, many years. If she had been open and honest about being a white person who identified as being black, would she be where she's at now????
Who knows.
And yet... at the end of the day, one isn't black, and the other isn't a woman.
technically, true, but being technically true in the case of trans gender is considered trans phobic in that if you are to call Kaitlyn Jenner a man, you are a trans phobic person for not acknowledging her identity. maybe we should enforce some sort of skin dye post op procedure to discern between legitimate trans-racials and illegitimate ones?
I only have one good trans friend, but she is a she, and refers to herself as such in all respects and will deny every being a man or born with a penis ect ect.
to her its not a web of lies, but who she really is, so where do we draw the line between what is "true" or not?
I mean, what is the determining factor on our acceptance of someones identity?
that someone is born male/female, or black vs white?
Or that they have undergone a specific *process* (ie open vs closed, surgery vs just dressing differnt, ect) to show the outside world this identity?
Yes... I was being *technical*.
In public, I'd be courteous to whatever they want.
oh yes, of course whembly, I dont mean to insinuate you personally as being trans phobic.
I just meant to discuss that there is a grey area between what is the objective, technically correct, scientifically provable "truth" and the subjective, politically correct, emotionally provable "truth"
I don't have a problem with her identifying as black. I have a problem with her taking a picture of a black neighbor and claiming that he's her dad. Same as claiming her adopted brother is her son. The lying.
I don't really see this as an issue of any kind at all.
She obviously has identity issues.
Some of them pathological.
Has this impacted on how she does her job?
Maybe?
The existence of pathologies among the Social Justice Movement (the extreme left) is as common as the existence of pathologies among today's conservatives (who have largely become extremists as a rule, rather than an exception).
kronk wrote: I don't have a problem with her identifying as black. I have a problem with her taking a picture of a black neighbor and claiming that he's her dad. Same as claiming her adopted brother is her son. The lying.
trans people claim their surgically altered bodies are their real bodies all the time, and they are allowed/encouraged to do so without shame, and we are encouraged to believe/treat them as real men/women. In fact to call them out as liars is politically incorrect and makes you trans phobic.
You are just ok with their "lie", but not this womans "lie" is all.
(just to be clear, not im not literally trying to call all trans people liars)
easysauce wrote: I mean, what is the determining factor on our acceptance of someones identity?
You can start with "is this a plausible claim?". In the case of transgender people we know that everyone starts out as a genderless/sexless blob of cells and then an extremely complex process of development, both before and after birth, adds a long list of sex/gender characteristics to the initial blank slate. And we have indisputable evidence that this process doesn't always work correctly in people who have a mix of male and female physical attributes. So all the transgender person's claim requires is the entirely reasonable belief that it's possible for the process of sex/gender development to go wrong in another way and have a brain/body mismatch instead of just a body/body mismatch. And once you grant that possibility the obvious conclusion is that brain gender is more important than a person's physical body in defining who we are, so a person with a female brain is a woman regardless of what physical characteristics she has.
But in the case of someone who claims to identify as a different race no such plausible explanation exists. Things like skin color don't have the same development issues as sex, and the vast majority of our concept of racial identity is based on cultural attributes not physical ones. So someone could have a strong desire to join the culture of a different race, but it doesn't make any sense to say "I'm really black and this white body is just a mistake".
To some degree social identities of race and gender are socially created and plastic. Acceptance as a particular race or gender depends on social acceptance.
The majority of people these days accept transgender people and recognise them as their adopted gender. I don't think that is the case for "trans-race" people.
I think that probably would be because there are so few "trans-race" cases that there has been no public debate on the issue. This is the first one I have heard of, at any rate.
kronk wrote: I don't have a problem with her identifying as black. I have a problem with her taking a picture of a black neighbor and claiming that he's her dad. Same as claiming her adopted brother is her son. The lying.
trans people claim their surgically altered bodies are their real bodies all the time, and they are allowed/encouraged to do so without shame, and we are encouraged to believe/treat them as real men/women. In fact to call them out as liars is politically incorrect and makes you trans phobic.
You are just ok with their "lie", but not this womans "lie" is all.
(just to be clear, not im not literally trying to call all trans people liars)
I have a lot of trains friends, and this is a subject we have often discussed:
Their chromosomes.
One of the issues (which I have studied formally in school, and which I hope to do some work on in grad school) has to do with the origin of the gender-dysphoria:
Is the origin genetic, epigenetic, or some other cause (it would be very/extraordinarily difficult for the cause to NOT BE genetic or epigenetic - all current evidence points to the latter).
But it does pose an interesting dilemma for those who suffer from gender-dysphoria:
IF the dysphoria is genetic or epigenetic, and the goal of those suffering from gender-dysphoria are seeking an eventual total genetic transformation (from XX -> XY or from XY -> XX), then the source of the dysphoria is important.
Because the dysphoria could simply be transmitted along with a chromosome change. The genetic or epigenetic queues could remain, so that a person with XX genotype and phenotype, who felt they should be XY phenotype could wind up (if we had the transformation at the level of the genes) as an XY genotype/phenotype who felt they should be an XX phenotype.
To put that in plain language. It could wind up that a genetic woman who felt they should be a man, could wind up transforming into a genetic man who felt they should be a woman (or a genetic man who felt they should be a woman could wind up as a genetic woman who felt they should be a man).
So... Here is where the REAL PROBLEM arises:
IFF the basic source of the gender dysphoria is genetic, and it carried along through any genetic level gender swap, then it would need to be fixed before a person could successfully transition.
Yet in successfully fixing the genetic cause for the gender-dysphoria, you then remove the desire, or "feeling" that one should be the other gender/sex... So there is no need for the transformation.
And this is the case for not just gender-dysphoria, but for a great many other conditions we are faced with encountering, such as this woman.
What if there really is a case of ethnic-dysphoria, where a person feels like they are really a different ethnicity? (I know that sounds utterly ridiculous, and it is on many levels, since ethnicity is primarily a phenotypic (physical appearance) issue).
I COMPLETELY SUPPORT both genotype and phenotype morphological freedom.
People should have the ability to transform themselves into centaurs, satyrs, dragons, or futonari if they wish to do so; people who want to turn themselves into Daleks or Cybermen (what exactly is the difference in those two??? I see no real distinction other than the shape of the case for their brain) should have that freedom.
So I see the whole changing yourself into a man or woman as a basic right.
Our current attitudes toward gender and sex are largely trapped by religious conservatism that fears sexuality, and who tend to fear morphological freedom as a threat to humanity itself (which is already threatened by far more dangerous stuff).
So... This woman is basically trapped by a society that places arbitrary distinctions and qualities upon physical appearance, and this created a psychological pathology in her where she felt the need to pretend to be black.
Strikes me as really problematic to tie sexuality, gender, race, and other social concepts to genetics (at least proportionally speaking; that is, I don't disclaim that genetics could play some role -- the problem is overemphasizing it to make some kind of claim to objectivity).
MrDwhitey wrote: My problem comes with her presenting someone who isn't her father as her father.
Agreed on that one.... The one article that I read on this issue (posted by a black dude I served in the army with), her parents acknowledge that since her teenage years, she's "always identified more with African culture than European culture"
Also, the reported "hate crimes" directed against her, I would have to see the write ups on them, to see the language used. If she has indeed spent some time in Mississippi, I would not be in the least bit surprised to see that she had been a target of hate crimes for helping black communities by the still remaining racists in that part of the country (and they are definitely there in MS)
Manchu wrote: Strikes me as really problematic to tie sexuality, gender, race, and other social concepts to genetics (at least proportionally speaking; that is, I don't disclaim that genetics could play some role -- the problem is overemphasizing it to make some kind of claim to objectivity).
Really it is tying it to epigenetics, which is related to genetics, but is a sort of larger control system for various variable traits.
Epigenetics is a huge organization of what amount to if-then-else statements for our genes to produce certain proteins, which in turn control other regulatory systems.
It is not reducing everything to a single gene (which is what genetics attempted to be), but rather to a genetic or epigenetic SYSTEM of genes and epi-genes (methylated sugars on codon sequences on our genes which trigger those genes only in the presence of certain environmental factors).
I still only know the most basic aspects of epigenetics, as I have not yet taken the upper-division epigenetics courses, nor the graduate level stuff I will need to take to finish my eventual PhD), but I know enough to know that everything in our body is tied to at least one epigenetic system (and most of what we currently know about shows a vast number of things tied to exactly one epigenetic system - like the size and shape of our nose or ears).
Sexuality and gender perception specifically is probably tied to at least three epigenetic systems, so what I described is likely a worst case scenario that would only happen in a limited number of people. But it remains a possibility, and even with many possible systems involved, it leaves in place the question involving the "fix" for these "malfunctions:" Do we just fix the malfunction, leaving the person as they are, without a gender-dysphoria, or do we alter their gender/sex and then fix the dysphoria?
Because ultimately, this question needs to be answered at some point, when we gain enough control over our genetic systems to be able to write whatever we wish into them.
BeAfraid wrote: Do we just fix the malfunction, leaving the person as they are, without a gender-dysphoria, or do we alter their gender/sex and then fix the dysphoria?
