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tbarryfigu's picture

Nice!

I'm really taken with your response. It's an interesting argument---

That the choice to identify with one half of your ethnicity may be the same as choosing to identify with one of the two sexes. I suppose it's a question, then, of accesibility. My ethnicity is "available" to me in a way a different gender may not be available to a transgendered individual. I am "both" not by choice, but by biology. The truth is, no matter how hard I try to portray myself as strictly Latina, it is a certainty that I will not be seen that way (100% Latinas aren't seen that way!). Similarly, a transgendered person may find it difficult to shed their born-sex, while they choose to identify as the opposite. Yet, they are not "both." They are one or the other (or sometimes, neither). They are attempting to access an identity that is not biologically tangible.

The difference may be this:

I cannot be judged for my decision to identify as a Latina (my skin is tan)

My decision to identify as German (not tan enough whitey!)

Or biracial (oh...yeah, that explains it)

My ethnicity is my own to claim. 

A transgendered person, however, is often told the opposite. Regardless of the gender they claim, they are commonly told that they do not have the rights to a gender that was not born to them, do not have the right to try to bend common perceptions of what a man is or what a woman is. They are not granted access to their chosen identity.    

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