What definition of merit are you using that it's not?
> most people don't describe themselves as racist, but a surprisingly high number of people are
Calling people racist for preferring to date a particular race is just silly, you might as well call people sexist for preferring to date a particular gender.
> you might as well call people sexist for preferring to date a particular gender.
Just give it a few years. I know that Slate (a mainstream publication) a few years ago published an article which mentioned in an aside that it is bigotry for a heterosexual man to refuse to date a male who identifies as a woman. I will be completely unsurprised if in a decade or two the same argument is applied to gender preference, period.
Currently someone who has transitioned is noticeably different than someone who was born that way. I think it's not far-fetched to imagine that in the future there will no longer be any 'uncanny valley' and the stigma will disappear.
A man can't go in space, can't fly, can't trick rocks into thinking, and can't do many things. But we do anways.
Your understanding of reality is flawed. XY chromosomes provide the instructions for the human organism to construct a male body -- they do nothing to prevent the altering of it later on.
Also, is this not 'hacker' news? Chromosomes are just the source code -- eventually we we will hack the souce or the binary all we want.
Right, just remind me when we're able to change the physical construct after it has already been constructing. It's literally impossible. Might as well change a banana into a fly by "changing the source code".
People also thought flight was impossible. In this case, the 'construct' is the morphological traits that distinguish men from women. That's what our brains use to differentiate men from women -- chromosomes are irrelevant here. We don't need to replicate sex at a molecular level -- if someone is indiscernible from a women without inspecting their molecular structure they are for all practical purposes a woman. A far cry from changing a fly into a banana, as much as you may wish it were so.
They're two very different things. Flight is obviously possible because the inherent laws of physics allow it, and we observed other creatures do it.
How are you going to take a grown man, whose physical traits are obviously different from a woman (broader shoulders, taller, more muscle mass, deep voice, not to mention his reproductive system, and other documented differences in other organs), and turn him into a woman? This is physically impossible and is akin to changing a banana into a fly.
> if someone is indiscernible from a women without inspecting their molecular structure they are for all practical purposes a woman
And physics and biology would still disagree with you. This warping of reality to fit some unscientific narrative is getting out of hand.
> How are you going to take a grown man, whose physical traits are obviously different from a woman (broader shoulders, taller, more muscle mass, deep voice, not to mention his reproductive system, and other documented differences in other organs), and turn him into a woman? This is physically impossible and is akin to changing a banana into a fly.
Well, the spectrum of bone sizes / muscle mass do have crossovers between the sexes. Obviously you're not going to turn a 6'5'' 300lb man into a believable woman but if that same man starts to transition at 16? Who knows. And there are plenty of people who are well within the size parameters of the opposing sex even in adulthood.
> And physics and biology would still disagree with you. This warping of reality to fit some unscientific narrative is getting out of hand.
Disagree with what? I said for all practical purposes. Sure, you could in theory make a biological and physical distinction -- it just won't be relevant to 99% of people if the difference is not available to them. Does a multi-platform software user care if he's running the ARM or x86 binary? They are two vastly different beasts but if the compilers work the user has no distinction.
> They're two very different things. Flight is obviously possible because the inherent laws of physics allow it, and we observed other creatures do it.
You are missing the big picture. What we view as physically possible now will change, as it always has throughout history. Space travel used to be 'physically impossible', heck so did circumnavigating the world. We will eventually reverse engineer our brain structure -- downloading our consciousness might be feasible one day. Do you think people will care about XY chromosomes when they can swap bodies? Or in a world that heavily uses VR?
> Obviously you're not going to turn a 6'5'' 300lb man into a believable woman
So now there's a notion of "believable" and "unbelievable" changing of men into women? That kind of completely brings down this entire house of cards now doesn't it?
Think of it from another way. If there's an earthquake and a man pretending to be a woman dies in the rubble, and they discover his remains 50 years from now, do you honestly think that they'll classify him as female? His skeletal structure is masculine, and no amount of pretending or hormones or surgery is going to change it.
> So now there's a notion of "believable" and "unbelievable" changing of men into women? That kind of completely brings down this entire house of cards now doesn't it?
How so?
> Think of it from another way. If there's an earthquake and a man pretending to be a woman dies in the rubble, and they discover his remains 50 years from now, do you honestly think that they'll classify him as female? His skeletal structure is masculine, and no amount of pretending or hormones or surgery is going to change it.
You're too hung up on the 'essence' of someone. It's not relevant in any practical way. If someone told you your spouse had a different set of chromosomes would you suddenly stop loving them?
> And physics and biology would still disagree with you. This warping of reality to fit some unscientific narrative is getting out of hand.
You seem to be completely ignoring the generally agreed-upon scientific consensus that gender and sex are not equivalent; sex is biology, and gender is mostly performance. A transwoman is a woman (gender) even though they're biologically male (sex).
The agreed upon science is that gender dysphoria is a mental issue. No more than a man thinking that he's a dog, he'd be classified as insane.
There can be studies into why some people have this condition, perhaps it could be due to environmental or upbringing reasons, but the solution is not to expect others to dissociate from reality and pretend that that person is the sex he "wants to identify with". It's no different from asking others to treat that person like a dog if he feels like it.
Intersex is a physical condition at the chromosome level. Gender dysphoria is a mental condition, so it follows that no, "transwomen" are not women, and "transmen" are not men, just how someone who believes that he's a dog doesn't make him a dog.
It really depends on the reason to prefer to date a particular race.
A: If it's aesthetic, sure (though one might ponder to what extent euro-centric beauty standards are indicative of inherent attractiveness vs a desire to fit into the current dominant culture: fair skin is now very popular world-wide, skin lightening is a big thing in Asia, the most popular plastic surgery tends to try to replicate european features, etc)
B: if it's because you think someone else's genes are inferior to yours... that might be the actual definition of racism. In his final book Where Do We Go From Here, MLK calls this out:
> Often white liberals are unaware of their latent prejudices. A while ago I ran into a white woman who was anxious to discuss the race problem with me. She said: “I am
very liberal. I have no prejudices toward Negroes. I believe
Negroes should have the right to vote, the right to a good
job, the right to a decent home and the right to have access
to public accommodations. Of course, I must confess that I
would not want my daughter to marry a Negro.” This lady
could not see that her failure to accept intermarriage negated
her claim to genuine liberalism. She failed to see that implicit
in her rejection was the feeling that her daughter had some
pure, superior nature that should not be contaminated by
the impure, inferior nature of the Negro. It is the Teutonic
Origins theory warmed over. The question of intermarriage
is never raised in a society cured of the disease of racism.
I originally didn't respond to this because you had a pretty good point and I didn't really have anything to add to it. You're apparently getting hammered, though, so I feel like I should say something, so... you're spot on here.
In defense of humankinds' innate fairness, though, I feel I should point out that all the reasoning about genetics and demographics and 'those people' in the world will not overrule someone's intrinsic assessment of a potential partner's attractiveness. The young lads and lasses will go out and shack up with whoever tickles their fancy. The older generation will tut-tut and justify their disapproval, but who ever listens to them?
> This lady could not see that her failure to accept intermarriage negated her claim to genuine liberalism.
No true Scotsman. Also, maybe she didn't want her daughter to suffer the cost of how society treated mixed race couples at the time. That's society's racism on display, not hers. I think we should all just be a little more charitable.
What definition of merit are you using that it's not?
> most people don't describe themselves as racist, but a surprisingly high number of people are
Calling people racist for preferring to date a particular race is just silly, you might as well call people sexist for preferring to date a particular gender.