The answer seems to be pretty clearly "fix their body to match their brain", as demonstrated by the successful use of that option in the real world. It works, and the only reason to oppose it is bigoted beliefs about what a person "should" do. So I don't see what technobabble speculation about magically changing all of a person's genes has to do with anything.
BeAfraid wrote: Do we just fix the malfunction, leaving the person as they are, without a gender-dysphoria, or do we alter their gender/sex and then fix the dysphoria?
The answer seems to be pretty clearly "fix their body to match their brain", as demonstrated by the successful use of that option in the real world. It works, and the only reason to oppose it is bigoted beliefs about what a person "should" do. So I don't see what technobabble speculation about magically changing all of a person's genes has to do with anything.
You are missing the issue here.
One of the goals of the trans community is full genetic change.
So that a man who wishes to become a woman would go from having an XY genotype to having an XX genotype.
Think of it this way, you have a problem whereby you think you are a different color (let's say you are a Smurf who FEELS like he/she should be purple, and not blue). Simply painting you a different color might provide you with some comfort, but you would prefer if your body naturally WAS that color (purple).
But, we discover a way to make your genes make you purple, but the color-dysphoria remains unchanged. Now, you are purple, but you FEEL like you should be Blue (as you originally were), because the epigenetic markers producing a "dysphoria" remain.
If we discover a "fix" for the dysphoria, it removes the need to turn you purple. You no longer FEEL that you really should be purple instead.
Simply altering people's phenotype (appearance) remains the only way to help people feel like they are whole, or feel like they are in the right body.
But it does not really put them in the right body. They remain in a body that is genetically their original sex. Only their phenotypical gender display has been altered.
People do not understand that our phenotype (appearance) and (genotype) are not as connected as we often think they are, and our self-image is not as fixed as we think it is either (nor is it controlled by our actual appearance).
The way I understand the issue is: Traditionally, social categories are almost completely externally derived -- that is, what race or gender I am is mostly a matter of how people around me treat me, regardless of what I might prefer. And I am expected to "live up" to others' expectations by conforming to those categories. The challenge to this notion is that I should be able to decide which social categories are applied to me, how I want to conform to them or challenge them, and others should be expected to comply with my choices about my identity. This is a pretty dramatic reversal. While not discounting the possibility that genetic and/or physiological "defects" are relevant in certain cases, I think such explanations are red herrings in the larger social issue about who gets to choose who "I am." And there is also the problem of saddling these people's identities with medical-sounding terms like "disorder." Many people nowaccept that homosexuality is not some kind of "disorder" that needs to be cured/treated. Trans people still face that and I think a lot of trans people even see their own experience in that light, because of all this pseudo-biological baggage that is weighing down an essentially social question.
I don't mean to trivialize this matter but the most recent edition of Dungeons & Dragons was widely praised for explicitly stating that characters are not bound to a binary gender scheme. We're talking about a fictional world in which a person's biological sex can be magically changed. So if transexuality was purely a matter of wanting to be XX rather than XY, what is the need for a transgendered character? I think the answer is, because being transgendered is not as simple as a matter chromosome configuration (even in a world where that is no obstacle).
BeAfraid wrote: One of the goals of the trans community is full genetic change.
So that a man who wishes to become a woman would go from having an XY genotype to having an XX genotype.
Which, at this point, is scifi technobabble. Why are we still talking about it?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
BeAfraid wrote: But, we discover a way to make your genes make you purple, but the color-dysphoria remains unchanged. Now, you are purple, but you FEEL like you should be Blue (as you originally were), because the epigenetic markers producing a "dysphoria" remain.
This is contradicted by the fact that gender dysphoria does go away when the person's physical body is changed. I don't really see why you're assuming that making changes through scifi technobabble "genetics" instead of surgery and hormones would produce a different result.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Manchu wrote: Many people nowaccept that homosexuality is not some kind of "disorder" that needs to be cured/treated.
I don't think this is a good comparison at all. A transgendered person does have a disorder, they have a body that doesn't match what they think it should be. And they consider this a problem that needs to be fixed, with the desired treatment for the disorder being changes to their body to make it match their brain. The same isn't true at all for someone who is gay. They don't see themselves as having any kind of problem (unless they've been convinced by external pressure), other people believe that something is wrong with them. A gay person living in a bigot-free environment would be perfectly happy with who they are, a transgendered person in that same environment wouldn't.
There was a time, not long ago, when many gay people did see themselves as suffering from a disorder and there were attempts to treat it. I don't challenge that this was a result of social pressures. What I am suggesting is that perhaps the current way that many transgendered people see themselves, as suffering from a disorder, is also a result of social pressures and one day many transgendered people may also not see themselves in this way any longer.
Manchu wrote: There was a time, not long ago, when many gay people did see themselves as suffering from a disorder and there were attempts to treat it. I don't challenge that this was a result of social pressures. What I am suggesting is that perhaps the current way that many transgendered people see themselves, as suffering from a disorder, is also a result of social pressures and one day many transgendered people may also not see themselves in this way any longer.
I guess that's theoretically possible, but I don't think it's very plausible. With homosexuality there's a clear correlation between feeling disordered and external factors saying "you're disordered", and a gay person in a tolerant environment wouldn't feel the same way as one in a bigoted environment. And that was still true even when tolerant communities were a minority of society as a whole. But with transgendered people there isn't the same effect when you take the external pressures away. They'll probably think "I'm not subhuman filth like people kept calling me, but I still have the wrong body", but even in really tolerant and open-minded environments they don't go all the way to "I'm happy the way I am".
Manchu wrote: There was a time, not long ago, when many gay people did see themselves as suffering from a disorder and there were attempts to treat it. I don't challenge that this was a result of social pressures. What I am suggesting is that perhaps the current way that many transgendered people see themselves, as suffering from a disorder, is also a result of social pressures and one day many transgendered people may also not see themselves in this way any longer.
I'm not so sure about that, IIRC, in one of the previous "trans-threads" we had, someone posted a link or picture of an article in which, they found that many trans-people who had undergone "corrective" procedures still ended up committing suicide due to actually having a host of other mental health issues.
Obviously, I have no solutions to this problem, other than to say, "treat everyone with respect!" But, while I can't say from personal experience, I would have to kind of assume that a person with "boy parts" but feels like they should have "girl parts" and vice versa would naturally feel like there's something wrong with them. In this case, it could probably be more of a confirmation bias?
Peregrine wrote: But with transgendered people there isn't the same effect when you take the external pressures away.
The pressures I'm talking about are more about internalized expectations. For example, there is pressure on men to be sexually attracted to women. Men who do not experience that attraction can come to feel disordered. This is all experienced internally. Similarly, there is pressure on men to want to embody manliness. Men who instead experience a feminine identity similarly can come to feel disordered. Over time, people (including gay men) have started to accept that a man who is not attracted to women is not disordered. The same could eventually happen with transgendered people, both in terms of how they are perceived and how they perceive themselves. I am a skeptical about the "wrong body" phenomenon because I think we live in a culture where gender and physiology are pervasively conflated. I don't think we experience our bodies "biologically" except inasmuch as social conceits about gender are constructed with biological-sounding vocabulary.
BeAfraid wrote: Do we just fix the malfunction, leaving the person as they are, without a gender-dysphoria, or do we alter their gender/sex and then fix the dysphoria?
The answer seems to be pretty clearly "fix their body to match their brain", as demonstrated by the successful use of that option in the real world. It works, and the only reason to oppose it is bigoted beliefs about what a person "should" do. So I don't see what technobabble speculation about magically changing all of a person's genes has to do with anything.
It matters because if we, in the process of "fixing their body to match their brain", change how the brain works we could just have created an "un-fix", as it were, where one problem is replaced by the same problem in reverse.
Manchu wrote: The way I understand the issue is: Traditionally, social categories are almost completely externally derived -- that is, what race or gender I am is mostly a matter of how people around me treat me, regardless of what I might prefer. And I am expected to "live up" to others' expectations by conforming to those categories. The challenge to this notion is that I should be able to decide which social categories are applied to me, and others should be expected to comply with my choices about my identity. This is a pretty dramatic reversal. While not discounting the possibility that "genetic and/or physiologic "defects" are relevant in certain cases, I think such explanations are red herrings in the larger social issue about who gets to choose who "I am." And there is also the problem of saddling these people's identities with medical-sounding terms like "disorder." Many people nowaccept that homosexuality is not some kind of "disorder" that needs to be cured/treated. Trans people still face that and I think a lot of trans people even see their own experience in that light, because of all this pseudo-biological baggage that is weighing down an essentially social question.
OK, here you are onto what epigenetics is about.
Certain aspects of our psyche are not Genetic (absolutely fixed by a gene at our birth), but are Epigenetic (altered by our environment over time).
It is just that SOME THINGS are fixed at some point, even though that fix came from an epigenetic factor rather than from a genetic factor.
As I said, it is a huge number of "if-then-else" statements throughout our chromosomes, which control various protein activations throughout our lives.
As I already pointed out, the shape of our ears and nose are known to be epigenetic traits (they are alterations to proteins made by HOX genes while we are in the womb, depending upon the levels of certain hormones in the womb at certain points during the pregnancy, and then different hormones and nutrients in our diet post birth up to the age of about seven to ten).
