what in the ECTA?
Words Count: 1139
CW: racism and cultural approiation
This is a blog documenting my time looking in the Ethnic/Race change to another community AKA R/ECTA
The E/RCTA, or the Ethnic/Race Change To Another Community has been braught to my attention in recent weeks and not for good reason. The E/RCTA community is founded on the belief that one can change their race and ethnicity because they are uncomfortable, disconnected and unhappy with their current race/ethnicity or their “deadrace”. The community started to become popular back in September of 2022 over on TicTok, and has been festering there primarily since. Most videos that the R/ECTA community posts are mostly about there transition goals, face claims and sharing subliminal videos usually accompanied by some K-pop or J-pop fancam.
Curious I wanted to take a closer look and see what was going on behind the scenes of this strange (and racist) community. Creating a throw away account I went undercover for a week as a ECTA in two separate Discord servers (For privacy and protection of the server I will keep the names disclosed) to do some observasional based research. In my week of being in the community I noticed that the main focus of conversations lead back to one topic being “subs” or subliminal videos.
Subliminal videos are a genera of videos majority found on Youtube that use repeated words of affirmation and subliminal messaging to motivate listeners and increase moods. “There is usually two types of these videos. Audio subliminals are usually made up of indiscernible jabbering overshadowed by random music. The second type is visual subliminals. Like the name suggests, they flash positive affirmations in a rapid fashion repeatedly.” (Mahdi. May 2021) Though the E/RCTA community uses versions of these subliminal videos that are advertised to change you’re physical appearance to look more like you’re desired race. For exmaple, a popular subliminal that is commonly used by the R/ECTA community is one when used enough can change you’re eye shape to becoming smaller with aegyo-sal and monolids. In both servers that I was in had dedicated channels for not only promoting subliminal videos but also chanels for showing progress and updates on how the subliminals were working. A large majority of these videos and photos that where shared where primarily focused on skin tone or eye shape.
This community, to no suprise, is very controversial, and a common agruement that they push to justify thier belief, is that if someone can change their gender than one can also change thier race/ethnicity. Claiming that both race and gender are social constructs and not a apart of your biology. This statement is fact, that race is in fact a social construct. To cite a article used by @rctababie over on TikTok, According to Megan Gannon in her article Race is a Social Construct, Scientist Argue, she states “Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning.” (Gannon, February 2016) Though one can not simply ignore the culture and history that is associated with each race. To disregard the social importance oof that race and force you’re self into it’s community without growing up with the experiences of said community under the justificaltion that race is a socail construct is problematic.
One can argue that with this logic, being a trans women is sexist because undermines the challenges and misogy that cis women faced in history. But to counter, race and gender have different history, experience and implication when in the context of discrimination. According to authors, Braden Hill and Steavie Lane in their article No you can’t identity as ‘transracial’ but you can affirm your gender” they state “Unlike gender, race presents as categorised (often physical) traits that are socially constructed and understood. You can’t inherit your gender, this is internal and something individual to you — but you do inherit the social construct of race. There is also much more to one’s racial identity than physical appearance — it’s also about culture, community, connection and even trauma.”
Though the most troublesome of information is that even with a large number of these races stepping forward and speaking their feelings on the community, and how they find the R/ECTA community to be racist, fetishing and culteral approating thier race it falls on deaf ears and the repeated phrases along the lines of of “I am [insert desired race]. I am valid!”
During my week observing the two discord servers that I noticed two things. One, that a large majority of people where wanting to be Asian, either be it Indian, Chinese, Korean ect. And two, that they where all under 18. Curious I went through the 172 users intros from both discord channels and compiled the following data.
(note that not all users said their dead race or thier age in the servers that I looked at so the data may be mildly skewed)
The data that I collected shows that majority of users where under 18 and that the most popular race and ethnicity to transistion to was those of Asian origin (Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean ect.) and that most common race they where transision from was promdominalty White. The numbers that I have collected made me draw some of my own thought and conclusions over the matter. (To preface my opinion, I’m a white transmale from American.)
It is not uncommon to feel insecure about where you come from and who you are espcially when you are a teen, and being white you think you have no culture. Which is not that case, Learning to embrace your ancestors culture and educating you’re self over it’s history and traditions can eliminate these feelings of detachment from any culture in general. Though in the case of most of thes R/ECTA members they where exposed to other cultures through media such as Anime, K-dramas or music that romantise these races which make them want to be apart of that community. That’s why they change races so that they feel apart of something and disregard what they were intially ashamed of. When the RCTA and ECTA community can come to terms and accepted the race and culture that they inhierted the community will die down and become another wierd thing that spawned from the internet.
Sources:
https://www.thedailystar.net/shout/news/subliminals-youtube-what-it-2088801
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/#:~:text=Today%2C%20the%20mainstream%20belief%20among,being%20used%20as%20biological%20variables.
https://theconversation.com/no-you-cant-identify-as-transracial-but-you-can-affirm-your-gender-163729
