PinkNews, our favourite source of gay-flavoured clickbait, is at it again. In their latest ‘community’ post, which is an opinion editorial without taking responsibility for it, they publish the notion that ‘trans people can become women for frivolous reasons like fashion or clothes’. First of all, I am anything but frivolous. I’m fucking fabulous, and in our society clothing is much more complicated than just that. If gender dysphoria had any such a simple solution, you’d think it would be resolved much more easily. Second, what of trans men? Are they just women wanting to opt out of the frivolity of fashion?
The excuse that is used for this language is a ‘feminist lens’: using the power of feminism, we can ignore that this promotes a long-standing harmful stereotype about trans people (women in particular). Fay Weldon, the woman whose opinion is elevated in this masked op-ed, says [m]an now controls the best weapon woman ever had, the body he so envied, its very moods and subtleties. He can become her, suck her up, subsume her.
As a feminist first and foremost, I don’t believe in this lens – Weldon’s excuse is that men are looking to lower themselves to become women. It entirely erases that trans women are and have always been women. But it also tries to have it both ways: man is superficial in wanting to co-opt womanhood, which itself is blatant superficiality. Isn’t the want for the superficial a superficial want?
But I’m not in this for the underlying reasons. Fay Weldon acts to reduce trans experiences to the superficial, whether that is the plot line she desired to write or not. If you write a ‘radical’ idea that you do not fully believe in, then there is no blame on the reader who takes your word for it. If you wear a trucker hat ironically, the end result is that you wear a trucker hat. If you wish to dissect and discuss the machinations of society that tend to divide people based on gender assigned at birth and then punishes them for deviating from the norm, be my guest. In fact, come over. I’ll cook you dinner and we can talk. But write it in a book as plain fact, and I’m gonna reserve the right to not cook you anything.