OH MY GOD THIS TOOK ME SO LONG TO WRITE! It’s been mostly done for ages but I’ve hesitated to post it. Back when I first wrote it, the war in Israel/Gaza hadn’t started and trans issues were much more front and center than they are now. So it feels untimely now. But maybe that’s for the best.
This is a short story, more or less. It’s also a bit of a philosophical disquisition and maybe some other things too. I hope you like it!
On a planet, light years away, which happens to resemble the earth in a lot of ways…
lives an extremely tall, extremely athletic man. He plays professional basketball. He’s not a huge star in the NBA, but he’s a solid player. You’d recognize his name, if you pay any attention to the game.
As the story starts, our hero finds himself in serious trouble.
What kind of trouble? Maybe it’s something like what happened to Ja Morant, stuff with guns. Or maybe he takes a political stand — sort of like an NBA version of Colin Kaepernick but on the other side — a right-wing position that the NBA or the fans are not OK with. Maybe he’s a white guy who insists that blacks are an inferior race, and his teammates refuse to play with him. But most likely, I think, it’s a sex/gender issue. He beats up a girlfriend or a prostitute too many times and gets suspended by the league. Then he does it again, and the league bans him permanently.
As a result of the trouble, our hero finds himself unable to play basketball for a living. Nobody will pay him to do what he does best.
As so many of us do, our hero blames other people for his situation. He gets angry. He goes in search of other people who are also angry. Turns out the internet is full of such people! Our hero yells and rages, on Twitter and Facebook to start. Later, Youtube algorithms take him to some weird places. He posts some videos of his own, but doesn’t find many followers. He does a little better on TikTok.
After a while, our hero finds a community full of unhappy people. He fits in just fine! He’s one of the most popular members. He has so many angry opinions! Sadly, the world outside his little community doesn’t much care what he thinks. Now that he’s not playing basketball, the world barely remembers that he exists.
Along the way, he becomes fascinated by the transgender wars. He notices how much this particular battle seems to matter — even in the real world, beyond the internet. Stakes are high, emotions are high. He learns the buttons to push, to get the really big reactions. He notices the money, the fame that’s there for the taking … if you are willing to say the right (wrong) things. Not NBA fame and money! But not too shabby.
He rewatches that episode of South Park where Cartman declares himself “transginger.”
He says to himself: why the fuck not?
“I’m a woman!” our hero announces to the world.
(He makes the announcement … where? Not that long ago, he would have chosen Tucker Carlson’s show. Before that, Bill O’Reilly would’ve loved to have had him, or Rush Limbaugh. But now: Joe Rogan, maybe? Maybe he lines up an interview with Bill Maher? Something like that.)
“You’ve all heard of me,” he says. (“You haven’t thought about me for a while,” he doesn’t say.) “I’m a woman and it’s my right to play in the WNBA!”
Rogan or Maher or whoever has some questions.
You’re a woman? You’re transgender?
I am.
Why should anyone believe you’re transgender?
I just said I am! That should be enough.
You’re not wearing women’s clothes. No makeup. Your hair is hideous! You got no style at all, man — never did. You’re as ugly as always. Hell, if you’re a woman then I’m a woman.
Fuck you! That’s offensive. It doesn’t matter what I look like. Deep down I’m a woman.
Are you going to get hormones? What about surgery?
Someday. Not right now though. I’m gonna be a star in the WNBA. That shit would mess with my game.
So how does it feel to be a woman? Any different?
Man, I hate it! I hate being a woman. Women suck.
What?!
Yeah, man. Women are the worst. We’re stupid, we’re self-centered, we don’t care about anything but ourselves. We’re straight up inferior to men.
Wait a minute. You’re saying, you’re now a woman, and women are inferior to men?Straight up, right now: you are inferior to me?
Definitely! Back when I was a man, I had some self-respect. I was decent, like you. Now I’m a woman … fuck. I’m stupid and worthless. Nobody should listen to anything I say. We women don’t know shit.
You never heard of feminism? Equality? What about women’s rights?
Women shouldn’t have rights! Women are property. They’re the property of their fathers and then their husbands. That’s how it used to be, that’s how it should be. We shouldn’t be able to vote, none of that.
