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There is a strange inconsistency in the progressive ideology of "Social Justice Theory":
We are told and constantly reminded that categories like race and gender do not apply to the core or essence of a human being, but that they are ascribed and socially constructed.
Therefore, if Peter tells us that he is not a boy but a girl, and that he wants to be treated like a girl and we should no longer call him Peter but Susan, we are supposed to support her and call her Susan henceforth. And anybody who raises some doubt about this transition is called transphobic, and his or her career might suffer some severe damage.

But what happens if Rachel tells us that she is a member of the Black community (although her parents and great-parents are of European descent), and Rachel even lives for some years as a Black person, being active in a group called National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, what happens if someone finds out about Rachel's true racial background? is she welcomed and supported like Susan formerly known as Peter, as a transracial person? Is her self-identification considered the ultimate judge in the matter of race (like it is in the matter of gender)?
Of course not! Rachel is treated with disdain, even hatred, excluded from her community like a traitor, like an impostor who has faked some certificates in order to work as a medical doctor in hospital. Rachel is told "But you ARE not a Black person; you ARE white!"

That's the inconsistency: On the one hand we are told that "races" do not exist and "sexes" are fluid, but you are only allowed to change your sex / gender according to your own whishes, whereas you are eternally trapped inside the color of your skin, and if you try to change that, ridicule or even social condamnation will be your fate.
Your "race", although it does not exist according to Social Justice Theory, is part of your essence, whether you like it or not. No choice is possible in this category.
Why? ---

[N.B.Rachel's case is not fictitious, there is even an article on Wikipedia about Rachel Dolezal]

Matias 8 May 31
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13 comments

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0

Congratulations on determining that Rachel's treatment was discriminatory.

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And that hypocrisy is why the AHA withdrew its 1996 award to Richard Dawkins. People who think they should be another sex can get surgery and hormones to gain many of the characteristics, but they can never get the reproductive organs that are critical to defining the new sex. Trans want to be thought of as their new sex, but they cannot reproduce at all as that new sex. And yet many people cannot reproduce according to their sex, so what is the difference? Actually, many other problems present themselves.

Trans rights have been politicized so that honest discussion is near impossible. It's like Republicans and Jan 6.

The same for non-Whites. Race becomes defined by the likelihood of being discriminated by those with White Privilege. How much reparation for slavery should a Black person get if they only have one one great-great-grandparent who was Black? And how does one go about proving that?

Biology could define Black people if only by the amount of melanin produced, or by logging which histocompatibility or other proteins DEEMED to be associated with non-Whites.

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This sort of bickering reminds me of an incident when I was at university, a certain member of my cohort, who was from down south was in the habit of coming to lectures and seminars wearing football shirts.
Another member of the same cohort who was local confronted him on the second week of the first semester.
"You came in here last week wearing a Hull City shirt," he pointed out.
"So what?" said the first guy genuinely surprised at the aggressive tone.
"This week you are wearing a Birmingham city shirt, that's SO WHAT!"
The rest of us by this time were paying attention, because the second guy sounded fit to burst.
"Oh," said the first. "I just like football shirts, they are comfy and I like all the different colours and patterns."
The second chap, went red in the face and gritted his teeth.
"You cannot do that!" he snarled.
"I can't do what?" Asked the guy in the shit as confused as the rest of us.
"YOU can't just wear a different football shirt every week just because you like the colour. Don't you understand, you DON'T do that, its not on, team loyalty IS IMPORTANT!"
The first guy was puffing and steaming from his ears, his face was red and his fist were clenching.
At this point the lecturer entered the room and asked what was going on and the first guy began literally screaming that the shirt guy had to be sent home to change or He was "going to KILL stupid southern ponce".
In the end Loud mouth Mc shoutyman was escorted out of the room by security.
However that is not the end of the story.
Our film studies lecturer told the story to to the head of the sociology department who far from agreeing he had done the right thing demanded Shirt guy be called in and ADMONISHED for being deliberately provocative and knowingly causing trouble by wearing varied football tops at a university in a town that was notoriously football mad.
The upshot was that Shirt guy left the university and sued for his fees to be returned and ultimately won, Shoutyman was hailed by the other local students as a hero.

I told this story to a close friend of mine who was a keen supporter of the local team and who was also a professor of English at Durham university.
His reaction astonished me, far from agreeing with me this this whole incident was raving mad, he got very angry and assured me that had he been the lecturer, he would have physically ripped the shirt off Shirtman's back, kicked him out of the class and told him to only come back if and when he made up his mind which team he was going to support or when he had decided to not wear Football tops at all.

This was the first time I realised that tribalism is alive and well and deadly in the modern age, and that some people can be brought to the verge of homicidal rage by actions of another that mean nothing to almost everyone else, simply because they buck an accepted local norm.

Interesting story! I, like shirt guy, would have been mystified by the whole thing (it's just a SHIRT!)

I could understand such loyalty, I guess, if it carried some tangible benefit. If, say, I received a check every time the Raiders won a game, I might feel very loyal to them. Even in this hypothetical scenario, though, why would I be angry if someone wore the shirts of several teams?

I would simply assume that they had a better investment strategy than I.

@AmyTheBruce This is the point, blind loyalty and obedience to a nonsensical system is ridiculous and even dangerous.

