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Marching into hell: trans women’s womanhood
If you were assigned male at birth declaring yourself publicly a woman at any point in history has always cause side eye. Even in the present day manhood holds the keys to power with precious few societies having legal equity for women on absolute parity with men. To be a woman has always made you a child of a lesser god, until the last 150 years chattel of your father and then husband, a social utility vehicle for producing the next generation. It was only in the 1850s in Britain that women got to keep her own wages and own personal property within the confines of marriage; even after that a married women could not stand as guarantor for another married woman. To be a woman was very much a second rate citizenship, so to understand yourself as one and then to be one in society has always been seen as a radical act.
Gender critical feminists will roll their eyes at this point for stating the obvious, with their core argument being that no person assigned male at birth every truly understanding the enormity of the gap between male and female. The deep irony is that most gender critical voices do not appreciate it either. To willingly stand up and accept legal womanhood and all it entails is akin to marching into purgatory at best, and a hell of society’s making at worst. There is something forgotten in the narrative that trans women willingly accept this as part of…