But … you’re a woman! How can you say that?
The truth hurts! Somebody’s gotta say it.
(It goes on like this, Rogan or Maher or whoever with a shit-eating grin on his face…. Ugh. Please imagine it for yourself. I’ll skip to the end.)
Now that you’re a woman, you’ll probably want to change your name. What’s your new name?
My name is … Gender Troll.
What, your name is like a message? You’re like Metta World Peace?
Just like that.
And you seriously expect people to believe you’re a woman?
You’ll see.
Now “Gender Troll” is making the rounds on the shows, the podcasts. He’s a mainstay on the alt-right circuit, the new right, the peddlers of the “crisis of masculinity” memes. They have opinions about gender. His opinions are like theirs, but amped up, even beyond what they were comfortable saying. It’s like catnip.
He continues to dress and present like the man he always was. More so, if anything. Not a thing about him is feminine in any respect. In keeping with his new name, he amps up his personal offensiveness toward the entire female sex. He wears jeans and a wife beater (for extra points, he writes the words “wife beater” on it). The word “woman” virtually disappears from his vocabulary; all women, and he continues to include himself in that category, are now “bitches” and worse.
He plays basketball in public for the first time in years. NewsMax and a couple of internet sites send reporters. A few videos trickle out. His game looks good! He’s using women’s basketballs, which are smaller and easier to dunk. The threes are falling. His athleticism is impressive. He is energized, ready to go, delighted to be back out there. Ready to be famous again.
The WNBA doesn’t want to let him play, of course. The whole thing is a travesty. He’s clearly not a woman. He has no respect for women. He’s an insane athlete and letting him play wouldn’t be fair to the others. He’s not even presenting as a woman!
Stung by the last criticism, taking some heat even from his supporters, he switches tactics.
Tiktok blows up when he posts a video of himself working out with a couple of former WNBA stars. He’s sporting prosthetic breasts. A platinum blonde wig. Fluorescent pink hightops with fucking sequins on them. He vamps it up, swishing his fake hair and grabbing his fake breasts, twerking after a dunk. Miming sex acts. A hideous, crass presentation of femininity: the worst misogynist you’ve ever seen, pretending to be a woman, as offensively as he can.
In public, he’s wearing shimmery dresses, platform heels, ridiculous wigs, hot pink lipstick. Sometimes he switches it up for a halter top and short shorts. A thong showing above skin-tight low-rise leopard print pants. Anything to get a rise out of feminists (and decent human beings generally). His face glowers the whole time. He’s daring anyone to say that he’s any less of a man, at the same time that he insists he’s a woman.
At first, folks on the right wing of the political spectrum aren’t quite sure what to think about this turn of events! There’s a mix of feelings. You understand.
But liberals, well, we’re predictable. We condemn him — and yes, we insist: despite calling himself a woman, this asshole is a “him.” This isn’t OK, we assure the world. This is wrong. None of this is funny.
Now MAGA world knows what to think. It’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen!
Our hero continues to insist, loudly, that women are inferior to men.
Interviewed by men, his performances are very strange. He bows his head, stoops low, sometimes even gets down on his knees, then looks up at the interviewer in fake awe. His answers start with “What a smart question!” “Oh my I’m much too stupid to have ever thought of that.” “Oh dear my little girly mind can’t even understand such a complex issue.” “I’m sorry I didn’t catch that! Your shoulders are just so strong … I couldn’t even hear you.” The way he says it, though! He spits the words. He’s full of rage. At himself? At the role he’s playing? At women? At society? All of the above?
Conservatives still aren’t sure what to make of him. They can’t quite approve of this role. But they feel his hatred! He hates the right people. That’s something.
Now he formally petitions the WNBA for permission to play. One of the worst teams in the league is owned by a libertarian dudebro. Our hero receives a contract offer. Triple the money that anyone in the league has ever made. The feminists are appalled. The league won’t let him play. No way.
MAGA world finally makes their choice. They’re all-in. “Let Her Play!” is the chant of the month. It sounds exactly like “Lock Her Up,” and of course the same people are chanting it.
