XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.radio.talk, alt.transgendered
XPost: soc.women
Anyone who has seen “What is a Woman?” — and millions of people have
now — knows that at the end we do provide an answer to the elusive
question. My wife makes an appearance in the very last scene (spoiler)
and delivers the correct biologically-sound definition: a woman is an
adult human female. That answer is simple and accurate and obviously
necessary to establish. But once it has been established, there is
plenty more to say about the subject. “What is a Woman?,” both the
question and the film that revolves around it, are meant to be the
beginning of a discussion, not the end. A woman is an adult human
female — every woman is that, and must be that — but there is so much
more to womanhood than its basic biological definition. Just as a man
is an adult human male — every man is that, and must be that.
This is a point made, rather accidentally, by a viral Twitter clip
featuring a female who, some time ago, changed her name to “James” and attempted to transition into a man. James now calls herself “the trans
coach” and offers life advice and motivational tips for other trans
people. Yet in a recent video James revealed that she still has a lot
to learn about the male identity she is attempting to assume.
What you’re about to watch is truly one of the saddest things you’ve
likely seen in a while, but also quite profound in a few different
ways. I’ll explain, but first watch:
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1667327987681722369
Now, there’s a lot in that two-minute monologue that’s simply wrong —
starting with her calling herself a man, of course — but even the wrong
parts reveal something essential, if accidentally, about manhood, about
trans ideology, and about our culture.
Here’s what we’re witnessing in this video. A woman was driven, by her
own self-loathing and confusion, to reject her womanhood and attempt to
become a man. She did not succeed in this pursuit, and never will, but
through the help of drugs and surgery, she has managed to create a semi-convincing costume of a man. It is convincing enough, apparently,
that most people she encounters reflexively accept and see her as a
man. She had imagined that being seen as a man would be a great relief
for her, a source of peace and freedom, but instead she has found that
manhood is not the utopian fantasyland she imagined it would be. Men in
the modern world are, as she has discovered, often deeply isolated,
alienated, and alone. It is lonely to be a man, she says. And she’s
right.
She did not know this before she set out on the fool’s errand of
transitioning, but she has now discovered that men carry a heavy burden
— a cross that is invisible to many women. Now she finds herself
shouldering just a portion of it, and it has broken her. She wanted to
be a man, but was not prepared for what that meant. How could she be?
She wasn’t a man and therefore could not have possibly known what it
was like to be one.
She still doesn’t know.
She says that women are deeper and more emotionally mature, which is
why it is much less lonely to be a woman. But that isn’t true. Women
aren’t deeper or more mature. They are just different. They are women.
They are more relational by nature, more empathetic, more affectionate,
more emotional, softer in many ways. Women are more fragile — it is
easier to hurt them physically and emotionally.
This all can be a source of frustration for us as men, but it’s also
what we love about women. We love women because women are women. They
are not us. They are different. They have a different way of being, of
existing in the universe. They bring another dimension into our lives,
and we sense that we need that dimension to be truly whole.
A healthy man doesn’t want to be a woman — he doesn’t want to adopt her
ways and her manner of thinking, much less her body — but he does want
to be with a woman. He wants not to become her, but to be united with
her.
I can say this about the inner life of a man because I am one. “James”
misses all of this because she isn’t. Instead she surmises that we are
simply shallow and emotionally immature. Which is exactly the kind of patronizing, contemptuous anti-male cliche that contributes to the
isolation and loneliness that she’s complaining about. It may be true
of some men on an individual basis, but generally speaking it is not a
lack of depth that causes men to be quieter, more stoic, more reserved,
or more distant. It is not even the intentional alienation and
marginalization of an aggressively anti-male, masculinity-hating
culture, though that is part of the story.
Some of what “James” is tapping into, or at least for the first time
noticing, has been an immutable aspect of manhood for as long as the
human species has existed. There is indeed more to being a man than
simply having male reproductive organs and chromosomes. There is also
the actual experience of being a man — the inner life of a man — which
runs much deeper than “James” understands, even now. A man tends to be
more in tune with the harshest aspects of reality. He is uniquely
called to confront the darkness in the world, and uniquely equipped for
this calling. It’s not that we don’t feel anything. We do feel, and
feel with great depth, but we carry those feelings differently, and
often we carry them in silence, alone. This is how we are wired, and
the world needs us to be wired this way. Women are also more oriented
towards community. They build and depend upon relationships. Men are
more solitary by nature. Again, these differences are hardwired.
When we say that men shouldn’t cry, it is not just a joke. There’s an
important truth here. The world needs men to pick up their burdens,
shoulder them quietly, and get on with business. The more that men
become emotional and soft, the more that society ceases to function as
it should. We need emotion and softness. That’s why we have women. We
also need toughness and hardness. That’s why we’re supposed to have
men. The men who fulfill this duty are accused of being unfeeling, of
lacking depth, but the truth is that they have a depth that people like
“James” can’t even begin to comprehend. And she probably never will.
She has accessed only the surface level of the male experience, and
she’s already fleeing for the hills. If she ever got the entire thing —
I mean if she was actually able to fully inhabit the mind, the inner
life, of a man — it would be torture for her. As it would be for any
woman. That’s because women are not meant to carry the burden of
manhood, any more than men are meant to carry the burden of womanhood.
We are where we belong. Which is the identity we were born with. We
cannot comprehend what it’s really like to have any other identity.
As for “James,” she will not allow herself to comprehend anything. She
gets close to partially understanding, but then she makes a left turn
and runs away. That’s why at the end she makes sure to clarify that
women and allegedly marginalized minorities are still totally justified
in treating “cisgender” white males like dirt. She was nearly on the
verge of discovering that we are human beings, that we have feelings,
that we suffer, but her ideology won’t allow her to finish connecting
the dots.
It’s all futile. Just like her transition. It amounts to nothing in the
end.
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