Now, let me address a few other things.
NO WHERE did I claim that it is a "disorder" of the sort you are using (as in "Such-and-such" is "wrong" - morally or judgment ally).
When I use the term "disorder," it means "A departure from what we normally find."
It is not a moral judgment, it is simply pointing out there there is something causing a person to feel "Not right."
And... If that "disorder" remains intact while trying to make a person feel "right," they are never going to feel "right."
They will always feel like something is wrong, no matter what is done for them.
Homosexuality is another epigenetically determined trait. It can be thought of as a "disorder" in that most people are not gay. It doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with it (most of my boyfriends, and some of my girlfriends identify as gay. I did for a short period of time).
But this does not mean that there is not an epigenetic switch somewhere that can be flipped to alter a person's attraction to the same or opposite (or both) sexes.
We think that homosexuality is an irreversible epigenetic trait, though (many epigenetic traits are irreversible. I'm some epigenetic factors, once the "If-then" statement has been executed, it removes itself from the genome, making it impossible to activate again - theoretically it should be possible to re-assemble it, but we currently have no idea if this is the case or not). All current evidence points to epigenetic factors in the womb that make a person predisposed to homosexuality, and then other epigenetic factors in the person's life prior to puberty then fix their attraction to the same sex (currently we guess this happens between two and ten years of age).
So the issue of what it is that causes a person to feel like they are "not the right gender/sex" is a vitally important question.
Because it goes to the very bottom of the question of whether a truly genetic fix to the gender-dysphoria can really ever be produced.
If gender-dysphoria turns out to be an irreversible epigenetic trait, then the best we can do is to alter the phenotype as best as possible to make the person as feminine as possible.
But that is a worst-case scenario, and epigenetics tend to be much more forgiving in their mutability (changableness) than purely genetic factors.
As an example of the difference between genetics and epigenetics.
Genetics would be code that looks like:
For x = 1 to _number of traits_
. . . _trait_x = a++
Next x
An epigenetic list of traits would look like.
For x = 1 to _number of traits_
. . . If (protein_1a = yes || protein_6zz = no && (hormone_q11bj6 >= .00087 && hormone_h26fft1 <= .766))
. . . . . Set hormone_34hgz = hormone_34hgz - .01
. . . . . Make protein_12++
. . . . . If (protein_12 >= 200 $$ hormone_34hgz <= 4.923)
. . . . . . . . Set trait_x = (protein_12 + hormone_q11bj6 + mother's trait)
Next x
And that example is tremendously simple for an actual epigenetic trait. Very, very few of them have simple binary determinants (is there water at age X? What food did the child eat the most of?). But most are dizzying arrays of hormones, proteins, and base chemicals that influence a huge number of factors going into a single trait.
But, ultimately, the thing that almost everyone has a problem with accepting is that EVERYTHING is determined, at some point, by your genes (whether directly, as a genetic trait, or indirectly, as a combination of environment and epigenetic factors).
Most people rebell against that (for any number of reasons), but it all comes down to all animals (and life) being nothing but massively and vastly complex machines. Nothing occurs without a mechanistic reason. But having a mechanistic reason does not reduce things to a single cause-effect relationship.
BeAfraid wrote: Do we just fix the malfunction, leaving the person as they are, without a gender-dysphoria, or do we alter their gender/sex and then fix the dysphoria?
The answer seems to be pretty clearly "fix their body to match their brain", as demonstrated by the successful use of that option in the real world. It works, and the only reason to oppose it is bigoted beliefs about what a person "should" do. So I don't see what technobabble speculation about magically changing all of a person's genes has to do with anything.
It matters because if we, in the process of "fixing their body to match their brain", change how the brain works we could just have created an "un-fix", as it were, where one problem is replaced by the same problem in reverse.
OMG!
You just might be the very first person (non biologist, I am assuming) who understood this issue!
Soooo many people tend to think that my questioning this issue is some sort of anti-trans, or homophobic attitude, when my goal is to provide people of any sexual orientation or body-image with the freedom to be who they want to be.
It does present some very thorny questions, and philosophical implications that could be hijacked by Evangelicals with a very homophobic goal in mind.
But I am confident that the answers to these questions will make the evangelicals suitably unhappy and disappointed, and the gay and trans community quite happy (and, analogously, it should make the Furries quite happy as well, as we would then be able to turn them into the cat-people, dog-people, or overly sexualized My Little Pony-people of their dreams).
I think one issue is that gender and race and sexuality are phenomena that people experience in their lives but epigenetics is really not. It's sort of like how we see red roses or blue violets rather than photons bouncing off of surfaces at certain frequencies.
P.S. Technically the systems biologists at school understood this issue. But no one outside of academia, or the trans people I talked to understood the problem.
Manchu wrote: I think one issue is that gender and race and sexuality are phenomena that people experience in their lives but epigenetics is really not. It's sort of like how we see red roses or blue violets rather than protons bouncing of of surfaces at certain frequencies.
Photons... But yes.
Technically we DO "see" photons bouncing off of surfaces at different frequencies.
BUT. . .
We do not perceive them in that fashion. We perceive them as colors. The color = (identical to)" photon z bouncing off surface n at angle θ and frequency x".
But most people also do not know to differentiate between sensation and perception. The word "sensation" in our vernacular often means "perception" ("What sensation do you have when you stick your hand in the water.", "What sensation does a mouth full of pop-rocks produce?" And so on. . .).
But the two are very different things.
Sensation is the nervous response of cells to their environment (haptic, olfactory, auditory, gustatory, and visual). Four of those respond to molecules, two of them to EM radiation, and two of them to air-pressure, one of which responds to changes in air pressure (that would be Haptic, Olfactory, auditory, and gustatory; haptic and visual; haptic and auditory; and auditory).
Perception is how we experience the sensations after they have been transduced to nerve signals to our brain.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: It matters because if we, in the process of "fixing their body to match their brain", change how the brain works we could just have created an "un-fix", as it were, where one problem is replaced by the same problem in reverse.
But the point is that in the real world it doesn't work like that. We fix the body, the problem goes away. This is fact, not speculation, and has a history of success to support it. BeAfraid just keeps proposing all this bizarre technobabble "genetics" that has nothing to do with the real world. He's raising imaginary problems that could happen with imaginary treatment, and I really don't see the point.
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BeAfraid wrote: Soooo many people tend to think that my questioning this issue is some sort of anti-trans, or homophobic attitude, when my goal is to provide people of any sexual orientation or body-image with the freedom to be who they want to be.
That might be your goal, but it's nothing more than wishful thinking, no matter how much useless technobabble you post to "support" your ideas about cat-people or whatever.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: It matters because if we, in the process of "fixing their body to match their brain", change how the brain works we could just have created an "un-fix", as it were, where one problem is replaced by the same problem in reverse.
But the point is that in the real world it doesn't work like that. We fix the body, the problem goes away. This is fact, not speculation, and has a history of success to support it. BeAfraid just keeps proposing all this bizarre technobabble "genetics" that has nothing to do with the real world. He's raising imaginary problems that could happen with imaginary treatment, and I really don't see the point.
They are hardly "technobabble."
They are the primary focus of people actually working on this problem (gender-dysphoria).
You seem to be missing the point that changing the body is not changing the genes
Genotype=/=Phenotype in the case of people with gender-dysphoria.
This indicates a genetic issue of some sort.
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BeAfraid wrote: Soooo many people tend to think that my questioning this issue is some sort of anti-trans, or homophobic attitude, when my goal is to provide people of any sexual orientation or body-image with the freedom to be who they want to be.
That might be your goal, but it's nothing more than wishful thinking, no matter how much useless technobabble you post to "support" your ideas about cat-people or whatever.
BeAfraid wrote: They are the primary focus of people actually working on this problem (gender-dysphoria).
I don't think any serious researchers working on gender dysphoria are looking for ways to let furries become cat-people.
You seem to be missing the point that changing the body is not changing the genes
What's your point? Genes are invisible and irrelevant, what matters is the thing that they produce. If you can fix someone's problems by giving them a daily hormone pill then you don't need to screw around with trying to change all of their genes (which is probably impossible anyway) to make them produce that hormone "naturally".
You aren't a biologist, are you?
No, but you don't need to be a biologist to understand that transforming people into centaurs and dragons by magic "genetics" is science fiction, not reality.
I am so not understanding what is actually being discussed here, but I just think this story is absolutely hilarious.
She does look black (or rather, very light brown) to me though, apart from the eyes.
Here is a method of putting the issue that more people here might understand.
Epigenetics is kind of like a computer code, a series of if-then-else statements.
And, the issue of gender-dysphoria might (probably does, since that is what they teach us in class at UCLA) have an epigenetic basis.
