Interesting. Cressida Heyes wrote that apology by the Associate Editors of Hypatia, but a couple of years ago she said something that would probably get the Guardians of Total Correctness on her ass too.

It’s a piece about Dolezal from July 2015 asking if we can really.

After being outed publicly, Dolezal brought her case to the court of public opinion, saying she is transethnic and drawing parallels between her and Caitlyn Jenner’s transgenderism.

But Hernandez-Ramdwar says being transethnic and being transgender is not the same thing.

“They do not choose to be transgender – they just are,” she says pointing out that transgender people are often dealing with actual physical, chromosomal, genetic identity elements. “On the other hand, if someone claims that they are ‘transracial’, in my opinion, they are choosing to ‘perform’ what they assume to be an ethnicity that is attached to a certain race in a certain context.”

Which is why a line needs to be drawn between race and ethnicity.

But notice she said “transgender people are often dealing with actual physical, chromosomal, genetic identity elements” – often, not always. One of the crimes people get mobbed for now is suggesting there are criteria of that kind. No no no, mustn’t say that: anyone who says she is trans is trans, end of. Identifying as trans is all there is, there isn’t any more.

Also it’s not permitted to ask any questions about criteria or reasons or how do you know. Oh hell no you can’t do that.

Also is it true that no one chooses to be transgender? How do we know? How can we know when it’s not permitted to ask? Especially when more and more of the rhetoric is about choice and identity?

“Race is a social construction based entirely on appearance; it changes according to time and place,” she says. “Ethnicity is about culture, practice, behaviour, sense of belonging – it may or may not coincide with how a person looks, but generally speaking we cannot tell someone’s ethnicity by looking at them.”

So is there such a thing as transethnicity?

“I suppose so, someone who was raised Catholic and converts to Judaism is ‘transethnic’, someone who moves to another country and takes another citizenship is ‘transethnic’ and someone who learns another language and then makes that their primary language is ‘transethnic,’” she says. “In a nutshell, we can choose our ethnicity and ties but we cannot, however choose our race as it is something based on how we are perceived by others.”

And sex isn’t? Gender isn’t?

And now Cressida Heyes.

But Dolezal’s relation to Jenner’s public coming out isn’t entirely left field. Both gender and race have complicated histories, this true. And while they don’t necessarily intersect, they are both built on the foundation of what you look like, says Dr. Cressida Heyes, Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Gender and Sexuality and a professor at the University of Alberta.

“That’s the place where race and sex come together,” says Heyes. “One of the reasons Caitlyn Jenner has been taken seriously in the mainstream press is because she’s been made to look very conventionally feminine, she’s hot, she’s what a woman is supposed to be so people will buy it.”

The reality, explains Heyes, is for every Caitlyn Jenner there are dozens more who are trans-ambiguous, people who can’t be readily labeled as masculine or feminine.

“And they have a much harder time, people don’t think that that’s okay,” says Heyes. “Something similar is happening with interracial.”

Where were the open letters denouncing this heresy?

She points to a student she has who has a black father and white mother.

“Like Barack Obama she’s not more black than she is white but because of the way race works in Canada, as well in the States, she has to be black because that’s how other people perceive her,” says Heyes. “She identifies that way partly because that’s how the world treats her – you have some degree of choice as to how you present yourself but it’s not all up to you.”

The door Dolezal seems to have opened with the transethnic identity debate has neatly fit into the treads of race and sex, the physical representations we ascribe to identity. But Heyes says the conversation would be more constructive looking at how those identities supplement the things we do and create.

“To me, those are the interesting questions, like what kind of politics are you engaging in when you present yourself in a particular way, not are you real or are you fake,” says Heyes. “But we get really trapped by that language, who’s really black and who’s really a woman.”