One of the great, pesky questions of human history has finally been answered. For thousands of years , as we all know, most great accomplishments were the works of men. But now and then there was an outlier, a woman doing great things. Esther in the Bible, Joan of Arc or Elizabeth I of England. It made no sense — but today, thanks to the tireless work of gender studies departments we know the truth: those weren’t women at all. They were actually men.
This weekend we had further confirmation of this revelation from the New York Times which ran a piece revealing that Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, was a trans man.
We know this because sometimes Alcott went by “Lou” and mentioned having a “boys’ spirit.”
I’m sold. I mean Alcott’s work shows an intimate and profound understanding of girlhood and womanhood. Who understands those things better than men?
But why stop with Alcott? What about Flannery O’Connor? O’Connor’s stories are so dark and menacing, it never felt like the work of a woman. Where are the beauty and skin care tips? Where are the shallow murmurings about fashion and how to attract boys? And what about Harper Lee? Could Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird be any more of a trans boy? Scout wants to play football for the Methodists and get into fights!
Sadly, there are still those in our society, mostly conservatives with their narrow minds and racist traditions, who still insist that women are capable of great works of art, or acts of leadership.
What they fail to see, what the trans movement has made crystal clear, is that sex itself — being a man or woman — is actually just a collection of cultural stereotypes. The very nature of the feats of history’s great “women,” make it plain that they eschewed and rejected the gender stereotypes of their day, ergo they must be men. Why is this so hard for the bigots and TERFs to understand?
One would think that women would find relief in this great historical truth made manifest in the faculty lounges of Barnard and Sarah Lawrence, now girls and women are free to truly be girls and women, not to play-act as important people in society. Now these institutions for women can go back to their original role of preparing their students to be wives and mothers who dress well and throw tantalizing dinner parties. The trans men at these colleges will of course continue more rigorous studies as the cultural stereotypes that define us demand.
It is not common for the work of historians and academics to fundamentally transform how we understand the past, one thinks of Heinrich Schliemann unearthing Troy, or the Rosetta Stone, the work of these experts in gender studies can now be spoken of in the same breath. In retrospect, it’s all so obvious: of course women never did any of these great things. Of course Madame Curie was really Monsieur Curie.
As is always the case with history, it tells us not only of the past but also of the future. Now we can be fairly certain, for example, that there will never be a first woman president of the United States, because obviously, anyone with the strength, tenacity and savvy to achieve that lofty office will in fact be a trans man, whether they know it or not.
Dylan Mulvaney, a leader in this push for a new definition of gender, who has been a woman for almost a year and has met with President Biden to discuss such matters put it well: “Girlhood means to me the ability to fail, but having a community of women around you, ready to hype you up and dust you off and put you back in your heels.”
It’s all so simple ladies, stop trying to be men — unless you really are one — and just dress up nice and pretty.