Elon Musk tweets,
Gender Troll is rounding into shape. She looks like a woman to me! She’s going to be the best player in the WNBA. Give her a chance. #letherplay
Donald Trump has some thoughts.
THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA IS ATTACKING GENDER TROLL. SHE’S NOT MY TYPE BUT SHE IS STRONG … ALMOST AS STRONG AS ME. WINNERS WIN, POLICITAL CORRECTNESS LOSSES. MAKE THE WNBA GREAT AGAIN!
Matt Walsh has to twist himself into pretzels, but finds a way to support her. Glenn Greenwald is performatively sad about the spectacle but lets us know that it’s really the fault of the liberals. Jordan Peterson is in heaven.
Now Gender Troll is everywhere you look. Every platform, every channel, every newscast. He somehow has a new outfit for every occasion, each more hideous than the last. (Propublica gets the scoop that Betsy DeVos is bankrolling his wardrobe.)
Bud Light reaches out and a deal is in the works. Gender Troll is an influencer who speaks to the lovers of mass-market American beer. We got basketball! We got dunks! We got fake tits! We got men proving they’re better at sports than women! We’re owning the libs in so many ways. Anheuser-Busch’s sales are up. The stock price is up. Everybody’s happy.
For a few weeks, nobody can talk about anything else.
The WNBA continues to resist, for a while. But with the threat of lawsuits, they back down. They let her play. They have to. She’s a woman, after all. She says she is. She dresses like one now … sort of. She’s playing the part … ish. She says she’s a woman, so she’s a woman. Them’s the rules.
On the court, she’s playing more than basketball. She’s still performing the feminine gender in offensive ways. She’s validating misogyny in every horrible way you can imagine. She’s just about the ugliest woman you’ve ever seen, but her performance is much uglier.
The league insists that she not dress with the other players. At first she dresses in a separate area of the locker room, or at a separate time, from the rest of the team. But then there’s an incident, and Gender Troll is permanently banned from the women’s locker room — and, later, from women’s restrooms as well. The conservatives are upset about that! Liberals defend the decision.
It’s almost an afterthought, but Gender Troll is an amazing player. She’s the star of the team, the best player the league has ever seen. She carries her team. They win and win and win.
But she’s also … can I call her a bitch? She performs bitchiness. She’s awful to everyone. Despite the winning, her teammates hate her. Her opponents hate her more. She hates them right back, or pretends to. There are physical confrontations on the court that threaten to become full-on fistfights. People are asking: is our hero’s anger real, or just for show? Maybe some of both? Professional wrestling fans have some interesting takes on this question.
Now there are feminist protests in the cities where our hero’s team is playing. There’s talk of player walkouts. But the team’s finances have never been better. All of her games are sellouts. Ticket prices double, then triple, and the fans keep coming. The merch is flying off the shelves. ESPN is showing the games, promoting them in prime time. TV ratings are higher than they’ve ever been, almost even with Major League Baseball. But many of the new fans have no interest at all in women’s basketball. They don’t care who wins or loses. They want the spectacle. How hard will our hero dunk in the faces of the … as liberals now call them … the “real women”? What new dances will “she” unveil? What new clothes? What other fun new ways to own the libtards?
Imagine the atmosphere in the arena, the noise, the cheers, the screaming men urging “her” to crush “them.” The games are now the place for self-important incels to network. Fox News starts a regular segment dedicated to the WNBA.
Actual basketball fans are appalled. Feminists are appalled. Liberals are appalled. The right says we need to get a sense of humor.
There’s a new MAGA war cry. “Trans women are women!” they yell with sarcasm, glee, self-righteous anger. In rural areas, now, you can hear it hollered out into the night, seemingly out of nowhere, for no reason. It’s the punch line of every new joke on the right. Laura Ingraham, Candace Owens, Rob Schneider, Louis CK all have their variations on the joke. Jason Aldean’s newest song is called “Trans Women Are Women, Motherfucker.” At WNBA games, the arena erupts when it comes on.
