Transgender vs. Transracial

[Prism]

33. Ethnocultural identities are not inborn

It seems much of gender identity manifests itself early on. We see it today in young children who do not identify with their physical genital characteristics. There are vast swaths of psychological research backing this up. Gender identity has a way of asserting itself.

This is not true of ethnocultural identity. It doesn't spring spontaneously from biological predispositions. Culture is learned. It can also be chosen.

Look at someone like Eddie Huang. He is Taiwanese-American, but he identified with hip hop culture as a young man. He adopted African-American culture as part of his individual cultural identity and often talks about the profound impact it has on his life. But at no point would he identify himself as black. He remains a cis-gendered heterosexual of Taiwanese-American heritage.

A transgender individual does not make a choice. It isn't a preference. It isn't, "This speaks to me, and I would like to be that." They simply are that gender, whether they want to be or not.

Rachel Dolezal made a choice. Whether that is an appropriate choice isn't for me to say. It's not my community she was adopting as her identity. But the fact she had a choice, made it, and then for some reason lied like crazy about it isn't analogous to the transgender experience. I think the two things are very far apart.