"I couldn’t escape Rachel Dolezal because I can’t escape white supremacy. And it is white supremacy that told an unhappy and outcast white woman that black identity was hers for the taking. It is white supremacy that told her that any black people who questioned her were obviously uneducated and unmotivated to rise to her level of wokeness. It is white supremacy that then elevated this display of privilege into the dominating conversation on black female identity in America. It is white supremacy that decided that it was worth a book deal, national news coverage, and yes - even this interview.
“And with that, the anger I had toward her began to melt away. Dolezal is simply a white woman who cannot help but centre herself in all that she does – including her fight for racial justice. And if racial justice does not center her, she will redefine race itself in order to make that happen. It is a bit extreme but it is in no way new for white people to take what they want from other cultures in the name of love and respect, while distorting and discarding the remainder of that culture for their comfort.”
This quote is from an article by Ijeoma Oluo about Rachel Dolezal, the woman in the US who ‘identified’ as African-American, until being outed as white. Dolezal has renamed herself since - with an African name.
I was reminded of this by the story in the news currently about Anthony Lennon, a white man with white parents who has lived and worked as a black man and black actor and director.
Some feminists have used the Dolezal scenario as a counterpoint to the issue of people, who are born genetically male but who identify as women and lay claim to be literally as much a woman as a person who is genetically female, categorised as such at birth and has always lived as a female.
People ask, if being a woman or a man or female or male can be simply a matter of self-identification, why can't a white person self identify as a person of colour? If the latter is wrong, how can the former be right?
What matters in the Dolezal case is that she used her relative privilege as a white woman to insert herself into the black community, thus displaying a distinctly white arrogance and lack of sensitivity to issues of race in, what remains, an extremely racist country, and she materially benefitted from her claim of being black – and took opportunities away from black women.
It is argued that ethnicity is a matter of self identification in some areas but in relation to such things as positive discrimination measures aimed at redressing historical disadvantage, there is an obvious need for a person to be able to demonstrate the validity of their claim by more than just a simple assertion of identity.
Here, in Aotearoa-New Zealand, to qualify for Māori scholarships for example, a person must be able to demonstrate their whakapapa – it is not enough to just declare oneself as tangata whenua on the basis of self identity.
But in relation to gender identity, one of the main aims of transgenderism as a political movement, is that nothing more must be required other than a personal declaration, i.e. there should be the removal of all medical inputs and most bureaucratic inputs to the process of changing one's legal sex. Going further, there is a growing demand to remove sex markers from birth certificates, not as a push back against intrusive state surveillance, but because it is claimed that having sex categorised on a birth certificate makes life difficult for trans and intersex people.
The demand that gender identity - an individual sense of oneself as a sexual being - must be embedded as a fully protected status in equality and human rights legislation, means a genetically male person, even one who has lived as a man for sixty or so years and fathered children, who self identifies as a woman must be accepted as a woman and have exactly the same legal and social status as a woman who was born and has always lived as female. This applies even to people who, like Philip/Pippa Bunce, choose to be men on some days and women on others.
A transwoman, even someone with a completely unaltered male body, as a result of a simple declaration of a sense of identity - is literally a woman, with the same legal status and social authority as the other categories of women - cis women and intersex women.
The same is true for female to male transgender people but they simply do not intrude upon cis men's rights in the same way, nor do they attract the same amount of public or media attention - except when they give birth or try to uncover their female genitalia in a gay sauna.
This means that, where there is any sort of single sex provision, or positive action measures for girls and women - eg the UK Labour Party's women-only shortlists and women's development programmes - anyone born male, who has self identified as a woman, cannot be excluded from them without a legal challenge for unfair discrimination.
A lot of radical feminists and a rising groundswell of others are concerned about the implications for safeguarding women - not from transsexuals who have always co-existed happily with women in the past - but from some on the fringes of the vastly widened trans umbrella, men who will opportunistically seek shelter under it in order to pursue - not a valid expression of gender identity - but a highly transgressive sexual agenda.
David Challenor was not drawn to the UK Green Party for valid political reasons. It was a combination of a narcissistic power trip and a means of advancing a political agenda that was about granting people like him, sexual license. In his case it was a sexual fetish that involved dressing as a little girl while holding an actual little girl in bondage, torturing her and sexually abusing her.
The current furore over Guiding in the UK is whipping up a lot of anger - and as often happens, a lot of it is directed at the wrong people. The issue of girls needing same sex spaces is a valid one, especially in the hyper-sexualised, body-obsessed world in which they are growing up. It needs to be acknowledged that there are girls who, for personal and religious/cultural reasons, do not want to share intimate spaces with male bodied persons - but the main threat to girls is not from the tiny number of boys who identify as girls, the big threat in my view is from predatory and manipulative adult men who may abuse the far greater ease of self ID as a means to get access to young people.
Given the sort of tactics now widely used by the trans lobby to silence dissent and its power and reach (which is completely at odds with its actual numbers and its claims to the most extreme social marginalisation), it will take a brave person to challenge anyone thought to have predatory motives.
The other scenario of course is that it will fuel right wing and fundamentalist extremists of the sort who have formed vigilante 'paedo-hunter' groups - with the potential for a lot of innocent people to get hurt.
Finally, my apologies to Ijeoma Oluo, but the paraphrase begged to be done:
“I can't escape transgenderism because I can't escape male supremacy. And it is male supremacy that tells an unhappy or narcissistic man that woman’s identity is his for the taking. It is male supremacy that tells him that any women who question him are obviously uneducated, and unmotivated to rise to his level of wokeness. It is male supremacy that then elevates this display of privilege into the dominating conversation on female identity globally. It is male supremacy that decides that it is worth international news coverage.
"(Insert name) is simply a man who cannot help but centre himself in all that he does—including his fight for what he sees as sexual justice. And if sexual justice doesn't centre him, he will redefine sex itself in order to make that happen. It is a bit extreme, but it is in no way new for men to take what they want from womanhood in the name of love and respect, while distorting or discarding the remainder of womanhood for their comfort."
