As conservatives and Christians have run away terrified by the prospect of having meaningless words like transphobic tossed at them, it might ultimately be, in a strange twist of fate, the feminists who take down the "transgender" narrative. If they ever figure out that "transgenderism" is a direct assault on their entire worldview, maybe it will prompt a full fledged civil war in the progressive ranks.
After all, according to mainstream feminist wisdom, there is no such thing as a "female brain" or a "female soul" or "feeling like a female." By the words of every liberal who has ever said anything on the subject of women's rights in the past four decades, how you dress, look, think, and feel have nothing to do with your womanhood. Usually it would be offensive and sexist to accuse a woman of acting like, thinking like, or feeling like a woman.
Yet now, suddenly, emotions and looks define a woman so severely that a man can actually become one if he claims to experience feelings that he assumes are feminine? The whole thing contradicts itself.
Feminism and transgenderism say two opposing things about what it means to be a woman. In fact, feminists have come up with the term "neurosexism" to condemn the misogynistic and "pseudo-scientific" idea that male and females brains are different. But Bruce Jenner claims he has "the brain of a female" so how does this work? Do you mean to tell me that the only people who can have female brains are males?
Meanwhile, feminists regularly insist that the absence of a uterus and a vagina excludes men from having an opinion about things like abortion. So a man can't have ideas about women's issues because he lacks the correct anatomy, but he can actually be a woman despite lacking the correct anatomy? How does that make any kind of sense? Transgenderism and feminism cannot coexist. Progressives can't have both. They'll just have to choose.
For my part, I agree that a man can never lay claim to womanhood. I also agree that there is such a thing as a female brain and a female soul and by extension female emotions and female personalities and female characteristics; but the trouble is that female brains and souls are always contained securely in female bodies. A man will never be born with a sloth's heart or a rhino's liver or a birch tree's root system, just as he will never be born with a woman's brain.
I'm told that white people appropriate black culture when they listen to Nikki Minaj or wear flat brimmed hats. I'm not sure that such offenses constitute cultural theft as much as they indicate possible brain damage, but that's not the point. If we're worried about groups appropriating from other groups, I think we need to investigate the practice of calling a man a woman because he grinds down his forehead, wears eyeliner, and pins back his genitals. If you look closely, you might find reason to consider this an appropriation of womanhood, or worse, a degradation of it.
There is more to being a woman than "feminized" facial features and frilly underwear. Bruce Jenner in drag is not beautiful. Women are beautiful because they are women. Womanhood is itself beautiful. Women bring something distinct and special to the world. They fill a void and play a role that no man can.
A woman is a woman not merely because of whatever cosmetic feature a man might vaguely emulate. A woman is a woman because of her biology, which a man does not share and never will. A woman is a woman because of her capacity to create life and harbor it in her body until birth, which a man cannot do. A woman is a woman because of her soul, her mind, her perspective, her experiences, and her unique way of thinking, of loving, and of being -- all things a man can only mimic.
A woman is a woman. She has earned that title. She pays for that title. She suffers with that title and gives life with that title and lives from conception until death and beyond with that title. She is that title. She should not be told that it's such a flimsy thing that a man with enough money can buy his way into it. It's demeaning and reductive, and as a father and a husband and a son and a brother, I take exception to it. I can only imagine how women might feel if they were only allowed to be open about it.
And notice I said I "can only imagine," because that's all I can do. I cannot experience a woman's thoughts or feelings due to the fact that I am not one. You don't get to have a "new" self or another self or a different self or a Self 2.0. Your self is your self. It's your being. It's your essential personhood; your particular and unrepeated character. Your self is your body, mind, and soul. It is physically, metaphysically, spiritually, philosophically, scientifically, rationally and logically impossible for a self to change into a new self. A self can only be what it is.
It's all so evil and so bizarre and so unthinkably ridiculous that no dystopian sci-fi writer could have predicted that the collapse of western society would look like this. Right now Orwell and Huxley are looking on in deep regret. "Man! An apocalyptic future where people are so pampered, conceited, and bored that they pretend they can snap their fingers and reconstruct their soul from scratch -- why didn't I think of that?"
After many years and at least a dozen viral Dove marketing campaigns, it seems that, for the sake of the gay agenda, we've utterly abandoned the whole "women shouldn't be photoshopped or plastered with makeup and silicone in order to reinforce a subjective standard of femininity" thing. Perhaps the one single thing liberals were actually right about has now been tossed into the garbage because it doesn't serve the gay/"transgender" narrative.
If progressives can wield the power to demolish and remake even the definition of "man" and "woman" in their ideological image, then they have achieved a total and irreversible cultural victory. They have reached into the universe and reshaped reality itself. They have become gods, or at least that's the kind of power we give them. You can blab on and on about economics and foreign policy, but if we live in a country where confusion, perversion, and self-worship reign supreme, what's the point? America will already be dead.