So, to illustrate why this is a problem, follow the following pseudo-code to illustrate what MIGHT happen if we do not fully understand the genetic basis of the problem. With this pseudo-code, I make the assumption that gender is binary for the case we are using (it is either XX or XY, and ~XX = XY and ~XY =XX
IF (genderDysphoria = True)
. . . Let _genderGenotype = XX || XY
. . . Let _genderPhenotype = XX || XY
. . . Let _perceivedGenderPhenotype = ~_genderPhenotype
ELSE
_genderGenotype = XX || XY
_genderPhenotype = XX || XY
_perceivedGenderPhenotype = _genderPhenotype
This code is a very basic description of the problem, but the key line is:
• Let _perceivedGenderPhenotype = ~_genderPhenotype
To translate that into English, for any who do not know how to read logical symbols, it reads "Let the perceived gender appearance (phenotype) equal the opposite of the actual gender phenotype"
This means that if a person presents an appearance as a male, then they will see themselves as a female, and if they are female, they will see themselves as male.
If this code is analogous to what is happening with a person with gender-dysphoria, and we attempt to alter their genotype from XX to XY, or XY to XX without understanding how this mechanism works, then all we would be doing is changing the outward sex, but keeping the gender dysphoria intact, as it is keyed off of the existing genotype/phenotype COMBINATION, and not just the APPEARANCES of gender.
BeAfraid wrote: They are the primary focus of people actually working on this problem (gender-dysphoria).
I don't think any serious researchers working on gender dysphoria are looking for ways to let furries become cat-people.
You seem to be missing the point that changing the body is not changing the genes
What's your point? Genes are invisible and irrelevant, what matters is the thing that they produce. If you can fix someone's problems by giving them a daily hormone pill then you don't need to screw around with trying to change all of their genes (which is probably impossible anyway) to make them produce that hormone "naturally".
You aren't a biologist, are you?
No, but you don't need to be a biologist to understand that transforming people into centaurs and dragons by magic "genetics" is science fiction, not reality.
I see... You just missed the entire point, and are doing nothing more than PURPOSELY trying to miss the point, is that it?
If you would like, I could bury you under a series of links to papers where these very issues are taking place.
And, I would suggest you read up on genetic treatments for diseases, which do exactly what you claim is impossible (as do all viruses): alter our DNA (genetics).
And, I see DNA (the molecule) weekly. It is one of the few molecules that can be seen with an ordinary optical microscope. Genes are hardly irrelevant, nor "invisible."
They control literally everything about you, whether you like it or not.
MB
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Iron_Captain wrote: I am so not understanding what is actually being discussed here, but I just think this story is absolutely hilarious.
She does look black (or rather, very light brown) to me though, apart from the eyes.
Yes, it is, and what is being discussed isn't too closely tied to the article (it simply dealt with body-dysphoria). Just basically what could make a person think they were something else.
BeAfraid wrote: Here is a method of putting the issue that more people here might understand.
Why do you keep thinking that this is a case of not understanding you when I just don't agree with your absurd claims about making dragons and cat-people?
So, to illustrate why this is a problem, follow the following pseudo-code to illustrate what MIGHT happen if we do not fully understand the genetic basis of the problem.
Or, instead of speculating about what might happen with some imaginary treatment involving genetic changes we can look at what does happen with real treatments. And the answer is that fixing the body/hormones/etc to match the brain makes the dysphoria issue go away. I have no idea why you insist on speculating about hypothetical situations that have nothing to do with reality when we already know the answer to the question in the real world.
BeAfraid wrote: Here is a method of putting the issue that more people here might understand.
Why do you keep thinking that this is a case of not understanding you when I just don't agree with your absurd claims about making dragons and cat-people?
I am sorry, but are you really that stupid to not understand that the language I was using at the time was symbolic for the most part?
Yes, we can do things (currently, no need to wait) like alter people's genome to get the, to grow fur all over their body (even though it is illegal to do so in most places). It is a simple HOX gene alteration.
But you are obviously not understanding why genetics is important to an issue that has a genetic basis.
So, to illustrate why this is a problem, follow the following pseudo-code to illustrate what MIGHT happen if we do not fully understand the genetic basis of the problem.
Or, instead of speculating about what might happen with some imaginary treatment involving genetic changes we can look at what does happen with real treatments. And the answer is that fixing the body/hormones/etc to match the brain makes the dysphoria issue go away. I have no idea why you insist on speculating about hypothetical situations that have nothing to do with reality when we already know the answer to the question in the real world.
And this is why trying to explain things to people who don't understand basic biology is such a pain.
Because ALL of my Trans friends (for which I have MANY) would like a fix that alters their genome to match their phenotype.
They want to be BOTH physically and genetically male/female (whichever sex AND GENDER they perceive themselves to be).
Current treatments will not allow a male->female transsexual to do things like get pregnant, or have a working clitorus.
In order to have those things, they need a change that is at the level of the genome.
And, they worry that if the problem of gender-dysphoria is at the wrong genetic or epigenetic level:
• It could leave them simply changing from a man/woman to a woman/man who still perceived themselves to be the wrong gender.
• It leads to issues relating to whether the gender alteration is even necessary to begin with.
• And it could provide ammunition to rather bigoted people who might seek to apply the "fix" for the problem to other areas leading to some pretty ugly situations.
These are not issues to be so lightly dismissed (although I suppose if you are not capable of understanding that, then you have other issues that take priority) when so much is at stake for so many people.
You are not going to acclimate well to the future if you cannot understand how drastically humanity will be changing over the next half a century, and why genetic and epigenetic issues are so central to those decades.
Peregrine wrote: I just don't agree with your absurd claims about making dragons and cat-people?
If his claim is reduced to somehow turning a genetic male into a genetic female or vice versa, does that change your opinion?
Since this is the goal of most of the trans community, it is a rather important issue.
Most of my female trans friends would like (or would have liked) to have children (to be fair, two of them are, but they are not carrying the child, which was their wish).
To paraphrase you, you're not a sociologist or anthropologist are you?
No, Cognitive Scientist and Computational & Systems Biologist.
Although my first time through school I did study with Joseph Campbell, yet his work (and mine at the time) dealt with religious history, and mythology (but a huge amount of it was anthropological).
But that still does not alter the fact that gender is an artifact of our brain, which is a biological component. And that the brain's mechanisms are dictated by genes (whether directly, or in conjunction with the environment).
If gender-dysphoria had no genetic component, then it would simply be a choice made by a person during their life. Few people decide intentionally that they are in the wrong body.
Well, first, I haven't argued that there is no genetic component to how a person feels about their gender. As you may recall, I have specifically pointed out that I am not saying that several times.
Second, what you are positing there is a false dilemma premised on a misunderstanding of gender.
Manchu wrote: If his claim is reduced to somehow turning a genetic male into a genetic female or vice versa, does that change your opinion?
Not really, because it's still incredibly speculative and based on science that is questionable at best.
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BeAfraid wrote: I am sorry, but are you really that stupid to not understand that the language I was using at the time was symbolic for the most part?
You were not using it symbolically, you were making literal statements and saw no need to clarify until I called you on your scifi nonsense. But nice job adding a rule #1 violation to your poor communication.
Because ALL of my Trans friends (for which I have MANY) would like a fix that alters their genome to match their phenotype.
Really? This is the first I've heard of transgendered people really caring strongly that their genes (which they have no interaction with in their everyday life) matching their identity, compared to the importance of having their body match their identity. Are you seriously telling me that all of your friends really care strongly about having a genetic test (the only way to see whether they have male or female genes) give the right answer?
Current treatments will not allow a male->female transsexual to do things like get pregnant, or have a working clitorus.
And why do you think that changing someone's genes will allow that? Changing the contents of a person's genes doesn't reverse the results of years/decades of development, and it's incredibly unlikely that if you swapped XY with XX a person's body would remove all of the male attributes, restore them to their original sex-neutral state, and then re-develop them into the appropriate female attributes. You'd just have a person with a male body and XX genes.
You are not going to acclimate well to the future if you cannot understand how drastically humanity will be changing over the next half a century, and why genetic and epigenetic issues are so central to those decades.
Peregrine wrote: Not really, because it's still incredibly speculative and based on science that is questionable at best.
I agree. I'm not sure what it would mean, if it even could be done, to suddenly transform a genetic male into a genetic female but I'm completely skeptical as to it being the same thing as turning a man into woman.
Manchu wrote: Well, first, I haven't argued that there is no genetic component to how a person feels about their gender. As you may recall, I have specifically pointed out that I am not saying that several times.
Second, what you are positing there is a false dilemma premised on a misunderstanding of gender.
First step is to demonstrate that there is a difference. Let's just think about a trans person. Neither their genotype nor their phenotype matches their gender identity.
Peregrine wrote: Not really, because it's still incredibly speculative and based on science that is questionable at best.
I agree. I'm not sure what it would mean, if it even could be done, to suddenly transform a genetic male into a genetic female but I'm completely skeptical as to it being the same thing as turning a man into woman.
Geez!!!
There are VAST numbers of biological processes that only occur in an XX or XY genotype (more for the XY than the XX, because MOST (but not all) genes in an XX genotype occur in both chromosomes).
Hormone regulation being the most important. Transsexuals have to take large amounts of hormones to retain the physical characteristics of their desired gender. Being able to alter their phenotype with a change in genotype is HARDLY "Science Fiction' because we have examples of Birds, Fish, and Frogs that do exactly that (turn from male into female or female to male - not to mention that any Plant can do it).
