Pretending to be

Spotted on Facebook:

Left side: Photo of Caitlyn Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. Caption: “Pretending to be a woman: Must accept and approve of” Right side: Photo of Rachel Dolezal. Caption: “Pretending to be black: Unacceptable!! We disapprove”

The people I see most often making the equivocation/slippery slope argument between “acceptance” of transgenderism and “acceptance” of “transethnicity”* depicted in this meme, and mentioned in my previous blog post, seem to inevitably be those who are most definitely not accepting of either one.

They morally disapprove of both transgenderism and “transethnicity,” and think they’ve caught well-meaning liberals in a tolerance trap by claiming that they’re exactly the same thing.

While I’ve seen varied reactions to Rachel Dolezal from trans women and people of color, ranging from anger to scorn to confusion to pity, there has been one thing in agreement: what she did is not exactly the same as what Caitlyn Jenner did, and there is no betrayal of the liberal principle of tolerance in saying so.

*Scare quotes are ugly; I know. I just need to use them here to acknowledge the varied meanings and/or controversiality of the terms surrounded by them.