All over the country, ordinary conservative men are starting to repeat Gender Troll’s joke. A spectator at a WNBA game, skirt and thong hidden under his Levi’s, pulls off his pants to show off the outfit — live on ESPN, replayed for days. Then Maria Bartiromo hosts a segment where she interviews a car dealer in Omaha, Nebraska who’s attracting customers with his new set of ads, which feature him as a full-on drag queen. Makeup, wig, shimmery dress, heels, the whole nine yards. The segment is called “The Drag Queen of Drag Cars.” This person is almost comfortable in his get-up! His performance seems close to authentic! That video really goes viral. Nobody can decide what to think. They check his politics and confirm he’s been donating to Republicans since 1996. But … isn’t this guy over the line? What defines the line? Is MAGA world the troll-er or the troll-ee? How can anyone tell?
But the genderqueer movement continues to spread. It’s trickling down to the masses. It’s starting to be really OK to be gender nonconforming, even deep in MAGA world. If four or six redneck friends go to a bar and get drunk enough, nobody’s surprised anymore when one of them turns out to have packed some lipstick, eyeliner, a miniskirt, or whatever it might be. Usually it’s the guy nobody expected.
But there are limits! There are rules! The performance needs to include a “fuck you” to liberals. And always, always, there needs to be a clear moment when everybody affirms that it’s just a joke. Especially when it’s not (only) a joke.
Back in the world of basketball, things are moving fast.
One day all of the top WNBA players quit. They form a new league with a new name. It’s called the FNBA, with “female” up front, a top-line insistence that only two X chromosones qualify you to play.
The WNBA lives on, as a much smaller league. The number of teams doesn’t matter, because the competition isn’t the point. The fans are there for the spectacle. Our hero continues destroy on the court and remains popular for a while. But the movement is now bigger than our hero. Gender Troll’s schtick is starting to get old. It’s too angry to last. Too vicious, in the long run, even for MAGA world. Also, with the caliber of the competition in free fall, the games are less interesting. Even the professional wrestling fans aren’t showing up as much.
Eventually, the right finds a new way to troll the libs. They move on to the next thing. The WNBA folds for lack of interest. Gender Troll loses his job and promptly goes back to his old name. He never again presents as a woman — is never again seen in public looking even remotely feminine. What a surprise!
The FNBA lives on. It now gets the exact same ratings that the WNBA used to. A few liberals have started going to the games as an act of solidarity, but of course that’s balanced out by the more conservative former fans who nowadays won’t be seen within a mile of the arena.
At the end of the day, even the libs have to admit it. We have, in fact, been owned. Score one for MAGA. And our hero made some decent money for a while. Maybe he’ll pay for some therapy.
It is now the liberal position that birth sex is what matters for sports participation. Anything else is just troll bait.
The right, of course, insists on the opposite of whatever liberals believe. So they now embrace the position that any man can be a woman, for any reason, if he feels like it. Some conservatives bemoan the passing of the WNBA and the untimely end of Gender Troll’s career. Others picket the FNBA, gleefully calling it transphobic.
In a huge surprise to everyone, the new conservative acceptance of nontraditional gender roles turns out to be permanent!
Wait, what? Wasn’t it all just a joke? Well, it used to be. But it was such a good joke that they just couldn’t stop telling it. After a while, the realization dawned. This is fun! Nobody’s getting hurt!
It turns out — and I know this will come as a shock to some of you — there is nothing wrong with gender nonconformity. Conservatives took a while to learn this very obvious fact about the world, but learn it they did. That’s when everything changed.
Hierarchy!
This is where we get a little bit philosophical. Strap in.
As I’m sure you know, conservatism has always been all about the importance of authority and hierarchy. Some people exercise authority, some people submit to authority, and it’s important to know your place in the hierarchy. If you believe all of that, you’re a conservative.
And I’m sure you also know that any sufficiently powerful cultural system has ways to make use of the “transgressive” and transform it into just another (conformist) element of the system. Every capitalist knows how easy it is to take a Marxist belief, slap it on a t-shirt, and sell it back to Marxists. Every day on Twitter, you can get retweets and likes by saying how much you hate Twitter — and thus create additional value for Twitter. Conservatives finally learned that conservatism could perform the same magic trick. They stopped fighting gender nonconformity and appropriated it instead — as conservative.