People don't seem to understand the unity of the gene. The same genes that produce hemoglobin in a human being produce hemoglobin in a wasp. The same genes that control body plan (HOX genes) exist in EVERY animal on earth, and are regulated by the same g-proteins and factors as well. The list of genes shared by all life is enormous.
So... If a fish, frog, or bird can alter its phenotype completely, and then give birth to live young, then the same thing is possible in a human being (with the right control genes).
In fact, if we were allowed to do so, we could take the genes that allow for gender-switching from one of these animals and insert it into a fetus RIGHT NOW and produce a human being that could switch gender. We do this all the time to produce transgenic plants and animals (although currently it is constrained to animals like insects and reptiles, with only a very few birds and mammals). But the technique has been shown to be incredibly simple, and effective.
But it is currently illegal to do so.
So, THAT is why this issue is of rather high importance to the transgendered, just to mention a few. Because not only are the genes that cause gender-dysphoria important to discovering how to best Complete the transition from one gender to the other, but it has rather drastic health issues as well (Gender reassignment comes with a LOT of risks, which could be minimized if we knew more about the endocrine system, and the genetic factors that regulate it. Simply flipping the genome would allow us to resolve ALL of those).
Addendum:
Because I cannot easily post links on my iPad (it has problems), I did not include a link to the protoandry or protogyny (sequential hermaphroditism) that I mentioned earlier. The Wikipedia article does not include the bird that changes gender (yet) because it was just discovered a few months ago (or maybe last year, I will have to ask my sister - she is an ornithologist/zoologist). But here is a link to the trait:
Manchu wrote: Just to be clear, you are talking about doing this to an adult?
Eventually, yes.
We would use an inactive retrovirus to insert the necessary changes to their chromosomes.
Retroviruses can be programmed to do this, and it is one means of producing transgenic organisms.
There are a LOT of things that could be sped up by using a surgical intervention during the change brought on by their genome (which would take several years to complete - we can't change physics, just biology). But even these might be unnecessary in theory.
The only place where a surgical intervention might be preferred would be in genital reconstruction and possibly in skeletal reconstruction (it would be difficult to get the widening of the pelvis that occurs in women, which occurs during puberty, which would be incredibly painful to subject an adult to - just as an example).
But in the case of genitalia, in a male->female, the penis would transform into urethra and clitorus, and would remain. . . Pronounced.
It would probably be a good idea to perform a reductive and reconstructive (cosmetic) surgery to the new female vagina, labia, and clitorus.
For female->male you have exactly the opposite problem. The urethra and clitorus fuse to become the penis, which would be rather small. There are also problems that might need a surgical nudge or two concerning the formation of the prostate in the female from the base of the cervix.
There are other issues particular to each transformation that may require, or would benefit from surgical enhancements, that deal with issues surrounding other structural changes between the two genders.
AND.... There WILL be people who choose hermaphroditism, to be BOTH genders at once... They might choose to be an androgyn (someone who presents equally as either gender), or they could choose to present as predominantly male, or predominantly female, yet have the genitalia of both genders.
We know that hermaphroditism is possible because we see it all over the place (in both animal and plant kingdom).
But, yes... It would be in adults, or young children, depending upon when the epigenetic factors become fixed in determining gender perception.
BeAfraid wrote: People don't seem to understand the unity of the gene.
No, you don't seem to understand how genes work. Let's give you an example to work with:
You (presumably) have the genes for having two arms. In the developmental process where you went from a single cell to an adult those genes produced two arms and allowed them to grow until they reached their full adult size. Now let's say you suffer a horrible accident and lose an arm. You still have the genes for two arms, but your body isn't going to grow another arm to match those genes. You would have to find a way to reactivate the growth process, rebuild the starting point that your arm develops from, and somehow get a new arm to grow properly without interfering with any other parts of your body (which need to remain in "adult" mode). That's MUCH more complicated than just saying "you have the genes for two arms".
Same thing with transgendered people. Simply swapping some genes doesn't mean that the body will change to match those genes. It's theoretically possible that you could combine a genetic change with a way to reverse and redo the development process, but that is a much more difficult problem to solve and there's no guarantee that it can be solved.
So... If a fish, frog, or bird can alter its phenotype completely, and then give birth to live young, then the same thing is possible in a human being (with the right control genes).
...
You really don't understand biology. I'm beginning to suspect that your supposed PhD in biology you're working on is a lie. And TBH your credential bragging in general is starting to look pretty suspicious.
LOL so you mean if we injected you with a retrovirus that re-wrote the part of your DNA responsible for the development of two arms, one of your arms (which one?) wouldn't simply wither away?
Manchu wrote: Again it seems like you are just talking about organs. I don't see anything about gender.
If you want to talk "gender," it is a perception, seated in a combination of our lateral temporal lobes, and in the lambic system (with a combination of the amygdaloid, hypothalamus, and basal brain stem).
It is a combination of a great many things, but it is THE BRAIN which controls our perceptions of gender.
In most people the perception = reality (physical appearance).
But in some small number, the perception seems to be exactly opposite that of the physical (presented) gender. Something happened in their brain that caused them to perceive themselves as being the gender they do not physically possess.
Since the brain is a physical system, it is a physical reason that things happen within it. For ALL of those things, there is a genetic basis (either directly, or as an epigenetic trait).
Basic cognition is an aspect of genes. Our higher cognitive abilities are a function of genes. The actual thoughts themselves are a bit more involved than to say they are just a function of genes, but the genes are what allows the superstructure for these thoughts to occur, and the genes can force some thoughts.
For instance, if I remove a gene from your thalamus to produce adequate amounts of dopamine, you will begin thinking about killing yourself until you eventually die from either suicide or some form of seizure (dopamine prevents our muscles from locking up due to the signaling of achetocholine in the amygdala to contract all muscles (all the time - dopamine is an interrupt for this process, telling the amygdala to NOT send the "contraction" signals. An error in this pathway is what causes Parkinson's Disease/Syndrome. This pathway also controls your emotional responses to things).
Somewhere in that tangle of neurons is a system of neurons that controls what gender you perceive yourself to be, as I have said, and what gender you ARE (your physical, sexual traits) affects what hormones run through the brain, which in turn affect what gender you perceive yourself to be.
Systems do not reduce to one single cause, they are a network of variables that affect each other.
Gender perception and choice happens to be one such system. And central to every node of that system is a selection of genes (possibly a System of genes) which control it.
I wish that I had my sexual genetics textbook with me, this would be easier to explain.
You cannot untangle gender from sex. Nor can you separate either from genes (even if the genes are not an immediate, proximal cause of some sexual or gender trait).
MB
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Manchu wrote: LOL so you mean if we injected you with a retrovirus that re-wrote the part of your DNA responsible for the development of two arms, one of your arms (which one?) wouldn't simply wither away?
Yep. HOX genes 3 - 6 would do that.
And we have done that on rats.
Addendum:
Oh! And which arm it would be would depend upon which gene and what you told it to do.
Generally, one HOX gene controls both sides of the body, but there is another gene controlling for bilateral symmetry. You can code it for one side or the other (it is another HOX gene, but since I have not got that deep into developmental genetics yet - saving it for grad school - I cannot recall which one).
My impression is, your most basic premise is that gender and sex are the same thing. But nothing you have posted actually shows as much. So for you, truth is chemical. But biochemical processes can malfunction and this creates contradictions, basically disorders or falsehoods, that can be repaired to get back to truth. In this schema, gender just means what is perceived, whether it is objectively (that is, chemically) true or false. In other words, you would seem to hold that a transgendered person is malfunctioning -- either (some part of) the brain is malfunctioning or the body is. Whichever one doesn't really concern you, because you think you can fix this contradiction/falsehood from either point. So long as the body matches the mind brain in the end, this would be a restoration of truth.
Iron_Captain wrote: I am so not understanding what is actually being discussed here, but I just think this story is absolutely hilarious.
She does look black (or rather, very light brown) to me though, apart from the eyes.
Manchu wrote: My impression is, your most basic premise is that gender and sex are the same thing. But nothing you have posted actually shows as much. So for you, truth is chemical. But biochemical processes can malfunction and this creates contradictions, basically disorders or falsehoods, that can be repaired to get back to truth. In this schema, gender just means what is perceived, whether it is objectively (that is, chemically) true or false. In other words, you would seem to hold that a transgendered person is malfunctioning -- either (some part of) the brain is malfunctioning or the body is. Whichever one doesn't really concern you, because you think you can fix this contradiction/falsehood from either point. So long as the body matches the mind brain in the end, this would be a restoration of truth.
No, gender and sex are two different things, but are deeply connected.
Just like your thoughts are not your brain, but are rather your brain + time (patterns of neurons firing, and ephaptic coupling, reverse action potentials, and other temporal processes give rise to specific thoughts).
So, like thoughts and the brain (you cannot have thoughts without the brain) you cannot have gender without sex (gender is an expression of sex - whether it is an identical expression of sex is what concerns gender-dysphoria).
Addendum:
You seem to be putting value loaded terms into the discussion that are causing problems.
