Individuals are far more important than groups; that’s the first sensible thing you’ve said in our conversation. It’s good to know that somewhere inside you is a rational person; hopefully you can move past your transphobia in time and join the rest of us in the future.

You say she chose it; how do you know? Why would she open herself up to the sort of hateful and small-minded reception that many people (yourself included) are giving her, if she believed she had any choice?

Look, the fact of the matter is that she’s black. Nothing you can say or do will change that. If you don’t want…

Well, our vocabulary is still catching up to the new reality. “Transracial” would be the logical word to use, but you say it means something else. “WrongSkin” is another one I’ve heard, but mostly in a tongue-in-cheek fashion from transphobic racists who deny that Dolezal is black. I’m just going to keep using…

I take it you’ve never heard of severely conflicted closeted gay men going “queer stomping” with their straight friends to keep up the appearance that they’re straight? I suppose that Caitlyn Jenner never joined in with the other boys back in high school laughing at “that fag with the gay pink backpack” just to fit…

Have you considered that you’re creating a false division between gender and race? Look, I get it: change can be frightening. Judging by the things you’ve said so far, you seem to like having a concrete idea in your head of how all black people behave, and how all white people behave, and now it’s possible to identify…

This is not a court case. The jury on whether Rachel Dolezal is black or not consists of one person: Rachel Dolezal. She’s already given her verdict. If you want to fight that and stand with the sort of people who still think that being gay is a choice and being transgendered is a mental illness, that’s your…

It’s irrelevant whether a dark-skinned woman could “pass” as white or not. There are many transgendered people who don’t “pass” as their identified gender even after reassignment surgery. Let’s face it, if Caitlyn Jenner weren’t rich enough to afford the best plastic surgeons, she’d still look more like she did when…

You can identify me as whatever you like; I know who and what I am.

Caitlyn Jenner didn’t grow up with first-hand experiences of training bras or menstruation or anything else that someone born physically female would have experienced; by your own arguments, she’s not really a woman. But she is a woman, and therefore your argument is moot. There isn’t “white Rachel” any more than…

“Not for the faint of heart”? If someone can’t handle unpleasant things happening to fictional people, the Fallout series is not for them. Nor are many other games, books, movies, paintings, poems.....

No, she actually doesn’t. You or anybody else are not the gatekeeper of “blackness”, any more than you’re the gatekeeper of whatever gender you identify as. A transgendered person doesn’t need your permission to change their gender, a transracial person doesn’t need your permission to change their race. It has nothing…

Yeah, it’s a shame that the first person to make a big public thing of coming out of the transracial closet also filed false police reports and generally comes across like an asshole, but we can’t paint all transracial people with the same brush. She’s a bad person AND a transracial person; they’re separate things.

It’s…

I can’t speak from personal experience, but my understanding is that Ms Jenner went through some extensive (and expensive) surgery to have those parts removed. She is a woman, Rachel Dolezal is black, and neither one of them need your permission to be who they are.

Or maybe she learned about black culture and realized that it resonated with something that was always in her and she didn’t understand. My point is that you can’t know what’s fundamental to her life and what isn’t, and neither can I; neither of us is the gatekeeper of who is allowed to be black. There is no…

I think it reveals the inherent racism in a lot of people who otherwise want to be thought of as “progressive”; they still judge people based on skin colour, and that system falls apart if you can’t identify a person’s ethnicity by looking at them.

Who are you to dictate what is and isn’t fundamental to her existence? Do you really think that she would identify as black, knowing the hateful and small-minded reaction she’d receive, if she had any choice in the matter?

She identifies as black, therefore she is black. Are you saying that Caitlyn Jenner is a man just because she was born male?

Excellent. It’s been interesting reading some of the other Dolezal-related comments on Gawker since she came out of the transracial closet; I’m surprised that so many people who otherwise call themselves progressive suddenly turn into Victorian-era bigots when confronted with something new that they didn’t expect.

I wonder if the pilot noticed that the steering was a bit off? In such a light aircraft, the weight of what looks like an average-sized cat in one of the wings would probably result in some sort of balance issue.

Caitlyn Jenner is a woman, and Rachel Dolezal is black. Neither one of them need anyone else’s permission or approval to be who they are.