Paul Campos notes the phenomenon of "reverse passing." Basically, it falls under certain categories. There are obvious charlatans who fake being minorities in order to benefit from programs set aside for minorities. This was the charge against Elizabeth Warren, though I don't think she was trying to "reverse pass" so much as relaying bad family history.
But there are clearly others who have a significant trauma in their past and therefore identify with marginalized groups in order to subconsciously contextualize their own trauma. There is also the desire to avoid being a white, cishet, man, especially when you, yourself, feel marginalized by the impersonal forces in society.
It's a fascinating idea. I've been surprised by the size and vocal nature of the recent trans-rights movement. Apparently there are a lot of strong feelings about this in the trans community. I do wonder if some portion of transgender people are processing a trauma, possibly gender-related, by rejecting their birth sex. I'm hardly qualified to speculate on that, but perhaps a better question would be: Why are transgender people so much more visible now than 15 years ago? Were we not looking? Were they not identifying as trans? Something seems fundamentally different about transgender activism recently, and I'm genuinely curious.
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You should follow up on this by watching youtube videos by Kat Blaque and Contrapoints. The crises taking place in gender are diverse, which is a huge part of why these debates can get so heated. There are still a lot of conventional, unchallenged narratives about trans lives, and positive representations of trans people were even rarer before trans people got behind the camera. Kat Blaque has been on Youtube for about a decade representing herself, and she, Contrapoints, and Abigail from Philosophy Tube are great representatives for the trans community because they speak for themselves and their familiars.
Some notes:
- Passing is not every trans person's goal. Many trans women don't mind being seen as somewhat masculine or as trans. Visibility is a big deal in trans communities.
- When a trans woman aims to pass as a woman, she is not a man presenting as a woman but a woman presenting as a woman. In an identical way, when you act gruff, you're not a man who is being a man but a man acting out being a man. Any discourse around reverse passing, I think, necessarily assumes that cis people's passing is categorically different from trans people's passing, or that passing is an exclusive part of trans or black experience.
- Questioning the sincerity of any trans person's gender risks playing into old tropes of trans female false consciousness and duplicity (e.g. Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, bathroom legislation) that come from older tropes of female false consciousness and duplicity (e.g., Eve, all the other ones).
- There are way too many trans voices out there for you to not engage one while boosting Paul Campos or yourself as a voice (no matter how small!) on these topics.
Keep up the good work, teach!
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