The rabbit hole of identity
Thoughts on race-fakers
Why do so many white American women feel a need to draw themselves into circles where they really don’t belong?
Is it to fill an emotional hole? Is it there is a dearth of resources available to these women, so they feel they can only thrive if they fit into these circles?
Almost all of my patients at the gender center were white girls. Many seemed to be seeking belonging by latching onto an LGBTQ identity. Often they first declared a non-straight sexual orientation, then non-binary gender identity, and finally trans male status. These were smart girls; they seemed to be picking up on something in the culture around them and seeking a way draw themselves into it.
White female identity in America
I was thinking about the circles of cultural belonging as I read about the story of Andrea Smith. Andrea Smith is an academic who claimed a Native American identity for decades. She based her entire career on this false identity.
“Anytime we lie, we tear a hole in the fabric of factuality,” wrote Sarah Viren in the New York Times Magazine about Andrea Smith. “But when we don’t acknowledge those lies, when we pretend that those pointing them out are obsessed or deluded, we also give up the opportunity to ever mend that tear.”
I was struck by this idea that Smith created her identity to build up her status in a community, and in essence she drew herself into a circle to which she didn’t belong. Yet I also understand the longing to feel connected and understand how family history can be challenging.
The rabbit hole of identity
I attended a primarily white catholic elementary school, and then an all-girls catholic high school. My mother’s side of the family is all descended from Europeans. They have been in the Midwest for decades, working as cattle farmers, hardware store owners, school teachers, and engineers. My grandfather was sent to Japan at 17, after the bombs were dropped in WWII. He didn’t see combat and came home and went to college using the GI Bill.
My father’s side is more complex, especially on my paternal grandmother’s side. Mexican-American heritage, with significant Native American lineage, but Native American lineage that cannot be easily traced. We saw this side of the family much less frequently, but those experiences held outsize influence because they were so different from the rest of my daily life. My grandfather on this side stormed beaches in the Pacific.
My paternal grandmother, who lived with one of my aunts, was tiny and chain-smoked. My father had many siblings, all with dark hair and loud voices. They would sit around the table sharing a meal and yell at one another.
It was the most glorious experience for a girl who was usually surrounded by Midwestern white people. Midwesterners are not exactly bold. But with this part of my family everyone had something to add, and if you didn’t share it then it was pulled out of you. Your opinion was expected, even at a young age. Depending on your cultural lens, some would see a debate, some an intense argument, some just regular conversation.
They called bullshit on many things and would easily debate politics to no end. They didn’t always agree, but they always shared their thoughts and they could disagree without taking it personally. I don’t play bullshit well at all. I can always easily get in touch with my thoughts and I am able to hear arguments and not cower in fear. They gave me thick skin.
Most of my white-girl patients at the gender center did not present themselves as masculine or even tomboyish. That’s one factor that made me question whether gender transition was a proper treatment for them. When one of the doctors said to me, “I have to suspend my disbelief every time I go into a room with one of our transgender patients,” I couldn’t ignore this bullshit. I also couldn’t ignore that these girls were drawing themselves into something.
But are they like Andrea Smith?
Andrea and her sister Justine moved to Chicago Illinois in the 1990s. Older than I am, but not by much. They got involved with social justice organizations, and a popular one at the time was the American Indian Movement (AIM). I dug out one of my late 1990s punk hoodies covered in patches to check: I too had an AIM patch. The Smiths’ involvement with AIM turned into the creation of a local chapter of Women of All Red Nations.
Andrea claimed that she was Oklahoma Cherokee and that her father was Ojibija. This is important. To be acknowledged as Native American, it’s not enough to show genetic lineage; one has to prove ties to a specific community, through a specific ancestor. This is why even though I am roughly 12% Native American, I can never really claim this identity. I don’t have an ancestor that I can link through and I haven’t had the time to attempt to trace these ancestors.
Andrea went on to have a well-regarded and fruitful academic career as an ethnic studies professor focused on Native culture. We know now she is not Native American. She has no ancestor who is Native, and no genetic heritage either. She will resign her position at the University of California, Riverside, in August 2024, keeping her retirement benefits and her title.
Did Smith believe her claims at the start? Was she too far down the rabbit hole to turn back when she realized how serious her fraud was? Did she see this as her only way into the academy, and to study what she was truly drawn to and interested in?
Are many of us Andrea Smith?
Adolescents aren’t the only people who draw themselves into circles. I have always had questions about my own gender identity. There was a period of time during my tenure at the gender center when I felt that non-binary terminology might come close to capturing those feelings. It was very easy when immersed in the gender quicksand to let these new shiny terms fit.
But in hindsight it was my sexuality all along. I have always been masculine, in addition to being loud and opinionated. I have always been attracted to women, even as I have been in long term relationships with men.
Did I benefit? I don’t know that I was afforded access to more resources or opportunities when I vaguely identified as non-binary, but I won’t rule it out. The political climate inside a gender center is pretty nightmarish.
I trained staff throughout the university on gender diversity alongside a wicked smart nurse. Some of our coworkers criticized her for having no “ties to the community.” While the gender center employed large numbers of LGBT people, some thought it should be staffed only by trans people. But my co-presenter, the nurse, resisted that pressure to draw herself into the LGBT circle.