Many observers, liberal and conservative alike, were shocked! They thought that transgressing gender boundaries would inherently tend to destabilize hierarchies, and thus would always be unacceptable to conservatives. But as any cultural anthropologist will tell you, this has to be incorrect. Gender (as opposed to biological sex) is, in the technical sense, a myth: it lives in the minds of those who create it, not in external reality. The elements of myths (as you will remember from that one class where you read a bit of Levi-Strauss) gain their meaning from the way they are combined, not from any intrinsic value. Cultural systems are self-reinforcing, self-creating. The cultural meaning of any performance depends on the system in which it takes place.
Conservatives created a system in which gender nonconformity supports conservative values.
How did they do that? Well, let’s go back to the basics of gender-based hierarchy and how it works.
Traditional religious conservatism is a hierarchy with three slots: God, men, women. God is the ultimate authority, whom all obey, men and women alike. Under God, women obey men. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it’s been around forever. Secular conservatives simply subtract God, leaving a two-slot hierarchy: men dominate women.
After Gender Troll, conservatives learned to embraced a new system. Now there are two extra slots in the hierarchy! (Really there are four new slots. We’ll come back to that.)
For the religious, of course, God is still at the top of the hierarchy. But let’s focus on the four human tiers.
The highest human slot in the new conservative hierarchy is occupied by biological men who dress and act in a traditionally masculine manner.
The next highest spot is men who dress and act in a way that is traditionally considered feminine.
Next comes women who dress and act masculine.
And at the bottom, as always, is women enacting the traditionally feminine role.
This new system is complicated! But it runs more smoothly than the old one. Having more places in the hierarchy allows for more occasions on which the system can be performatively reinforced.
For instance. Donald Trump is now the only conservative male politician in the United States who won’t do drag, at all, under any circumstances. He has a new test of partisan loyalty, though. He has always insisted that people like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz agree in public that Trump won the election (and more generally that everything Trump says is true). He now insists that they do so in high heels, a skirt, a falsetto voice, and maybe a little lipstick. They comply, because of course they do. It’s just another way to show deference to the alpha. If anything, they exaggerate their “feminine” side as a show of servitude.
By acting feminine, Graham and Cruz might seem to lower their status. (It was this fear, in part, that made the idea so taboo on the right, until recently.) But in fact their submissive gender performance only confirmed what everyone already knew about their hierarchical place vis-a-vis Trump.
Surprisingly, it turned out that when someone like Ted Cruz wears a dress, for the right (conservative) reasons, the result is only a very minimal status loss to him within the conservative ecosystem. At the same time, his performance reinforces the system itself, which is the important thing. The rewards flow to the entire system, and to Cruz himself for performatively upholding and defending the system.
Every time a conservative man, acting as a conservative, performs the feminine gender and acts submissive to a man performing the masculine gender, he restates and reinforces the systemwide belief in the superiority of men to women! He reinforces the hierarchy. And as we’ve said, the hierarchy itself is all that conservatives have ever wanted out of gender. They have that now, better than ever.
So conservatives aren’t scared of gender nonconformity anymore. Quite the contrary: they’ve embraced it with a vengeance. So much so that gender nonconformity is now a marker of political conservatism.
Pronouns!
It was tricky, for a while, as conservatives scrambled to find new pronouns for their four genders. They decided to embrace six sets of pronouns! Yes, six!
Of course, liberals pointed and laughed at that spectacle. And yes, to be honest, MAGA world minded the mockery quite a bit. They got over it, though.
The new pronoun system is pretty complicated. But it trolls the libs pretty hard. Also, it’s alphabetical.
What the left calls “cisgender men,” the right has decided to call alphas. Alphas are just men who behave like men, in all the standard ways that conservatives have traditionally preferred men to behave. Their pronouns are the standard “he,” “him,” and “his.”
Next down the hierarchy is the Bs: biological men who perform the feminine gender. It turns out that conservatives needed two categories for this. First up we have men who perform feminity rather halfheartedly, or on rare occasions. The official right-wing gender term for these people is now broads. Their pronouns are “be” “bim” and “bizz.”
