I'm talking, of course, about Rachel Dolezal, the President of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP who's been "passing" as black for the last decade. The sympathetic arm of the internet has already started praising her as "transracial," or someone who internally identifies with another race, and begun comparing Dolezal's journey to Jenner's. If you're a South Park fan, you probably thought about Kyle's transition into a tall, black basketball player and his father's into a dolphin.
As laughable as the subject should be, they've been taken under serious consideration by legitimate organizations. The difference between Jenner's journey and Dolezal's is that Dolezal's journey was one of deception full of stereotypical appropriations.
With overnight fascination surrounding the transgendered community, others have hijacked the prefix to demand the same respect. And it doesn't stop at the "transracial." Perhaps the most disturbing are the "transabled." You may remember the Taboo episode about Chloe Jennings-White, an able-bodied woman who uses a wheelchair because she believes she's disabled. She isn't suffering from conversion disorder, a legitimate form of hysterical paralysis, either. She can walk. Others have staged accidents to lose limbs or deliberately induced blindness.
While these disturbed individuals do deserve psychological study, they don't deserve a sympathetic paring with the transgendered. In doing so, psychologists are dumbing down the field by ignoring the foundations of science, foundations rooted in cold hard facts.
In science - hard science - the most obvious theory is often the right one, and always the first to be explored. But here - in soft science - sensitivity has become a variable that influences the study. With regard to the "transabled" or "transracial," the most obvious theoretical cause would simply be a cry for attention. These people see the respect bestowed upon the disabled or the tremendous perseverance of the racially marginalized and, in short, want a piece of the action.
By acknowledging "transability" or "transrace" as a unique condition befitting a psychological label, the field of psychology is taking a Creationist approach to science: seeking facts to support a baselessly pre-drawn conclusion. Ironically, allowing sympathy to trump science with regard to the "transabled" or "transracial" fosters a culture that demeans the truly disabled and racially disadvantaged. It sympathizes with the privileged.
It may be knee-jerk, even easy, to draw a parallel between the transgendered and these dubious "trans" causes, but the transgendered who've come to terms with their identities are living honest lives. Legitimizing the "transabled" and "transracial" allows these people to live lies and usurp resources meant for those born or faced without an alternative.
Obviously, the transgendered community, the disabled, and ethnic minorities have espoused outrage against the self-assigned disadvantaged. Perhaps these fringe movements are a sign that First World privilege has reached its cultural threshold, wherein some people are so bored with the luxury of walking, sight, or being white that they seek stimulation by fabricating discourse.
Whatever the cause, whether these individuals have body dysmorphic disorders or simply want attention, legitimizing their conditions by rewriting psychology's Bible, the DSM-5, will only serve to delegitimize the entire field of psychology. There is cause for sympathy in the soft sciences where subjects are concerned, but sympathy is not a variable in the lab. Logic has been lost by an overwhelming call to coddle everyone's innermost quirk. As we charge towards greater equality for our once-most disadvantaged and marginalized, able-bodied white people have once again proven that they can make anything about themselves.
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