This Imitation Is Not Flattery

Transgender ideology is especially offensive to women, all women.

Our kids who have been caught up in transgender ideology are victims. I understand that. What has happened to them is not their fault, and I don’t blame them. It’s as if they’ve been kidnapped and thrown onto the queer theory crazy train, and we want to help them escape. Until they escape, they spend a lot of time and effort trying to look like, act, and essentially be the opposite sex. But I don’t think they have any idea just how insulting and offensive this behavior is for women.

For the boys and young men who are trying to “transition” to be a woman, what exactly do they think a woman is? Someone with long hair and soft skin? Someone who wears dresses and the color pink? Maybe someone who likes to cook or sew? I’ve known many women who fit this description, and I’ve known many women who don’t fit this description. I’ve known women who have some of these characteristics, but not all of them. None of these attributes define a woman. A detransitioner put it best: “I just woke up one day, looked at myself in the mirror, and asked myself, ‘What the heck am I doing?’ I realized no matter if I would have gone [through] every surgery, continued with hormones, I realized I would have never been a woman. At best I would have been a caricature of what I believed a woman was.” Exactly.

I suspect that most women look at these caricatures of themselves and wonder, “Is that what he thinks a woman is? He has no clue…” I want to tell my confused son that he doesn’t get to be a woman, and that by essentially announcing, “Look at me as I pretend to be a woman,” he is insulting his mother, his sisters, his friends that are girls, all women. He has no idea how disrespectful and degrading to women his behavior is.

It’s not much better for the girls and young women who want to “transition” to be a man. For many centuries, even longer, women have been told they cannot do all sorts of things because they are women. But in the last 100 years, women have demonstrated that they can do just about everything that men can do outside of a few biologically determined functions. Women are just as successful as men in all areas of business, government, academia, sports, etc. But now, following the strict rules of transgender ideology, girls are not allowed to have certain haircuts, play with certain toys, play in certain sports, etc, because if they do, they are not girls, but boys in girl bodies.

You’ve got to be kidding.

These girls have been sold a lie, often by men, that girls and women can’t or don’t do certain things. It’s a complete reversal of the last 100 years of progress in women’s rights, where women have been increasingly allowed to do everything that men do and proudly be women. Women are once again being told what they can and cannot do. The nasty twist of gender ideology is that if a woman does or thinks certain things, she’s not a woman at all, but a man. It’s a wicked assault on all women.

This disrespect of women has me looking at all the transgender public figures and organizations that support “trans rights” in a completely different light. Bruce Jenner (aka “Caitlin”), Congressman Timothy McBride (aka “Sarah”) and others are victims of gender ideology, and they therefore also have my sincere sympathy. But when they appear in public, they are projecting a man’s definition of what a woman looks like. Once again, it’s men setting the definitions and limits of women. They probably have no idea that their caricatures of women are insulting and offensive. Intentional or not, they are mocking my mother, my wife, sisters, and all the other women in my life, and I really, really do not like it. Organizations like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are even worse, if that’s possible. They actively support and encourage both men pretending to be women, and women being told what they can and cannot do or think if they are really women. These organizations no longer support women - they despise women.

These offenders, victims of gender ideology, do have a path to redeem themselves and truly honor all women. They can escape the queer theory crazy train, reclaim their stolen identities, and return to reality. For young women and girls, this means that they can think or do anything they want, and still proudly be women; they no longer have to listen to anyone dictating to them what they are allowed to do, as a woman. For young men and boys, they can live out their own definition of a man and stop insulting all the women in their life by trying to make themselves into some best guess of what a woman is.

Gender ideology is, among other things, all about imitation. Is imitation the sincerest form of flattery? Not this time.