comments:
So, at least for the kind of "Good for the Goose, Good for the Gander" arguments for Transracial identity by appeal to Transgender identity, I think it can be helpful to reflect on how minimal a description it is to call something a "social construct". It's not that it is wrong or lacks content, it's just not actually enough content to address the kinds of questions we're asking in this context. It's a bit like calling me an animal. It tells you something about me for sure, but it also leaves out a lot of relevant information for questions about who I am and what I do. That's just to say that the class of things we call "social constructs" is actually a widely diverse set of things and it's important to be able to say more about them when we start doing comparative analysis. Each one's significance is at least partly determined by its relationships to other identities, people, cultures, and institutions. Some of those interrelationships leave more room for association/identificaiton based on internal subjective experience and judgments than others. Take two much less controversial examples, even if they don't rise to the level of what we often think of as identity when talking about Race and Gender: Fashion sense and Tax Bracket. Both are socially constructed. Nobody would be or have either without a whole lot of interrelationships with other people, institutions, and ways of life. But we think it's pretty reasonable for someone's fashion sense to change over time. The relationships and networks that make up the Fashion World in which "fashion sense" is embedded include, in large part, a lot of subjective stuff. The relationships and networks that that govern tax brackets very much do not. It depends on a bunch of institutions that we are really subject(ed) to and we have pretty minimal genuine engagement with. In other words, tax bracket is something assigned to us and the interrelationships and institutions that govern it also tightly control changes in status. All of that is just to say that calling something a "social construct" does not mean it's an anything goes kind of situation. Social constructs are still norm governed and have rules and restrictions on how they work, even if we often aren't aware of them or can't articulate what they are. In the end, this isn't really an argument that Racial identity is NOT flexible in the way that Gender identity is. It does mean, I think, there needs to be a positive argument for it that goes beyond pointing out Race's socially constructed nature. Further, that argument will need to be rooted in an actual analysis of Race as a social construct, including all the ways it's situated in and among all other identities, people, and institutions that make up our lives. Edited to add (so it's not just me ranting): I recommend Ian Hacking's book, "The Social Construction of What?" as a pretty accessible but clearly analytical intro to these kinds of questions.