A New Type Of Woman, An Old Type Of Man

I'm not sure if there's something in the water, but for the past few months, there’s been a spate of highly-intellectual men making highly questionable claims about womanhood. 

We’ve seen Neil DeGrasse Tyson, world-famous science communicator, explaining what an individual would do if they woke up feeling “80% female and 20% male” (put on makeup, obviously), well-known psychotherapist, Scott Alexander, comparing the impulse to defend women’s rights to drug addiction, talk-show powerhouse, Jon Stewart, drawing an equivalence between children with paediatric cancer and children confused about their gender identity, and noted mathematician, Eric Weinstein, citing his belief that there are male brains in female bodies (shortly before admitting that he doesn't understand this stuff). 

And maybe it's because I’m not as smart as these guys, but I have to admit, I wasn’t really getting it. 

What exactly does it mean to “feel 80% female”? How does a brain find its way into the wrong body? Why, if everybody is what they say they are, don’t women get a say in what they are?

But thankfully, as I grappled with these questions, I realised it’s only confusing if you don’t understand what a woman is!

Oh, you thought women were a distinct, meaningful class of human being? No, silly! Women are a costume. A vibe. An abstraction that can always be accessed through a “universal vagina.” 

Women and men throughout history? They’re trans and non-binary people now! I mean, how could Joan of Arc have been a woman when she was known to wear men’s clothes? How could Kurt Cobain have been a man when he...excuse me, “they” occasionally wore dresses? And even though Marsha P Johnson is on video clarifying that he’s not trans and wasn’t there when the Stonewall riots started, he…excuse me, she, is henceforth a trans woman and heroine of gay liberation. 

Don't worry, misgendering Dylan Mulvaney is a hate crime but misgendering dead people is totally fine.  

Also, the fact that Joan of Arc and Kurt Cobain’s shiny new identities are based entirely on the fact that they sometimes wore the “wrong” clothes doesn’t mean that gender is based on regressive, sexist stereotypes. No, no, no. Gender is a far more sophisticated concept than that. It’s pure coincidence that our training materials present gender on a scale from Barbie to G.I Joe. 

Anyway, sex and gender are different. Except when it’s convenient to pretend they’re not. Like when we say “sex assigned at birth” even though sex isn't assigned but observed, usually months before birth. Or when we use people with disorders of sexual development to obfuscate conversations about gender identity. Or when we demand the right to change the sex markers on official documents after (or, indeed, before) receiving gender-affirming care.

And, of course, if you notice any of these inconsistencies, it’s not because the whole framework is broken and incoherent and scientifically illiterate, it’s because you’re a hateful, fascist bigot.

So if you question any of this, if you ask to talk about the realities of human biology (even though, again, biology is unrelated to gender), if you point out the transvestites and perverts and fetishists sheltering under the “trans umbrella,” if you apply the same perfectly reasonable scrutiny you'd apply to any other identity group, we’ll kill ourselves. 

Hope that clears things up.

A few days ago, I watched a debate between two more highly-intelligent men--Dinesh D'Souza and Matt Dillahunty--on transgender inclusion in bathrooms. And while I could spend all day picking it apart, I'll make do with highlighting a particularly telling quote from Dillahunty:

…what's to stop me, whether I identify as a woman, whether I’m…first of all, if I was dressed as a woman, you wouldn't even know! You don't know what my junk is! If I go in and open the door and sit down and use it, you have no idea. And it shouldn't be anybody's business what's in my pants or what I'm wearing. We can remove gender from the bathrooms entirely as far as I’m concerned […]

There's nothing stopping me from walking into a woman's bathroom and assaulting someone.

For the record, if Matt Dillahunty walked into a women’s bathroom “dressed as a woman,” we’d know. 

But more importantly, he’s wrong, there is something stopping men from walking into women’s bathrooms and assaulting people: decency. 

Yes, almost every man is capable of assaulting women in female bathrooms. We’re capable of exposing ourselves in female changing rooms. We’re even capable of going on podcasts to talk about womanhood without giving a moment’s thought to what it entails. 

But most of us don’t. And our absence makes it easier to call out those who do. After all, the only men we need to worry about when women say, “Please stay out of our spaces,” are the ones who reply, “How are you going to stop me?” 

So while the people who buy into this ideology might believe they’re supporting a new type of woman, they’re really covering for an old type of man.

A man who views women’s privacy and safety as distractions. A man who thinks women’s sporting achievement is meaningless. A man who sees women as uppity, misplaced ribs who should be grateful to be recognised at all. 

Gender non-conformity is nothing new. Misogyny, sadly is nothing new. But the idea that women don’t exist is new.

As George Orwell put it, “Some ideas are so stupid, only intellectuals believe them.”

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