YES, gender-dysphoria is a "malfunction" in the sense that it is a deviation from what we call typical, normal operation of the brain.
If it were not, then we would see Significant numbers of the population with these issues.
It is a malfunction in the same way that a person who has some form of depression is malfunctioning. Or that a person who has Parkinson's Syndrome is malfunctioning.
This does not mean that there is any value judgment for the person, or that there is an attempt to devalue them.
And it is not about establishing "Truth" but about establishing WHY gender-dysphoria occurs, and what to do for people who suffer from it (ask anyone who is transsexual if their life has been easy - i.e. Have they "suffered" as a result of it - and they will say "yes").
Simply altering the physical appearance is not enough for most transsexuals. They wish to have more than just a cosmetic change.
To do that, you must have a genetic change.
Yet if you alter the genes without understanding the dysphoria, you could be wasting your time, or, worse, doing damage to the person that could kill them.
Most people have a hard time with this issue because they cannot wrap their heads around the fact that biology is governed by genes (even things like our thoughts) and they begin to put value judgments on discussions about genetic issues (which is a real danger, because the answers to some genetic questions have been shown to give ammunition to people with toxic and outright evil goals and intentions or beliefs).
Without knowing the cause, or the systemic model/equation for something biological, we cannot produce the desired goals for people who happen to possess some trait which they find undesirable.
So... Stop trying to think of this in terms of good/bad/true/false as if it were a value judgment.
This is just about WHAT IS and what people who have some form of gender/body-dysphoria would like done to have a body image or gender that matches their perception.
With Caitlyn Jenner figuring so prominently in the news, the comparison has been made here and essentially everywhere else on the internet between her and Dolezal.
To take this particular discussion back to Dolezal, I suspect BeAfraid would allow that some kind of genesplicing that would increase the melanin expression in Dolezal's skin would be sufficient to make her black.
Manchu wrote: Gender is not an expression of sex. The correlation is pervasive but not necessary.
I don't know what relevance this has to anything. Nor where I ever said that gender is an expression of sex.
There certainly seems to be a desire among most people to have the two equate.
That is why transsexuals undergo re-assignment surgery. So that the two match as closely as possible.
You seem to be too hung up on that, when it is irrelevant to the issue.
The only relevance (which I pointed out earlier) is that to most people sex and gender are an identity (they are equal to each other - not an "identity" like a superhero's secret identity).
The language of Social Politics only clouds the issues in biology. To say nothing of running into some rather substantial contradictions with biology due to the persistence of dualistic thinking in much of philosophy.
MB
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Manchu wrote: With Caitlyn Jenner figuring so prominently in the news, the comparison has been made here and essentially everywhere else on the internet between her and Dolezal.
To take this particular discussion back to Dolezal, I suspect BeAfraid would allow that some kind of genesplicing that would increase the melanin expression in Dolezal's skin would be sufficient to make her black.
Easily, and you don't even need genes. We have an epigenetic system that would darken her skin with the exposure to the right hormones (it would alter genetic expression). But the genes controlling melanin are already present.
BeAfraid wrote: Nor where I ever said that gender is an expression of sex.
BeAfraid wrote: So, like thoughts and the brain (you cannot have thoughts without the brain) you cannot have gender without sex (gender is an expression of sex - whether it is an identical expression of sex is what concerns gender-dysphoria).
BeAfraid wrote: The language of Social Politics only clouds the issues in biology.
The issue of gender is not only nor even primarily biological. The same applies to the question of race.
BeAfraid wrote: Stop trying to think of this in terms of good/bad/true/false as if it were a value judgment.
This is just about WHAT IS
Not about truth, simply about "WHAT IS." This is totally incoherent.
BeAfraid wrote: Nor where I ever said that gender is an expression of sex.
BeAfraid wrote: So, like thoughts and the brain (you cannot have thoughts without the brain) you cannot have gender without sex (gender is an expression of sex - whether it is an identical expression of sex is what concerns gender-dysphoria).
OK... So I did say it.
It is an incomplete expression, which is factually correct, but technically wrong (or is that the other way around???).
The point that I was trying to make is that gender is irrelevant without sex. You can't even have a gender without sex (what gender is a hydra or a paramecium?)
But I will retract the statement in favor of the more correct statement that one cannot have gender without sex.
Even if that is true (which is questionable) it is still not a demonstration that gender is necessarily a function of sex. To accept your premise for the sake of argument, and to contextualize it as a historical phenomenon, it could simply be a matter of sex heretofore serving as the frame of reference against which gender has been constructed.
In terms of the value-laden usage of "truth' that you used before, it has nothing at all in relation with the existential truth involved in what is (ontology).
You seem to be using the word "truth' to mean "Something morally valuable."
When the issue of the causes of gender-dysphoria is not concerned with the moral value of whether a person has a form of gender-dysphoria or not. The issue is just to find those causes so that they might be of use (utility) to the people who have such a dysphoria, so that they might make a decision about what they wish to do (if anything) about it.
BeAfraid wrote: The point that I was trying to make is that gender is irrelevant without sex.
Nope. Remove all of a person's physical sex characteristics and they'll still have a gender.
(what gender is a hydra or a paramecium?)
That's an irrelevant question because a hydra or a paramecium does not have self-awareness or society. Sex is physical characteristics and genetics, gender is how we see ourselves and how we fit into society. An entity that is neither capable of thinking about what it is nor interacting socially with other members of its species can not have any concept of gender, regardless of its sexual attributes (or lack thereof).
check out the Berdache system used in the Aztec Empire before Cortez showed up with his merry band of conquistadors.
To the OP, I am curious.... In the other article that I read, they talked to her parents, who said, "she's always identified with the African community" and even went so far as to adopt black siblings "for her" At some point, as a parent, shouldn't you sit back and say, "ya know there may be something wrong here?"
For the record, I'm not saying that IDing with a culture is wrong.... It IS wrong however to say you ARE of that culture. To me, it doesn't matter if you say you are a pony, cat-person or black person, there's still a disconnect in the brain somewhere. I mean, if she's IDing her black neighbor as her father, instead of her actual father, is there something serious in her past that caused this disconnect to where she doesn't see her actual parents as parents? I'm thinking of a Sybil-esque situation, where perhaps there was some serious abuse in the past, and this woman, to escape from it, ended up IDing with her neighbor, and viewed him as her father, etc.
BeAfraid wrote: You seem to be using the word "truth' to mean "Something morally valuable."
Actually, what I am getting at when I use the word in evaluating your seeming worldview is that it is tantamount to will. But yes, I think your metaphysics are driven by a sense of morality that may be invisible to you because you so deeply take it for granted.
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Ensis Ferrae wrote: At some point, as a parent, shouldn't you sit back and say, "ya know there may be something wrong here?"
There is a lot being left unsaid. Why is she so estranged from her parents? They say it is because she doesn't want to be seen as white. But what's her story? And why did one of her adoptive brothers decide to leave her parents' home, seemingly cut off all contact from them, when he turned 16? Seems like a very complicated situation that is being underrepoted to maximize outrage about someone daring to identify with a race despite how strangers reading the story would prefer to categorize her.
It makes no sense for a variable with no signifier to have a value.
It is pointing to an empty set.
Claiming that "If you remove a human being's "Sex" and they can still have a gender" is nonsense, because it is impossible to remove a mammals' sex.
Mammals, and MOST animaliaCANNOT BE SEXLESS this is like trying to claim you can be any letter you wish in an alphabet that does not exist.
And it is the primary point of disagreement among the more strident members of the Social Justice Movement and biology as a whole.
It might be possible at some point to create a person who reproduces through cellular mitosis (asexually) but for them to claim a gender would be meaningless with the way that way associate gender in our world (which might be a problem).
But this still ignores the fact that gender-dysphoria is not a choice, while gender might be a choice (although, not likely).
People with gender-dysphoria didn't decide that they wanted to be that way, and we have found AMPLE physical and genetic differences in male->female transsexuals that indicate that this dysphoria was something that occurred in the uterus.
BeAfraid wrote: It makes no sense for a variable with no signifier to have a value.
It is pointing to an empty set.
This is a fairly common social phenomenon.
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BeAfraid wrote: People with gender-dysphoria didn't decide that they wanted to be that way
You're tilting at windmills here. Neither I nor any other of your interlocutors (so far as I can tell) are arguing that transgendered people choose to be transgendered. (I am not going to use the debatable terminology of "gender-dysphoria.")
Claiming that "If you remove a human being's "Sex" and they can still have a gender" is nonsense, because it is impossible to remove a mammals' sex.
again... check out the Berdache system.
The Berdache System is irrelevant to the issue. I am not contesting the existence of alternative genders, but simply that none of them are something that a person chooses like they do their socks in the morning. All are pretty much the product of a genetic or epigenetic factor.
The issue I am pointing out is that Gender-Dysphoria:
is something that some people choose to correct by having re-assignment surgery, because the availability of a complete genetic replacement is currently not available, and the danger exists that the dysphoria could persist after such a genetic replacement, such that's the person still felt they were not the correct gender (which is what Gender Dysphoria is).