The third set of pronouns is needed for biological males who go “all the way” in performing femininity, whether consistently or only on occasion. When done really well, it can be hard to know whether these people were born men or women. Conservatives have decided to bless these folks with the term babes. Their pronouns are “be” “ber” and “bers.”
Next we have the Cs, women who act more masculine than conservatives used to consider appropriate. Again, conservatives needed two words, and some genius decided they could reach out to Latinos at the same time. Chicas are biological women who make stabs at acting masculine but don’t fully succeed (or don’t try very hard). Women who enter completely into the masculine idiom are blessed with the very male-sounding chicos. Chicos, of course, outrank chicas in the gender hierarchy. The pronouns for chicos are “chee” “chim” and “chizz.” Chicas go by “chee” “cher” and “chers.”
Finally we have the D’s, traditionally feminine women. They get to be dames and to keep the original feminine pronouns.
As for the broads, babes, chicas, and chicos who perform gender incorrectly, or in a half-assed way that offends conservatives — well, it’s just super lucky that the English language already has a “b” word and a “c” word to denigrate women. Those words are becoming disturbingly common in MAGA world.
So there’s a new conservative gender hierarchy. It’s complicated and it has its pronouns. Liberals are bemused. Like a dog trying to figure out a little toad that just hopped into its life, we’re poking at it, wondering how the whole thing works.
One of our initial questions was whether babes or chicos would come to rank higher in the conservative ecosystem. Is it higher-ranking, within conservatism, to perform the preferred gender, or to have been born with the preferred sex?
The answer became clear to everyone at a specific moment in time. It happened at a presidential debate. Nikki Haley put on a very dapper business suit and tie for the occasion; she was standing next to Vivek Ramaswamy, who (at the insistence of Donald Trump) was wearing a skirt. Vivek said something that really pissed off Haley, for about the fourth time that night. That much wasn’t a surprise. But nobody could believe what came next. Haley turned toward Vivek, leaned back, and sucker-punched the everliving fuck out of him!
Vivek went down hard. It looked bad. It seemed for a long moment as if Haley’s play for dominance might pay off. But it all came to nothing. Vivek got up, dusted himself off … and graciously, gentlemanly, refused to hit her back. Skirt and all, he was the man and she was the woman. And that was that. The traditional male/female dynamic was in no danger. She could perform the male gender all she wanted, but had no chance against the power of the sexual dimorphism at the heart of the conservative belief system.
You see, conservative women are free to perform the male gender in any way they desire. They can walk like a man, dress like a man, talk like a man, act like a man: anything. As masculine as you like. No limits. The conservative system accepts their performance as a performance within the system. Their gender nonconformity itself demonstrates their acquiescence to the system. Conservative women can act as if they were male, but in doing so they only demonstrate their acceptance of the superiority of maleness! And when conservative men act like women, they “prove” that women are inferior.
The whole thing is ugly, frankly. Liberals aren’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or vomit.
The religious conservatives are on board.
Jerry Falwell Jr. is out with a new video (sponsored by Mattel) where he dresses as Barbie while patiently explaining, yet again, why women need to submit to their husbands.
Drag Queen Bible Story Hour is now a staple on the Christian Broadcast Network, its message of women’s disempowerment made just a smidge more pungent by being proclaimed by a man sort-of-pretending to be a woman.
Everywhere you look, these days, the right is embracing genderbending.
But they don’t call it that, you see. They call it gendermending. Gendermending is exactly the same thing as genderbending, except that its participants support the conservative/hierarchical gender system.
Conservative politicians (most of them!) only gendermend a little bit, on special occasions (or as demanded by Donald Trump). But more permanent options are available. Some people who used to identify as “transgender” now call themselves “gendermended” instead. Conservatives love these people! It turns out that truly committed gendermended people have a very specific and important place in the conservative worldview. These are the most committed babes and chicos that the world has ever seen. They are willing, nay eager, to perform their gender roles in a way that supports conservative belief. And these central tiers of the new gender system are best served by having full-time occupants.
Miraculously, these people’s previously non-conforming gender preferences … turn out to conform to the needs of the system!
