We're all aware that anti-trans groups of all sorts will label being trans and/or cross-dressing as being "blackface" or as some kind of cultural appropriation. I was wondering what other people's thoughts were on why blackface is unacceptable, but being trans and/or making oneself to appear female isn't. (This is going to be from an FTM perspective just because it's what I'm more familiar with, and because it attracts this "blackface" criticism far more than being MTF seems to.)

I think it's ok because, for one, gender is a biological component of the brain that can be influenced by hormone levels during fetal development while race isn't, so it's possible to be born with a gender that doesn't match your outside appearance, while it's not possible to be born with a mental race that does not match your outside appearance. It's also a well-documented phenomenon that millions of people claim to be a gender that doesn't match their assigned one, while pretty much no one is claiming to be a race that they weren't born as and taking steps to alter their appearance and behavior to match a different race. So, the idea that a white person would claim to be mentally black and then go around in blackface 100% of the time is just a thought experiment and not something that anyone actually does, and is not a biological imperative that anyone actually has.

The idea that it's appropriation for men or transwomen to do or wear traditionally female things is also extremely one-sided towards women. Almost no one cares if women wear pants, even though pants were strictly a men's item of clothing for much of Western history, but it's apparently improper for men or transwomen to wear dresses. We accept that most of what society has historically labelled (or enforced) as being "male" is now unisex, but we haven't gotten to the point where things that are traditionally "female" are unisex, too. Those are still just for cis-women. It's empowering and liberating for AFAB's to wear men's clothing, but it's blackface for AMABs to wear women's clothing. This is neither fair nor consistent. I expect any anti-trans feminist who uses the "blackface" argument to always wear a dress, have hair longer than shoulder-length, and never go in public without makeup. If I can't have feminine things, then they shouldn't get to have masculine things.

The reason blackface is not acceptable is because the purpose is to make fun of a group of people by who were enslaved and otherwise persecuted during the majority of this country's history. 

I don't see how being trans is related to that in the slightest way.


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Wearing blackface is a choice.  Being trans isn't.  For most of us, even transitioning isn't really a choice.

The idea of "cultural appropriation" is ridiculous also. Culture does not belong to one specific person or group of people for all time. It's just a way for these rabid types to attack people they don't like.

Quote from: KathyLauren on June 06, 2018, 05:51:36 AM
Wearing blackface is a choice.  Being trans isn't.  For most of us, even transitioning isn't really a choice.

Absolutely. I don't want to transition. I'm terrified of the consequences. I think I'll have a harder time finding dates and friends during and after transitioning, I think I've got about a 50/50 chance of losing my job over it (I live in a very conservative area), it's expensive and time-consuming as hell, there's all kinds of stress involved, and there's quite a few little advantages to being a guy that I just won't have as a girl (respect, extra muscle, more economic opportunites...).

I think very few people in their right mind would actually want to put themselves through all that. I'm doing it because I need to, because having a man's body is emotionally distressing for me and I've nearly killed myself over it several times already.

Also: gender steriotypes are bad. I wore skirts and makeup even before deciding to transition (though always in an alternative style, which people seem to find semi-acceptable, since everyone expects those styles to be kinda weird anyway), and I'm not intending to supress my masculine side afterwards. I'm 6 feet tall, I refuse to cut my mohawk, and I'm not throwing out my man-boots for anything. There's nothing wrong with having a guy side as a girl, either, even if I'm trans.

That attitude may make passing a little bit harder for me, too, but I don't care what other people think. I just want to be me.

To tell the truth I was quite surprised when I was told that non-black actors playing black roles is considered unacceptable in some countries. I'm curious—are traditional christmas plays, Shakespeare's Othello and other such also forbidden unless one has access to a black cast member willing to play the part?

Be that as it may, at least to me being "trans" is not acting. Rather, I find myself doing much less of it than when I felt I had to suppress most spontaneity, expressions of affection and other things that were natural to me when I was little in order to fit the (gender) role assigned to me, to assume a (to me) foreign and constrictive body language, and to restrict my wardrobe to items that fit that character.

But then again, I consider myself even now to be primarily me rather than trans. Actually, I'm probably more me now than I was before I accepted myself. It  feels nice to again feel some freedom.

Even if being trans were a choice, I don't see what the big deal is with people transitioning. Even without the the science behind it, why should it matter if someone with male genitalia decides to live as a woman? I feel like this idea that transition is something you're only supposed to do as a last resort when you absolutely have to gives some negative connotations that it doesn't deserve, and which kept me from acknowledging my own trans-ness for awhile >.>. I shouldn't have to justify my actions when they don't negatively affect anyone else.

Yeah, cultural appropriation concerns can get pretty out of hand, too. There was an incident I read about recently where a white girl who wore a Chinese styled dress to her prom got cyberbullied by a bunch of liberals who thought it was offensive. If you really think that, then at least address it in a mature fashion, or blame the retailer who stocked the dress instead of the person who bought it. There's no need to harrass someone who didn't put more thought into their wardrobe decisions than "I'm going to wear this pretty dress I found at a store in the mall."