But Manchu is trying to pull some sort of obfuscation of the issue by constantly bringing up an irrelevant issue about gender, as if that makes any difference to people who currently do not have the same gender and appearance, these people wish that's their genotype matched their phenotype after re-assignment, yet it might not be possible to achieve this, depending upon the causes of gender-dysphoria to begin with (sorry Manchu, but that is the terminology we use for the issue. If you have something better, that actually defines the issue as precisely, then feel free to suggest it to the appropriate authorities for official adoption).
It is relevant to the issue, because as you have said many times, sex is gender, at least, plays a very significant part to it.
The Berdache system proves that all wrong. Society plays probably the biggest role in "gender" identity, and the Aztecs happened to have had a system in place where fathers could determine the gender of their children at any point in that child's life.
Anyhow... Yeah Manchu, I think that there are some significant issues not being brought up in any of the articles about the OP, and the more it's not talked about, the more I'm inclined to think there was some form of abuse going on in that household when that woman was growing up.
I can see why the lies and falsehoods she willfully perpetrated are causing issue. That being said, when you have to declare your race isn't it essentially what you choose to identify with?
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: If a white woman gets to call herself black and be taken seriously, can I identify as a Kryptonian?
I suppose that you can if you can show that you can mimic the properties of a Kryptonian.
Do they have spray-on bullet-proof skin?
MB
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hotsauceman1 wrote: I want to identify as Native American For those scholarships.
THIS gets to the heart of why this sort of cross-cultural identification is problematic.
Technically, I have no problem (nor should anyone else) if a person wishes to identify as another ethnicity (using the term "race" is problematic, since such a term has no definition that can be properly nailed down. "Ethnicity" though does have a definition that does work - is capable of defining things which have specific markers of either culture, identity, or appearance/phenotype).
I happen to qualify as being both Native American (my Great-Great-Grandmother was a Caddo/Choctaw Indian/Native - her mother was Caddo, and father Choctaw), and Jewish (again, I have relatives who were German and Swiss Jewish, many of whom converted to Lutheran between WWI and WWII in order to escape persecution).
But I have not used either of those in order to get scholarships, or other benefits because I am primarily German/English/Irish, and I come from a family who was fairly wealthy (and parts of it still are, thanks o my older sister protecting much of the Estate from my uncle's idiocy and lecherousness).
There exists a real need by many minorities for help and assistance in overcoming poverty (which I did not fully understand until I was disowned when I was younger for defying my parents, and wound up living on the streets).
Poverty is not something that is due to laziness, or poor management of money (it requires actually having enough money to "manage" for that to even be a factor), but mostly due to a culture that continues to marginalize the poor, and forces them to pay more for goods and services that others with capital.
Also, some minorities suffered pretty severe treatment that officially marginalized and penalized them for centuries, prior to the mid-20th century, and the aid we offer to these minorities is an attempt to raise them as a group to an equal status to the largely white ruling class in the USA and Western Europe.
So... For someone to adopt an ethnic identity of a marginalized group carries with it problems of whether they qualify for aid offered to members of that minority.
Just saying outright "NO!" seems at first to be the right and sensible thing (which I largely agree with - they have every opportunity to take off the minority "clothing"/appearance they have adopted in order to return to their privileged (Oh! how I HATE that word!) status as a member of a dominate ethnic group (in the USA and Western Europe, this is Caucasian/White).
But, depending upon how deep their association with that adopted ethnicity goes, they could very well have become so deeply identified with that ethnicity that they too suffer from the depredations that actual membership]/i] in that ethnicity causes.
So... Turns out to be more complex an issue.
As an example:
My older sister married a Persian, which required her to convert to Islam. They are not particularly observant Muslims, but it has caused friction where she works (she is the VP and Head of the Legal Dept for a major Petro-Chemical company in Texas, as well as the executor and CEO of our family's estate), and at the schools of their daughter (where my sister is looked down upon by the largely WASP demographic of the other students.
So, despite my sister's membership in the Upper-Class, economically, she does suffer from pretty severe discrimination as a result of an adopted identity.
But.... As I have pointed out to her, a LOT of this is due to her tendency to [i]OVERLY identify with the culture, and much of what she suffers could be resolved by simply dressing a bit more Western, as she did before she was married.
I know a LOT about what it is like to be persecuted because of an affected or adopted physical appearance.
I was one of the 2nd Generation of Punks, and the first generation of Goth/Deathrockers in the USA. In the 1980s, we suffered horrific persecution from the mainstream population due to our appearance.
But we had the luxury of being able to simply drop our affected appearance, and return to normal. Just like a person who adopts another Ethnicity.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: If a white woman gets to call herself black and be taken seriously, can I identify as a Kryptonian?
You're free to identify yourself as whatever you want. Noone is able to or has the right to stop you from doing that. Don't be offended, however, if people don't call you / see you as a Kryptonian. You're asking them for a favor, not the other way around.
Shadow Captain Edithae wrote: If a white woman gets to call herself black and be taken seriously, can I identify as a Kryptonian?
You're free to identify yourself as whatever you want. Noone is able to or has the right to stop you from doing that. Don't be offended, however, if people don't call you / see you as a Kryptonian. You're asking them for a favor, not the other way around.
By that logic, asking a crazed gunman not to shoot you is asking for a favour too. It's true, but it's also meaningless; we don't call the gunman reasonable for simply rejecting this simple favour, do we?
JUNE 15--The NAACP official who today resigned in the face of evidence that she masqueraded as black once sued Howard University for denying her teaching posts and a scholarship because she was a white woman, The Smoking Gun has learned.
Rachel Dolezal, 37, who headed the NAACP’s Spokane, Washington chapter, sued Howard for discrimination in 2002, the year she graduated from the historically black college with a Master of Fine Arts degree.
Dolezal, then known as Rachel Moore, named the university and Professor Alfred Smith as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C.’s Superior Court. During the pendency of the civil case, Smith was chairman of Howard’s Department of Art.
According to a Court of Appeals opinion, Dolezal's lawsuit “claimed discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender.” She alleged that Smith and other school officials improperly blocked her appointment to a teaching assistant post, rejected her application for a post-graduate instructorship, and denied her scholarship aid while she was a student.
The court opinion also noted that Dolezal claimed that the university’s decision to remove some of her artworks from a February 2001 student exhibition was “motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over” her.
As detailed in the court opinion, Dolezal’s lawsuit contended that Howard was “permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult.”
Judge Zoe Bush dismissed Dolezal’s complaint in February 2004, 18 months after the lawsuit was filed and Dolezal was deposed on several occasions. Bush found no evidence that Dolezal was discriminated on the basis of race or other factors. The D.C. Court of Appeals subsequently affirmed Bush’s decision.
Following the dismissal of Dolezal’s lawsuit (and the Court of Appeals decision), she was ordered to reimburse Howard for a “Bill of Costs” totaling $2728.50. During the case, she was also ordered to pay the university nearly $1000 in connection with an “obstructive and vexatious” court filing that sought to improperly delay her examination by an independent doctor.
Dolezal’s lawsuit, included “claims for medical and emotional distress damages,” according to a court docket. (5 pages)
It is probably just me, but we seem to be in a period of peak insane among the population in the USA.
I suppose it could get worse.
But it is troubling enough as it is.
We have Radial Right-Wing "Patriots" shooting up the police in Dallas, and insane "Political Correctness" in people going to extremes with attempts to appropriate ethnicity.
It is probably just me, but we seem to be in a period of peak insane among the population in the USA.
I suppose it could get worse.
But it is troubling enough as it is.
We have Radial Right-Wing "Patriots" shooting up the police in Dallas, and insane "Political Correctness" in people going to extremes with attempts to appropriate ethnicity.
MB
I though the guy in Dallas was pissed about a custody battle loss. Not sure how that would make him a 'patriot' to anyone.
It is probably just me, but we seem to be in a period of peak insane among the population in the USA.
I suppose it could get worse.
But it is troubling enough as it is.
We have Radial Right-Wing "Patriots" shooting up the police in Dallas, and insane "Political Correctness" in people going to extremes with attempts to appropriate ethnicity.
MB
I though the guy in Dallas was pissed about a custody battle loss. Not sure how that would make him a 'patriot' to anyone.
Some of his online activity was on a "Sovereign Citizen Patriots" forum.
Sovereign Citizens claim to be the True Defenders of the Constitution and immune from any laws passed by the Federal Government.
They usually tend to wind up doing exactly what this guy did when they make the news (such as the killings of cops in Georgia):
Only Federal Law Enforcement (The FBI, and DNI, and Secret Service) seem to be acknowledging the connection between our president and the rise of these groups (there has been something like a 2000% rise in Sovereign Citizen crimes since 2009, and around a 5000% - 10000% rise since 2012).
It's that whole "the ACA is socialism," "Obama wants to take our guns," "FEMA concentration camps" thing.
This guy is just another incident of one of them going really far off the rails. Sovereign Citizen involvement also tends to be correlated with a high degree of mental health issues.
Only Federal Law Enforcement (The FBI, and DNI, and Secret Service) seem to be acknowledging the connection between our president and the rise of these groups (there has been something like a 2000% rise in Sovereign Citizen crimes since 2009, and around a 5000% - 10000% rise since 2012).