As I fell down a rabbit hole reading about Andrea Smith, I found numerous articles about others. “Another week, another unmasking of a white professor allegedly posing as a person of color: this time it’s Kelly Kean Sharp.”
And Jessica Krug.
And CV Vitolo-Haddad, an Italian-American grad student accused of “misleading people about their racial and ethnic identity.” They admitted benefiting “socially” on campus from the confusion. I say “they” because “Vitolo-Haddad uses the nonbinary pronouns they/them.”
Is it only Vitolo-Haddad’s ethnicity that she misled people about?
I now know so many women, most of them younger than me, who declare the pronouns, “she/they,” or non-binary identity. And I can honestly say so many are smart, and college-educated, and yet do seem . . . to struggle on some fundamental level. Like Smith, they seem to gain some social currency from their marginalized identity.
Why is it often the women?
At my most forgiving I imagine that the charade might start with a mistake. Perhaps some of the women were once asked a casual question about their race or ethnicity. Perhaps they felt deeply that to acknowledge their whiteness was a cultural taboo. Perhaps they intuited that they had to claim some circle or risk being left behind.
So they didn’t speak up and instead they rolled with it. Perhaps it felt good, perhaps they felt that it had a social benefit. And it does — it clearly appears that within academia, a cost-benefit analysis would encourage one to roll with it.
The best answer I’ve found comes from Christine Folch, a cultural anthropologist at Duke. She pointed out that white men don’t do this. “And at the root I think what we see is a competition for scarce resources on the part of those who are not the hegemonic ideal in academia, which remains white male.” For white women, “strategic use and appropriation of brownness” may help “accumulate more power, more legitimacy, grants, coolness points.”
Could the same be said of the strategic use and appropriation of LGBT identities?
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It's much simpler than that. Feminist theory constructed intersectionality. Straight white men are the devils, disabled, black, trans women are the angels. Men have been villainized for decades, and it's somewhat ingrained now. But (white) women are less accustomed to this, and the racial insanity that escalated in 2020 exacerbated this. Ask yourself who is reading "White Fragility" and "How to Be an Antiracist"? Women are more likely to be drawn to higher intersectional ground. Helena Kerschner and others talk about how they learned online that being white was like being evil, they had no right to speak, their opinions didn't matter, but they became celebrated once they declared themselves to be "non-binary" and then "trans." The buzz of intersectional acceptance is intoxicating. Stephen A. Richards was trying to escape the "cis white oppressor" status - many boys are seeking to climb the intersectional ladder too, and escape the blight of being male. He literally removed his genitals to avoid becoming the evil white male r*pist he was expected to grown into by default. So the problem isn't that these girls are girls, it's that they're white. For boys, it's that they're male, and white. These girls aren't transing to be men, they're transing to be trans, because that identity is celebrated - "man" is not; there's no ground to be gained there. That's also why the race-faking thing comes into it, but it's intersectionally frowned upon to be found out. You're not allowed to fake being POC, so unless you're willing to take the risk and the fallout that comes from it, for most girls that kind of leaves only sexuality, neurodiversity and "gender identity." Every girl in college claims to be "bi" for cred, but few have or do have romantic entanglements with another woman. Neurodiversity is still a bit of a thing out there, but we're mostly beyond the bulk of the "headmates," and tics and other performative trends in this area. Which leaves the ripe ground of "gender identity" with an infinite array of identities, and no criteria qualify. Your romantic history can demonstrate you're not bi or lesbian, you have to put on a particular performance for most mental health issues, which can be identified as fake with sufficient knowledge. But gender identities are whatever you claim them to be. You can even invent a new one and it's immediately regarded as "valid" by default. It's no wonder then that white girls are drawn to this to obtain intersectional victimhood and oppression points. They're not pursuing maleness or manhood because this doesn't let you step up the intersectional ladder. But points you get for "trans" far exceed those deducted for "man." You've voluntarily accepted victimhood as a martyr. If you're looking for an explanation, you need look no further than intersectional feminism. Helena is a really good speaker on this topic, as she went through it herself. Look up Helena's chats with Ben Shapiro, or with Aaron Kimberly and Aaron Terrell on the Transparency podcast, or her presentation for Genspect, titled something like "Trans and Tumblr."
Unlike racial identities, a transgender identity is one that people are actively encouraged and recruited to adopt by existing members. And it’s definitely recruitment - spend a few days on Tumblr and you’ll see what I mean. They first make it look really cool and desirable and a way to fit in, then they bully you to the point of not wanting to be yourself anymore, by telling you that you’re privileged, you’re a bad person because you’re not a minority, you aren’t even allowed to speak. Then, once they’ve provided the incentive, they use all kinds of double talk and vague language to make you question whether you could be. Then, if you decide you are, the love bombing begins. But then there are the threats, to make sure you never back out - anyone who changes their minds was just faking it for attention, no one outside this community will ever accept you, etc.
It’s pretty clear that there are certain people who understand that increasing the numbers helps their cause of erasing any boundaries between males and females and giving them full legal and physical access to women’s spaces. They are likely joined by people with a financial stake in the medical transition industry, people with a variety of motives such as decreasing the reproductive rate of humans for environmental reasons, and people trying to bring about the economic downfall of western nations.
These kids are pawns of people who don’t care one bit about their wellbeing.