It is a truth not so universally acknowledged that pretending men who think they are women are actually women is a farce. Male bodies are not at all the same on both a micro- and macro-level. Their genes are different. Their hormones and chemicals are different. Their bone and muscle structure are different, their organs are different, and their psychology is very, very different. These are all truths that should not have to be repeated.
I generally call surgically altered males who think they are women “extreme cosplayers.” Because that is what they are.
In a sane world, this would be pretty harmless. Who cares how Joe/sephine wants to live his life? I don’t, really, so long as I’m not forced to hear about it or modify MY behavior to conform to his version of reality. It doesn’t harm me when he wears 5” killer heels, or that his closet has better dresses than mine. I simply don’t care.
But this is not a sane world. Joe/sephine wants to use women’s traditionally private spaces, infringing on at the very least our modesty and at worst our safety. Joe wants to be able to shower naked alongside us, whether he has been surgically altered or not. Joe wants to have access to women’s shelters, where women who have been terribly abused by men may be counting on a safe, private space. Joe wants to be housed in women’s prisons, even if Joe has a history of raping actual women. Joe thinks we are being stupid or hysterical because we do not WANT to share our spaces with Joe.
In addition, Joe thinks he is a better woman than women. Because of his unique male physiology, it’s easier for him to diet and exercise his way to a shapely form. Joe wants to be a beauty queen. Joe wants also to compete in women’s athletics – regardless of the fact that Joe’s male physiology gives him an unfair advantage, resulting in hard-working female athletes losing competitions and scholarships to Joe. Joe thinks he even ought to be able to breastfeed babies, whether his fake breasts produce milk or not. (Spoiler alert – they do not. MEN DO NOT LACTATE, at least not in quantities that could nourish a baby – and even with hormonal treatments, the quality of the milk would be in question.)
Joe is wrong, of course.
But it’s our own damn fault Joe can even field arguments that he has a right to our spaces, our clothes, our unique role in the human species, and our social niches. For decades, the women’s rights movement has insisted that women be treated just like men – not treated equally under the law, but treated LIKE men.
It didn’t start out that way. In the 70s, women still embraced femininity while expressing a desire to be treated equally. This led to all kinds of great positive advances (and a few negative ones): women had better access to traditionally male careers, giving us more choice. Women made up the wage gap – yes, entirely, since the tradition that women only make 80% of what men make does not take into account critical variables like experience, time in job, and relative danger/comfort levels. Women’s health made huge leaps forward, and women’s athletics gave women opportunities we had never had before. By the 1980s, things were pretty hunky-dory for us chicks.
But never underestimate the human ability to spoil a good thing.
There’s an old fairy tale I’m quite fond of called “The Golden Fish.” In it, a fisherman catches a pretty golden fish, and as he is marveling at it, the fish speaks. “Fisherman! I’m actually a prince of the seas, and if you release me, I can give you whatever your heart desires.” Well, the fisherman was pretty poor, so he asked that the fish turn his run-down shack into a prosperous cottage farm. “Go home, fisherman, and you will find it so.”
And indeed he did. His old shanty had been replaced with a pretty thatched cottage with a separate kitchen and even a loft, and a barn and pens held farm animals that could make his life much better. His wife was inside, stunned at the transformation. Eagerly the fisherman told her what had happened, expecting that the wife would be delighted at his cleverness, but she was not. “What! You could have asked for much more! Tell the fish that you want instead to be a wealthy merchant with a fine house and a horse-drawn coach!”
So the fisherman goes back and calls to the fish. “Go back, fisherman, and you will find it so,” said the fish.
Was the wife satisfied? Heck, no. She asked for more – first to be a noblewoman. Then to be the queen, then empress, then the Pope himself. Each time the fisherman went back and the fish granted his wish, though the sea was stormier each time. At last the wife asked to be God.
When the fisherman asked for this, the golden fish laughed. “Go back, fisherman, and you will find your old shanty.”
And the fisherman went back, and there was his wife, in her rags, sitting in the tar-paper shanty they had started with. She had finally asked for too much.
And so the women’s movement did. Women began to insist we were not just equal under the law, but JUST THE SAME as men. We deluded ourselves that we were just as strong, as fast, as fit, and as durable as men. The kickass heroine became popular – the idea of the Captain Marvel, the woman who could beat up the men around her because women were in fact more powerful.
Now, science shows that this is not true. But men, by and large, want to give women what women want. Evolutionarily, this is sensible; happy women are more likely to have sex with men, and thus procreate. Men like happy women.
So men decided to share our delusion. And thus it has been for 20 years or more. How unsurprising is it, then, that so many men have decided that since women are the same as men, men can be the same as women?
We can only blame ourselves for what has happened.
To reverse the Golden Fish course we are on, it is essential that we undelude ourselves – that we confess that men and women are, in fact, very different. That women have bodies that are physically weaker, but gifted almost magically with the ability to bear and nourish babies – our very future is literally in the hands of women. We need to confess that we cannot do exactly the same things boys can do.
And we need to say that this is okay.
Of course we should be treated equally in the law, in society, and in culture. We are just as important as men, and men are just as important as us. But a demand for equal treatment is not the same as being exactly the same. Equality and equity are very different things.
By insisting otherwise, by insisting that women are just like men, we have severely damaged women’s status – and our culture as a whole. The equilibrium that once guaranteed women a special protected status in society while also guaranteeing us equal treatment under the law has been upset. We are losing everything because we have insisted on the error of the fisherman’s wife.
We can’t have it all. We are different from men. We are only human beings.
And that’s okay. In fact, it’s more than enough.
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