It's that whole "the ACA is socialism," "Obama wants to take our guns," "FEMA concentration camps" thing.
This guy is just another incident of one of them going really far off the rails. Sovereign Citizen involvement also tends to be correlated with a high degree of mental health issues.
MB
There is zero correlation between libertarianism and "mental health issues". No more than being a democrat, republican, socialist, communist etc. Nice strawman argument though.
The guy who shot up the police station in Dallas didn't do it for political reasons and saying "he went to forums" isn't verifiable. I'd really like to see where you saw that because not even CNN is making that claim from what i've read.
I google searched and didn't find any reports saying he "went to forums" or had any sort of connection with sovereign citizens.
As for the rest of the mud slinging. The ACA was most certainly enacting socialism and Obama most certainly wants to ban assault rifles. To say otherwise is being intellectually dishonest. Equating those with the FEMA "camps" shows that you have a bias and an axe to grind.
I like to vote Green Party because I enjoy throwing away my vote.
As for this lady, my give-a-damn meter is hovering between "STFU and GTFO" and "Moron". Claiming her adopted brother as her son and the neighbor as her dad is LOL worthy.
It is probably just me, but we seem to be in a period of peak insane among the population in the USA.
I suppose it could get worse.
But it is troubling enough as it is.
We have Radial Right-Wing "Patriots" shooting up the police in Dallas, and insane "Political Correctness" in people going to extremes with attempts to appropriate ethnicity.
MB
I though the guy in Dallas was pissed about a custody battle loss. Not sure how that would make him a 'patriot' to anyone.
Some of his online activity was on a "Sovereign Citizen Patriots" forum.
Sovereign Citizens claim to be the True Defenders of the Constitution and immune from any laws passed by the Federal Government.
They usually tend to wind up doing exactly what this guy did when they make the news (such as the killings of cops in Georgia):
Only Federal Law Enforcement (The FBI, and DNI, and Secret Service) seem to be acknowledging the connection between our president and the rise of these groups (there has been something like a 2000% rise in Sovereign Citizen crimes since 2009, and around a 5000% - 10000% rise since 2012).
It's that whole "the ACA is socialism," "Obama wants to take our guns," "FEMA concentration camps" thing.
This guy is just another incident of one of them going really far off the rails. Sovereign Citizen involvement also tends to be correlated with a high degree of mental health issues.
MB
So a link to a generic sovereign citizens = The Devil site, but ZERO proof this guy did his heinous act under any political motivation at all,and there are a slew of actual news sites, interviews with his family (parents and his ex) and the cops which pretty clearly state he did this over the custody issue.
You're really stellar in your attempt to make this look like some right wing nut job committing a crime because he is a right wing nut job.
As for your claim that "They usually tend to wind up doing exactly what this guy did when they make the news (such as the killings of cops in Georgia)", your definition of "usually" must be an interesting one, because in the real world, it is actually unusual for folks to make war against the police.
Only Federal Law Enforcement (The FBI, and DNI, and Secret Service) seem to be acknowledging the connection between our president and the rise of these groups (there has been something like a 2000% rise in Sovereign Citizen crimes since 2009, and around a 5000% - 10000% rise since 2012).
It's that whole "the ACA is socialism," "Obama wants to take our guns," "FEMA concentration camps" thing.
This guy is just another incident of one of them going really far off the rails. Sovereign Citizen involvement also tends to be correlated with a high degree of mental health issues.
MB
There is zero correlation between libertarianism and "mental health issues". No more than being a democrat, republican, socialist, communist etc. Nice strawman argument though.
The guy who shot up the police station in Dallas didn't do it for political reasons and saying "he went to forums" isn't verifiable. I'd really like to see where you saw that because not even CNN is making that claim from what i've read.
I google searched and didn't find any reports saying he "went to forums" or had any sort of connection with sovereign citizens.
As for the rest of the mud slinging. The ACA was most certainly enacting socialism and Obama most certainly wants to ban assault rifles. To say otherwise is being intellectually dishonest. Equating those with the FEMA "camps" shows that you have a bias and an axe to grind.
There may not be a correlation between Libertarian and mental health issues, but there certainly is between the Sovereign Citizen's Movement and Mental Health issues.
There may not be a correlation between Libertarian and mental health issues, but there certainly is between the Sovereign Citizen's Movement and Mental Health issues.
MB
I must have missed where you posted reliable sources showing:
1. This guy was in the Sovereign Citizen's Movement
and
2. Where he did not commit this act as a response to the custody issue (as every news source and interview so far indicates).
In the preceding article, there is an exploration of the mental fitness of Sovereign Citizens to even be able to stand Trial, as based upon THIS:
The Sovereign Citizen Movement and Fitness to Stand Trial http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14999013.2013.796329?journalCode=ufmh20 Abstract:
A sociopolitical movement with strong American roots has been making inroads to Canada, as well as other major jurisdictions around the globe. The Sovereign Citizen movement supports a number of unusual beliefs that may be mistaken for psychotic symptomatology. These individuals present with many features which may appear psychotic in nature, including bizarre and paranoid beliefs as well as unusual speech and behavior. Despite this compelling psychotic mimicry, it is the authors’ opinion that the majority are not truly psychotic. Timely recognition and accurate assessment of Sovereign Citizen patients is crucial in order to minimize harm in the form of unnecessary treatment and hospitalization, as well as delays in court proceedings incurred by questions such as whether they are Unfit to Stand Trial. This paper provides a descriptive profile of distinguishing features which may be observed when assessing a Sovereign Citizen patient, with an emphasis on clinical presentation, diagnostic challenges, and management-related issues
To date, EVERY major encounter with the Sovereign Citizen movement has been one of a paranoid, and violent character. Even when dealing with minor traffic stops, evidence shows a preponderance of evidence of schizophrenic and paranoid behavior.
The Simple belief that they are above and beyond the law is a basic delusion contradicted by the results of their attempts to claim this as a defense, or to behave as such in public.
The real question is- should this be turned into a lifetime, or Wayans movie?
White Chicks 2- Black Chickz (in which they don whiteface to infiltrate a group that is using black face to rob banks, or something, and end up acting like white women acting like black women)
or
Fighting for my Identity- the struggles of a white black person.
All aboard the surreal bus
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16teaparty.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Rachel Dolezal, curator of the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene, has also watched the Tea Party movement with trepidation. Though raised in a conservative family, Ms. Dolezal, who is multiracial, said she could not imagine showing her face at a Tea Party event. To her, what stands out are the all-white crowds, the crude depictions of Mr. Obama as an African witch doctor and the signs labeling him a terrorist. “It would make me nervous to be there unless I went with a big group,” she said.
She also refused a student the chance to speak because “Rachel said I didn’t look Hispanic,”, even though the student " identifies as Hispanic, grew up in a Spanish-speaking country, speaks the language fluently, and, while she has light skin, believes she has a “pretty solid experience of what it’s like to be Spanish.” "
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tamerragriffin/rachel-dolezal-once-told-a-student-she-did-not-look-hispanic
You read that correctly; a Caucasian woman masquerading as a woman of colour refused to let a Hispanic student speak about her ethnic identity experiences because she did not look Hispanic enough.
Jihadin wrote: Heard mention she sued some black college because she was discriminated against on grounds she was white or something
In another interview with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie, Dolezal questioned who her birth parents really are, saying, “I haven’t had a DNA test.”
“There’s been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne are my biological parents,” Dolezal told Guthrie. She later added, “I’m not necessarily saying that I can prove they’re not, but don’t know that I can actually prove they are.”
Dolezal also said that there were “no medical witnesses to my birth” and said she was born “in the woods.”
In another interview with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie, Dolezal questioned who her birth parents really are, saying, “I haven’t had a DNA test.”
“There’s been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne are my biological parents,” Dolezal told Guthrie. She later added, “I’m not necessarily saying that I can prove they’re not, but don’t know that I can actually prove they are.”
Dolezal also said that there were “no medical witnesses to my birth” and said she was born “in the woods.”
"A lot of people might go to the film. Hopefully nobody goes to that film,” Dolezal said. “We need to boycott that film from my perspective," Dolezal concurred.
She described the film as "highly offensive", and accused it of "miseducation" (sic), "misrepresentation" and "robbing and shredding ancestry and history".
Yesterday, the activist went on the Today programme to discuss her race, declaring: "I identify as black."
Asked about about the efforts she made to change her appearance, she said: "I certainly don't stay out of the sun."
But she added: "I don't put on a black face as a performance. I have a huge issue with black face. This is not mockery."
In another interview with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie, Dolezal questioned who her birth parents really are, saying, “I haven’t had a DNA test.”
“There’s been no biological proof that Larry and Ruthanne are my biological parents,” Dolezal told Guthrie. She later added, “I’m not necessarily saying that I can prove they’re not, but don’t know that I can actually prove they are.”
Dolezal also said that there were “no medical witnesses to my birth” and said she was born “in the woods.”
If she comes up with stuff like this about who her birth parents are I seriously am looking forward to hearing about the 8 hate crimes she has suffered in her long troubled life as a "black" "mother"
