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Men are the winners in gender ideology. It's all about trans women, with not just the thrill of dominating real women in sport, but the whole AGP thing of getting a kick from porn fantasies of feminine dolls and being submissive and all the panoply of male sex fetishes. In comparison trans men seem kind of sad. It's not at all about embracing fantasies of masculinity, because they just can't do it. Being super tough and aggressive and beating the shit out of people? Even if they wanted to they couldn't begin to compete with the real thing. And of course trans men in men's sport is a non-issue. The role model, as far as it goes, is gay men – with, always, that moustache. It not so much an embrace of male gender norms as a rejection of female gender norms, with a very fine line with those sad breast-binding non-binaries.
Indeed, those who shout loudest about smashing the binary can be among the most gender conforming people on the planet. Men who claim to be women fetishise femininity while demanding even greater access to women’s time and resources….
Meanwhile, women such as the actor Bella Ramsay, who disidentify from femaleness on the basis that they do not feel “feminine”, do not and indeed cannot make a land grab for male status and authority. On the contrary, they are ceding more ground, leaving “womanhood” to the males who define it — the “dolls” — rather than messing things up with their unfeminine ways. Patriarchy 1.0 told female people they were innately feminine and had no choice in the matter; Patriarchy 2.0, aware that there’s nothing more unfeminine than a flesh-and-blood female human with an inner life, encourages such creatures to exit the “woman” category rather than spoil the fantasy for everyone else.
For this reason, we should celebrate every woman who refuses to budge up. Cerys Vaughan presents far more of a challenge to gender norms — those of both left and right — than any girl meekly binding her breasts and handing her “woman” card to a doll-identified man who insists he needs it more.
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