Quote from: Kylo on June 06, 2018, 07:57:17 AM
The idea of "cultural appropriation" is ridiculous also. Culture does not belong to one specific person or group of people for all time. It's just a way for these rabid types to attack people they don't like.

The words "cultural appropriation" almost invariably come from the mouth of a white person eating Pad Thai with chopsticks. 

I see two parts to this.

With both blackface and cultural appropriation, the idea is that somebody is playing dress-up. When they try to apply it to transgender people, it continues the idea that somebody is trying to view gender as a costume instead of an identity.

The second part is the idea of "what label are you?" The kind of tribalism that says people with different labels should be treated differently. Blackface is bad because how it was used was to make fun of black people. The problem wasn't the make-up, it was the behavior.

Quote from: Devlyn on June 06, 2018, 10:59:35 AM
The words "cultural appropriation" almost invariably come from the mouth of a white person eating Pad Thai with chopsticks. 

Yes!

The reference to cultural appropriation in relation to gender presentation is absurd on the face of it.  There's no single "womens culture" or "mens culture" that we 'appropriate' with gender presentation.  We simply present as our true gender identity guides us within the culture we live with.

In the USA, for example, there is not anything like a universal womens or mens culture.  The culture of a rural female farm worker is very different from that of an urban female executive, for example.  We typically just transition gender presentation within our own cultural niche.

A MtF such as myself is not "stealing femininity", or "appropriating the female body."  There is not a finite supply of femininity.  My femininity is MINE, has always been mine, and with transition, is merely being allowed by me to be expressed.  Similarly, I am not appropriating a female body.  This is MY body, and as it's appearance changes, nobody else is losing their female body or femininity.

Gender expression is not a zero-sum game.

The barbs that haters through at us are as ridiculous as the hate itself. The two don't have the slightest connection. Cultural appropriation is also completely different and i agree is getting out of hand.

When you take on elements of a culture and make it caricature of what the culture is, it is in poor taste in my opinion. Imagine someone donning a feathered headdress and dancing around with war cries etc that would be dumb, while someone trying to adopt Native American religion and using the sweat lodge etc, would not be a caricature, in my opinion.

Nobody is making fun of women, we are women to those that it applies to and we are just presenting to the world that reality.

Quote from: DannyM on June 06, 2018, 11:33:40 AMBlackface is bad because how it was used was to make fun of black people. The problem wasn't the make-up, it was the behavior.

This concept is very difficult for me to grasp. Is forbidding non-black people from playing black parts on stage/in movies/in real life because some people many generations ago tried to be funny truly appropriate?

If so, doesn't it also follow that since e.g. the male actors dressed like women in Some Like it Hot presented very cringe-worthy caricatures in an attempt to be funny, males could/should also be banned from crossdressing?

I find the logic a bit alarming. Although (since it seems to at least for now be mostly OK to make fun of males) women who cross-dress and trans men would probably would not be immediately be affected, don't you think that this may pose a risk to trans women?  After all, by that criterion we really might also be accused of something similar.

... and so, after spending a few rather unpleasant hours thinking about the implications, I must say that depending on one's circumstances Lucca's concerns may actually not be completely unfounded. I do hope it won't happen.

Well, blackface in entertainment is problematic both because it was historically used to ridicule black people, as well as take roles away from black actors. You could say that men dressing as women to play cis-female roles would have similar problems, saying it takes work away from female actors, but this doesn't really happen outside of occasional comedy routines like on Monty Python, so it's not really an issue.

(I don't think this is as much a problem with theater, since the actor pool is a lot more limited; if you're doing a community production of West Side Story in a mostly white town, you're just going to have to give all the Puerto Rican roles to white people.)

It gets more muddled with things like Halloween costumes, where white people have gotten flak for painting themselves black in order to dress as black characters when no malice was intended. All things being equal, this wouldn't be a problem in an ideal world, but given the racist history of blackface, it's probably best to avoid it rather than engage in it for something as frivolous as a Halloween costume. In most cases, you can dress up recognizably as a black character without painting yourself black, anyway.

Or, people could just consider the context and realize that 99% of times no real offense or real hate is intended these days.

If we take this sensitivity to its logical conclusion you might as well outlaw having fun. Nobody will be able to dress as anything but what their 'designated' culture is, actors will be told they can only be exactly what they already are, can't speak in any voice but your own accent, can't speak about anything but your own limited experience or you'll be invalidating someone else's, and in the end the social consequences resulting from it if you do will mean you never say a word or crack a joke for fear of offending someone.

What a utopia.

I think we've reached a point in history where arguments and ideas were once maintained by virtue of the fact they never overlapped has disappeared. There is a compelling argument that for much of American history the black community has suffered disproportionately compared to, and at the expense of, almost every other demographic, and should feel sensitive towards people that have historically taken advantage of them doing it again. Regarding blackface, I'm not sure that makes all Morris dancers racists (to take one example of cultural overlap), but the kid on Halloween that has no appreciation for the plight of the black community and did it because it made them laugh on the internet is probably a bit of a jerk...

