Before  anything I’m going to start of by pointing out that I’m trans but I’m white. So my space in talking about this will come largely from the fact that I’ve had many people including my father try to invalidate transgender identities by saying “well if trans race identities aren’t a thing then I’m sorry transgender identities can’t be either.” So this is mostly coming from a place of defending my own identity but also calling out racism. But since I don’t actually experience racism or understand all of the complexities of this topic I invite this to be a discussion and something people can add to via comments.

So often I hear this argument that tries to invalidate transgender people, and a large response in retort to this attitude is “well you just can’t compare them because they’re different things.” I totally agree with this and it is in fact the reason. Unfortunately, for some, it’s not enough to understand. So in order to justify my identity and also keep people from muddling race and gender, I’ve thought about it a lot and decided to share my reasoning so far in explaining why we can’t simply equate the two. Continue reading →