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These days social pressure, ambition and that ineluctable human quality called identity, make some people want to change who they appear to be.
Leaving aside furries and drag queens, two available methods to change how one appears are 1) to undergo plastic surgery and 2) to appropriate a racialized identity.
For example, Rachel Dolezal and Carrie Bourassa have vociferously defended their genetically spurious claims of Black and Indigenous ancestry. Because these are women descended from Europeans, they have performed the remarkable trick of improving their status in society by claiming kinship with an historically downtrodden population.
In her own defence, Rachel Dolezal says race is a social construct; she self-identifies as Black. This is more-or-less how Carrie Bourassa, who claims to be Métis, Anishinaabe and Tlingit, is responding to recent investigations by CBC and others that show she is 100% European by birth and ancestry. Her story is inconsistent so far, both relying on made-up details about her grandmother marrying an Indigenous man and the assertion that she was adopted into a Metis family, so claiming that DNA both does and does not matter. It’s hard to see how this will end well for her.
Society reserves a lot of umbrage for people who want to change how they are seen. This applies especially to transgender women. Gender, like race, can be called a social construct (or not, tellingly). If you’re born with male genitals but grow up certain that you are female, you can have the surgery and pass as well as you can, but an army of outraged parents – and Germaine Greer – will never let you forget who you really are.
So you can understand why people will take deliberate, and at times painful and costly action, and then immediately deny it. People can be so mean.
Thanks for reading!
Have a great week!
Karen
Reupholstery Update:
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