1

And your point is, nobody is allowed choices? Or....?

0

Are the accepting/rejecting bodies truly equivalent in these comparisons? Who, exactly, is doing the accepting or rejecting? Are they the same body? Do they even overlap? Are the specific human beings who accepted Susan the same specific individuals who rejected Rachel? And what relationship do these individuals have with the progressive ideology of "Social Justice Theory"? Is there an official membership status or list of individual names of people who self-avowedly belong to all three of these clubs, and are recognized as members by some authoritative official? Or are we just tossing an apple and orange salad?

skado Level 9 May 31, 2021
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Race is part of your essence? Isn’t this purely a societal construct? Perhaps that is why those of mixed race often feel they have no place. When my son applied to Washington University in Saint Louis, he felt pressured to join an organization of others of mixed race. He found it repugnant — this insistence on defining oneself by ones racial heritage, and thus he chose to go to a different university. Perhaps it’s our human nature to be tribal, but this shouldn’t be conflated with the false notion that race inherently defines who we are. The various races have the same genes, all aligned in similar positions along our chromosomes! And this makes us one species! Shouldn’t we try to overcome our tribal natures rather than to adhere to this tendency with this false ‘race-defines-your-essence’ nonsense?

Gmak Level 7 May 31, 2021
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Race is a false concept. But, the fact that people of color have been and continue to be discriminated against is a fact. The same can be said of people from ethnic backgrounds different from those we are accustomed to.

0

You list yourself as atheist. Your social justice and labeling issues is no different than you labeling yourself atheist. If you notice on link I provide below, people are recognized as gods. Gods exists because people labeling themselves as gods. If a girl can label herself as a boy or a white label themselves as a black then people can label themselves as a God and thus atheism is wrong or illogical.

Now that you are given the fact that gods exist, why are you still calling yourself atheist? Is this a refusal of acknowledgement that people are self labeling as gods? Are you labeling yourself as atheist for same as a "white" person wants to be called "black"?

[en.m.wikipedia.org]

Word Level 8 May 31, 2021

I don't think I have ever read so many non sequiturs in one single post in my entire time on the internet.

@LenHazell53 might work

1

I am a me. As my parents would say at dinner, like it or lump it. (I still don't know what that means.)

No, I don't think I know what it means either. But yes I definitely have heard it before. 😉

1

Your inconsistency only exists in certain communities, most notably yours. Although you only used it as example in this instance, the definition of race can of itself be part of the problem. Race is defined by externally observable characteristics in may places in the world, but in Aussie, race is defined as acceptance within the community or culture. That is, regardless of colour, if you are accepted within the indigenous community as aboriginal then that is what you are. So, anyone adopted into that community via marriage or any other means, is accepted as part of that race/culture. It's not necessarily the best or only solution, but's it's better than measuring "race" by percentage blood. In the indigenous institutions there are signs on the wall saying "don't judge my aboriginality by my colour".

@Matias I don't think I need to remind a fellow atheist that majority beliefs don't mean shit. When people start to try to define race they discover that the definition becomes unusably broad very quickly. Is it colour, eye shape, nose shape, lip shape, hair style, language, what? There is no one physical thing, nor group of things that clearly defines racial boundaries, or the edges of the category one is trying to put them in. Even dna analysis can't clearly define boundaries . We might look at someone and say they are definitely oriental or definitely caucasion or polynesian, but they are exemplars and even then it's easy to be wrong. So if we can't clearly define the boundaries, how useful is the categorisation? And when attempts at categorisation lead to such incredible prejudice one can reasonably ask, why are we trying to do this? And I know that's not you, but it's a good reason for arguing that races don't exist.
In aboriginal communities the Elders speak for the community. To my knowledge Elders are not elected nor appointed but come to be through others in the community accepting their wisdom, perhaps in the same way as "opinion leaders" come to be in other societies (and I don't mean teen fashionistas).

2

To take it to its extreme level for the sake of argument. What about species ? What if I decide that I am a dog or a cat, rather than human ?

I suppose that the question really generalizes as. To what extent does an individual get to define themselves, and to what extent are we defined by society as a whole ?

The one obvious answer, is that a thing, or human, may be defined in several different ways for different purposes, by different people. As for example. For tax purposes a car may be defined as a road worthy vehicle, when I use it to drive, and taxed accordingly. But the tax authorities may define it as and exhibit, when it is in a motor museum, and decide not to tax it.

So it should be possible, that for example, a human may define themselves as Female, for the purposes of sexual relations, yet be defined as Male, by a sports association for taking part in sports. But that requires that people are able to be honest, even when self interest is a stake, and that people accept that life can be complex and that you can not always have simple hard and fixed definitions of everything. But that would require people to use their brains, and sadly they are usually very unwilling to do that.

@Matias My own thought would be that associations such as sporting bodies, should stop talking about sex/gender completely. And instead define their events/ handicaps into the groups, for people with a 'Y' chromosome and people without a 'Y' chromosome. Though they would probably get some flack about discriminating against people on the grounds of chromosomes, but I think that sense would prevail in the end.

0

Yes social justice theory is itself just a cultural construct, and your point is far from being the only fault to be found with it. Though it has to be said that "none existent" and "fluid" are not at all the same thing.

0

Keen observation, I concur.

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