How do we decide who was really born in the wrong body?

Do you have a link to support that Rachel Dolezal believes that she was born the wrong race? I haven’t seen anything from her, other than her generic resignation announcement, which didn’t address her race/skin color directly.

Certainly not everyone applauded Caitlyn Jenner’s bravery.

I think it’s a very interesting question and I look forward to responses. But I question some of your details.

@Cupcake, according to what she says in this interview, Ms. Dolezal has “identified as black” since she was a young child. While I have not seen where she specifically states that she was born the wrong race, I saw it as that least somewhat implicit in her statements.

Each of those decisions is made by the individual. The only difficulty is in needing another person to carry out the changes to make one feel whole. There is no other person who gets to make the decision.

Rachel Dolezal addresses some of the questions during an interview today. This seems like a personal statement laced with lies.

Chloe Jennings-White has a rare mental disorder.

Caitlyn Jenner is going through a physical change to match what she has known since a young age.

All three cases cannot be compared to each other. It’s as simple as that.

@zenvelo while no one else may be able to make the decision, many are more than capable of passing judgement publicly. It would be considered incredibly politically incorrect to say that Jenner is a freak for making the choice to alter her body, but Jennings-White is roundly condemned for wanting to alter hers. I am wondering why one is totally fine and laudable while the other is inconceivable and nearly reprehensible.

@Pied_Pfeffer with all due respect, saying they can’t be compared sounds a bit like a cop out. There are many who would say Jenner and Dolezal have mental disorders just as much as Jennings-White. Others might say they are all perfectly sane and are following their one true path to personal happiness.

@FlyingWolf Yes, there are always plenty of people to stand in judgment of others, no matter what the discussion. That doesn’t make it right or appropriate.

Ms Jennings-White’s disorder is actually one of wanting self-harm. The other two cases do not involve self-harm.

@zenvelo it seems odd that elective surgery to remove/repurpose a perfectly healthy and functional body part isn’t considered self harm. Isn’t referring to Ms.Jennings-White’s “need” to mess with a functional body part as self-harm even a little judge mental in itself? Saying the judgement isn’t appropriate isn’t going to make it stop, and the reasons for two totally different judgements are at the heart of this question.

The person themself, if they’re self-aware and truthful. Or, a good shaman…

I think the individual decides for themselves, but society decides if they accept it or not.

On another Q I talked about Jewish people who don’t identify as Jewish. Antisemitic people won’t care what that person says about themselves. she is.

The woman in the recent news reports has a very broad nose. Maybe she didn’t feel
Pretty among WASPy friends? It’s just a guess. I know I never hung out much with Jewish friends because they were doing Jewish things that I knew nothing about, or my parents didn’t participate in, and I felt out of place. Among my Catholic friends I felt much more comfortable.

How much percentage does someone need in them to be able to identify with a group? Do they need to be 20% black? 20% Asian? Look Asian? Look white? One of my friend’s is Chinese-Peruvian, born in America. Would most Americans just want to label her Chinese-American? People say to me all the time my husband isn’t “really” Mexican. He is as Mexican as I am American. He is second generation Mexican.

I also mentioned another friend’s uncle who lived as a white doctor his entire adult life. He basically got away with it I guess considering the times he lived in. Was he really white? I guess so, but his parents weren’t, they couldn’t have passed in the white community.

The decision isn’t ours. We crossed the Rubicon of gender, theological, ethnicity and racial differences ages ago. We know these things don’t really matter in the great scheme of things, unless they are used as artificial means to hold people back. We long ago decided to aspire to meritocracy; in our history, our literature, our laws and our behaviour. We need to remind ourselves of that now and then. And hold the course.

Not to be the fly in the ointment but.. none of the cases you presented sound like people who are ok.

@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One That is your judgment. You get to express your opinion, but you have no qualification to judge another person. Neither does anyone else.

@FlyingWolf Thank you for questioning my answer. It is understandable why some people would say that Dolezal and Jenner are suffering from a mental disability just as much as Jennings-White is. They don’t know someone who feels this way and/or cannot empathize with it. Either way, they are not in a position to judge another’s mental capacity without proper training. I don’t have it. Do you? Even then, it has been proven time and again that some experts are wrong.

My response was based upon the facts provided thus far. Even if it comes to light that Dolezal’s decision to attempt to pass as belonging to a different “race” or Jenner’s decision to go forward with a sex-change are due to specific mental disabilities, is that a reason to group all people with similar desires in the same categories?

@JLeslie Sending you a PM in order to not go off-topic.

@Pied_Pfeffer I didn’t get it.

@Pied_Pfeffer you broke them into different categories in order to say that two are wanting to make changes because they are mentally ill and one is doing it because he has always known he was born wrong; that doesn’t seem quite right to me. Why don’t we consider that Ms. Dolezal and Ms. Jennings-White were born wrong and decided to do something about it? I am trying to understand the difference in attitude.

@FlyingWolf I did? Which categories? That was not the intent. Let me rephrase it from my cozy armchair.

There is no proof that I have run across that says that everyone who wants and even pursues physical changes to their body in order to address becoming more like the male or female sex that they know that they are. If you were to wake up tomorrow and find your body magically changed to mirror the opposite sex’s, would you embrace it or desire to switch back? There is enough history on it to prove that it is a fact of life and not a mental disability.

In Dolezal’s case,it is still questionable. There are a variety of reasons why a person would desire to be classified as a different race. So far, she hasn’t provided any information that garners any insight. What is clear is that she has woven a web of lies. No proof has come out that she has a mental disability or not.

Ms. Jennings-White has been clinically diagnosed with a mental disorder. The other two haven’t.

This explains why it’s different, perfectly.

Neither interest me. Maybe Rachel though was doing it for monetary reasons? If not, I wouldn’t know as I’ve not looked into it.