OK. One More... Sex Appropriation

I am still constructing a more research oriented Substack page, which should be up soon, providing that I get ahead of my doctoral studies.

Anyway, I just wanted to jot down some quick thoughts I had. Perhaps I will keep this blog as a running commentary on my momentary thoughts, like a hypothesis generator.

So, several years back, a woman named Rachel Dolezal, who is 100% Caucasian, presented herself as a black woman and fooled the black activist community. She then said that she identified as black, ergo, she was black [at heart]. I have written in the past about cultural appropriation, whereby cultures grow through adoption of another culture's traits and that sometimes such adoption is complimentary and not really an appropriation. Yet, in Dolezal's case, she was indeed appropriating culture. She had no real experience of what it was like to grow up black as a way to inform her worldview. She merely adopted the culture and pretended. She overplayed sympathy for empathy. Were her experiences authentic or complete enough to truly feel what it was or is like to be a black woman? Probably not, at least not completely. 

Similarly, can one animal species feel what it's like to be another? Can a bat feel that it is a cat, or a chimp feel that it is a cow? Perhaps the closest we can get is how dogs and cats have been domesticated as parts of human families, but the connection does not negate species particulars. And of course, many higher apes, being kindred to humans, have some similar traits to people, so the lines draw closer together. Yet, none can fully come close to humanity. Species exist within a certain epistemological framework.

So then, this all got me thinking about the transsexual experience and gender dysphoria. The dysphoria is the sense that one's body parts do not match psychological conceptions of self. Yet, I wonder, regardless of how much one's mind feels a bent toward the opposite sex, can that person ever truly know what it's like to be the other sex? Drastic measures like sex reassignment surgery can provide some connection, but even then, the genitalia do not necessarily function the same way and even with hormonal treatment and the subsequent reshaping of  bodies (growing facial hair or breasts, etc.), the experience is completely its own and at best is a rough facsimile, but is not the original. How is this greatly different than Rachel Dolezal changing her hair or skin pigmentation to blend in as a [light-skinned] black woman? Dolezal looked more black in her guise than her true blonde white-girl self, but was this an authentic transformation? Was she dark enough or had she experienced a lifetime of racial identity as a black woman? 

This solicits inquiry. In the same way, is a transsexual person really that sex or just a rough facsimile? If anything, I would say that it's a wholly new thing, but that would also mean that it doesn't quite correct the imbalance originally perceived. It's a bandage on a deep psychological wound, which is absolutely real in many cases, and perhaps misconceived by societal normalization in others. Dr. Deborah Soh has gone so far as to decry sex changes for adolescents because they lack the experience and are prone to impressionability in their growing worldviews. Heck, when I was twelve, I still pretended to be Han Solo, but I could never be more than my perceived character. Yes, mine is a weak analogy, but still, there may be danger in taking drastic steps too early without robust knowledge of the opposite sex, beyond a mental image. 

Anyway, this all begs the question: can there be such a thing as sex appropriation? 

I'll leave it there for the pondering.