By elevating parodies and caricatures of womanhood, our culture makes actual women less valuable.
By elevating parodies and caricatures of womanhood, our culture makes actual women less valuable.
W omen are vain, catty, and brainless. Women’s beauty is built on stiletto heels, false eyelashes, giant fake breasts, debilitatingly long manicured nails, and makeup. We know nothing about current events and sports; our heads are filled with gossip, worries about our accessories, and generating clickbait for our online profiles.
These are the messages sent by the elevation of transgender “spokeswomen” such as Dylan Mulvaney. Drag queens’ cartoonish depictions of overly sexualized women are no longer simply tolerated. Rather, the media and society elevate them to womanhood at its best. The mantra is no longer “trans women are women”; now trans women are the best women.
Trans women are also our best female athletes, so they must be allowed to take spots, scholarships, and awards from biological women. Convicted criminals — including violent sex offenders — should be allowed to self-select into whatever prison facility they feel most comfortable. Biological female prisoners fearing for their physical safety are just transphobic. Trans women must be allowed to expose their male genitalia in women’s locker rooms. If the young women around them are uncomfortable, then those girls should get help with their hang-ups. Never mind if these women are recent sexual and physical-assault survivors or just want privacy. Trans women’s need for inclusion in women’s spaces is more important than a biological woman’s safety and privacy.
This is what society is telling women and girls. Ladies, are we really okay with this?
Among the great ironies of the rise of the transgender movement is that, while it claims to seek to upend gender roles, in practice, it elevates sexual stereotypes. A generation ago, girls interested in sports and woodworking might have been called tomboys, but no serious person would have suggested they weren’t really girls. Now, society is encouraging girls who do not conform to female stereotypes to consider becoming boys. The message is that womanhood is a garish costume to be put on or discarded. Like changing clothes or hairstyle, it’s a choice you can simply make and easily reverse if you change your mind.
The realities of what transition entails are not even in the fine print of the mainstream narrative. Do parents who are being goaded into offering their children “affirming care” by policy-makers understand that cross-sex hormones will forever change their children? Do they know that these hormones can result in lasting, devastating physical harm, including the loss of fertility and healthy sexual functions?
Women once fought to not be objectified and looked at as a collection of body parts. Yet now, we commonly hear women referred to as bleeders, people with periods, chest feeders, and worse. Spokeswomen selling feminine-hygiene products now have never even had a period; they’ve never felt the cramps and fatigue. They’ve never experienced these things because they do not have ovaries and a uterus. For them, these are useful props, and it’s all just a schtick.
The costs of the transgender movement are borne almost exclusively by women. Male athletes and prisoners have little to fear from “trans men.” It’s women’s safety, opportunities, and dignity that are being discarded.
The well-documented mental-health decline among young women has many causes and contributing factors. Yet those celebrating the next “glass ceiling” moment — when a “trans woman” receives another “woman of the year” award, smashes another world female athletic record, wins another beauty pageant — should consider how they are contributing to it. They’re sending a message to biological women and girls, and it says: You’re second best.