Advancing Backward

womanhood is being girlie and soft and wearing a lot of pink, like barbie

Like Hannah, Aly noodles. She noodles a lot.

When she’s not digging around in the mud on the riverbottom so she can shove her arm up a giant catfish, she harvests protein with a bow or a rifle, and documents all of that hunting and fishing — sorry, huntin’ and fishin’ — on social media. And she posts the results, frequently in the form of injury videos:

@alyfromalabama @alyfromalabama ♬ original sound - Alyssa Hall

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Cisgendered men, being appalled by a form of gender performance in which a woman engages in traditionally masculine behaviors like hunting and wrasslin’ in the mud for fish and getting hurt, respond to Aly and Hannah’s videos with deep hostility, as evidenced by an endless stream of hateful comments like, “OH MY GOD I’M IN LOVE,” and, “Ring size?”

Over the course of a century, we evolved a wide-open conception of gender in which women could be 1.) pretty and 2.) tough and physical, all of that together in one package, as women, while men could be entirely men by being elegant and urbane:

Warning: not a self-portrait of the author, though easily mistaken for one

Now, compare:

@dylanmulvaneyDay 95- barbie dolls #trans #barbie

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@dylanmulvaney*filmed pre surgery* happy holidays baby! Days of girlhood Christmas special gonna be a lil late but coming before the new year. I’m healing up! Love ya so much ❤️❤️

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The appalling state of “transgender” performativity, this giant cultural advance, turns on a set of pathetic Stepford cliches. Our progress is a giant step backward. The biologically male Dylan Mulvaney is experiencing “girlhood,” not womanhood, as an adult.

Seconded:

Reality Girl @RealityGirlZine

it’s been said before, but gender theory was supposed to liberate us from oppressive gender roles. instead it has concretized them to the point that people think their bodies are “wrong” if they don’t “match” these outdated stereotypes. Now children are having extreme body mods.

This is shit, and our children can’t have this for a future.