Many of the gendermended insist that they are not “trans” anything — transsexual, transgender, transgressive. They’re not interested in disrupting anything. They don’t want to challenge norms. They just want to be accepted for what they are. They used to feel broken, but now they are mended. They have found a home. For many, that’s all they ever wanted. These are now among the most reliable conservative voters.
I should mention some stirrings in the underbelly of the beast. Less wholesome goings-on. Take a minute and imagine the new sex games that conservatives are inventing! There are now six (six!!) genders. Imagine how many new varieties of pornography have sprung up overnight. “Dom/sub” sex games have a thousand new permutations. Millions of conservatives are playing, most of whom only recently learned to feel OK with their own off-kilter gender preferences. It’s crazy out there. Actually, it’s probably best not to think about it. I feel bad for Dan Savage.
One recent change in the broader culture has been very sad for liberals, especially those of a certain age. These days, conservatives are the only ones who watch Rocky Horror Picture Show. Country music versions of “Sweet Transvestite” and “Time Warp” are all over the radio. Liberals can’t even stand to watch the movie anymore.
Matt Walsh just made a new movie of his own. It’s called “What is a Woman, Really?” His new, more complex answer still enrages the left, which is all he ever wanted.
Those of us who lean left of center are learning to live with the new realities. We’ve lost the support of a lot of the transgender community. And, well, the feeling is mutual. A lot of us liberals don’t support trans folks like we used to.
Gender nonconformity, as such, is no longer seen as liberal. Liberals have to ask themselves this question, on meeting a transgender person for the first time: “Does this person think of their transgender identity as part of a liberal (anti-hierarchical) identity, or is it conservative (pro-hierarchical)?” When we’re honest, we liberals will admit that we believe there’s only one good answer to that question.
Why? Well, let me close by telling you about a longtime friend of mine, Pat. Pat is a perfectly decent woman, a lovely human being. But she’s always been ambitious, and the culture at her job is so conservative! There’s a very Mad Men vibe about her employer: the women are mostly secretaries, and all the executives are men. But Pat had ambition. She was going to climb that corporate ladder. And in order to get ahead, she had to dress and act like a man all the time. All the time!
At first it was just annoying to watch her personality change as she adopted ever more masculine habits. She started wearing suits and ties to work. She refused to talk about her emotions, but always had opinions on which team would win the big game. She started to condescend to her female friends.
A turning point came when Pat announced that she wanted to be addressed with the “chico” pronouns. Her liberal friends had trouble with that! Oh the arguments we had! But we finally decided to relent. Based on Pat’s wishes, we decided to respect chizz pronouns and call chim “chim.”
But things only got worse. We heard about the cheers in the boardroom, the day Pat openly mocked women who choose to be mothers. Chee lost some friends for good, that day. Then just last month, Pat got an elective hysterectomy, to prove to the company once and for all how committed chee is to its masculine ideals. Chee won’t be taking maternity leave! After that, the company was delighted to promote chim yet again.
Now we hear that chizz company plans to turn even more sharply toward the right. They plan to feature Pat as part of their new marketing campaign. Chee will be promoting the company’s message that maleness is superior to femaleness — that to be biologically female is to be inferior. Pat’s elective hysterectomy, and chizz reasons for it, will be key to the campaign. One message of the campaign will be that companies concerned about the bottom line should prefer employees who can’t become pregnant. Because companies exist to make money for their shareholders, new corporate governance laws should be passed requiring that companies discriminate against pre-menopausal women. We asked Pat about it, and were both shocked and not shocked to learn that chee agrees with the message and is proud to be its spokeschico.
It’s a tough situation for Pat’s liberal friends. We want to be supportive of Pat! But, well, you understand. We have mixed feelings. How are we supposed to support this new brand of transgender people, when their beliefs and actions offend everything that we stand for?
Back to Earth
As I said at the start, nothing in the story happens here. It’s all taking place on another planet that just happens to resemble earth in a lot of ways. Probably most of it couldn’t happen on the planet where you and I live.
But which bits are impossible, and why? Also, what did I leave out? What important people, ideas, and institutions are missing from the story?
You tell me. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for reading.