With that said I don't think that provides a strong enough argument to retract back to separation when you consider the benefits plurality has over singular ways of thinking, but it does provide the opportunity to be open-minded, and willing to learn from others. Regarding the transgender community, I think attempting to pitch us against another vulnerable minority in such a shameless and blatant fashion is something that both sides can rise above...in short transitioning isn't blackface

Anastasia x

I have to be careful what I post in this tread because the whole truth might cause arguments however a portion of the United States was a good deal different in the past than it is today. The first movie shown in the white house was Birth of a Nation. This was proclaimed by Woodrow Wilson to be the best movie ever made. During both world wars black service men were assigned to labor jobs and few were permitted to fight for their country. Even during my childhood in the 1950's we had a separate but equal ruling from the Supreme Court. Yes, things were separate and Blacks where not permitted to mingle with whites however things were not equal. Blacks were to use old, worn or cheap public items and whites were given the best. Much of the white population was offended by this treatment however there were portion of the country where this treatment existed into the 1960s. Because of this mindset, blacks received treatment that whites never would have permitted and this included black face which wasn't always complementary as it made fun of racial stereotypes that were far from the truth.

On the other hand, Some like it hot is a takeoff on The Prince and the Pauper. It takes someone out of a comfortable environment and puts them an unfamiliar environment to see if they sink or swim. If it make fun of anything, it make fun of the lack of understand a male would have about the feminine world. More recent versions of this are the movies Tootsie or Mrs Doubtfire.

This were the difference is. Blackface disrespected a population while a man playing a woman is a fish out of water experience.

Now if you wish to describe the transgender experience in the discussion and those who take offense at us, our experience would resemble that of the black population in that we would be classified as second class citizens. We are far from fish out of water in that we have finally found a place where we are comfortable and belong. We are ridiculed only because we are different than what is the "Norm" for the population they are used to. Blackface really doesn't enter into it as it comes down to the respect of another human's right to exist and have the rights that everybody expects.

You know, it occurs to me that most of the people making the "transition/cross-dressing is blackface" argument are white... you'd think that someone who's this concerned about cultural appropriation or offensive caricatures wouldn't be so quick to appropriate a different culture's experience for their own gain.

Incidentally, I once went to a Halloween block party with a group of other college students, and one of them showed up in a blackface costume. As in, he didn't just paint his skin black because he was dressing as a black character, he actually dressed up as a minstrel show actor, complete with ragged, old-timey clothes and an afro wig. At the time, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and just assumed he was clueless, but a couple years later I ran across his Facebook page and found all kinds of racist alt-right type garbage, so I'm now inclined to believe he knew what he was doing and was just intentionally being racist.

You will also notice it's extremely rare anyone who is not white will be ridiculed for playing characters of another race, or for "culturally appropriating" compared to when a white person does it. White people, apparently, are the only ones who can truly sin in this regard, and it is white people, for the most part, who like to accuse other white people of it in order to signal their virtue.

In other words, much of this anti-racist rhetoric is perfectly racist in its own way.

The comparison of transition and cross-dressing to blackface is bloody laughable, though.

Quote from: Kylo on June 07, 2018, 07:53:26 PM
You will also notice it's extremely rare anyone who is not white will be ridiculed for playing characters of another race, or for "culturally appropriating" compared to when a white person does it.

That's not entirely true, there have been plenty of Japanese live-action film adaptions of Japanese animation that have cast Japanese people in roles that were originally white, like in Fullmetal Alchemist or Attack on Titan, and have been criticized for it in both Japan and the U.S. (Or at least in the U.S, I've been told that there's some controversy in Japan but I can't really gauge it for myself.) However, this is pretty defensible in my opinion, given that I'm sure there's a lack of white actors who can speak Japanese well enough to stock an entire film cast.

It's a bit different for American media, where there is no shortage of English-speaking actors of any race, so there's no practical barrier to casting non-white actors, besides things like marketing concerns, where well-known "bankable" white actors tend to draw more attention. In this case, the context of the specific film matters; casting white people as the good guys and brown/Arab people as the villains in The Last Airbender is somewhat problematic for an adaptation of an American cartoon that deliberately went out of its way to feature an almost entirely Asian cast. On the other hand, I found the whitewashing accusations placed on the American Death Note movie to be pretty spurious, since it's an American adaptation of a Japanese work. Keeping all the characters Japanese but setting it in the U.S. would've given it racial connotations that the original didn't have, since the Japanese characters weren't minorities in the original but would have been in the movie if they were still Japanese. (Now, the movie still sucked, but that's beside the point.)

 I feel most people are quick to criticize people, things, and situations they know nothing about out of fear, hate for themselves and/or because their friends and neighbors do it. If they can't accept their own life the way they are they need someone to bash to make themselves feel better! My own or your lives are actually none of their business. We are trying to make ourselves happy which in turn will make those around us happy. Sort of like a chain reaction.