In the Hans Christian Andersen tale,
the emperor had no clothes. These days, if the emperor puts on the right
clothes, he can call himself an empress. And we all have to applaud.
Yesterday’s Miss Universe contest
featured, for the first time in the event’s 66-year history, a transgender
woman. Competing as Miss Spain, Angela Ponce entered the pageant to much
acclaim, writing in an Instagram post: “Today I am here, proudly representing
my nation, all women and human rights.”
Ponce didn’t win, but the
27-year-old has been hailed by the media merely for competing. “Miss
Philippines Catriona Gray took home the crown at the 2018 Miss Universe pageant
on Sunday night in Bangkok, Thailand, but she wasn’t the only winner of the
night,” a writer for ABC News declared Monday morning. “Miss Spain’s
Angela Ponce became the competition’s first transgender contestant, a major
step for the 66-year-old pageant.”
“In the wake of a Victoria’s Secret
fashion show that many feel failed on the inclusivity front, Spain’s
Angela Ponce is poised to make history as the first transgender woman to
compete in Miss Universe,” a Yahoo! News writer began her article on the
topic. The NBC News feature on the Miss Universe competition didn’t even
mention Monday night’s winner until four paragraphs into the article, focusing
instead on how Ponce “broke barriers.”
All of this fanfare raises the
inevitable question: Could Ponce actually “represent all women” without being a
woman at all? In our unscientific moment, so much as asking this question is
enough to warrant being drummed out of polite company in certain circles.
Dwell for just a moment on the
reality of Ponce’s biology — a reality that, no matter how much cosmetic
surgery Ponce obtains and regardless of whether Ponce truly feels like a woman,
cannot be altered. Technology might disguise that truth, but no amount of
medicine or mutilation can coax Ponce’s chromosomes into submission.
But consider another question, too,
and perhaps a more important one: Can Ponce live as a transgender woman without
forcing us to go along for the ride? The Miss Universe pageant, the progressive
media complex and, increasingly, the left wing of American politics, seem to
think not.
Ponce told Time magazine in
November that winning the contest would be symbolic: “Trans women have been
persecuted and erased for so long. If they give me the crown, it would show
trans women are just as much women as cis women.”
This is the charade we are being
asked to accept. It is not enough to say, as we should, that gender dysphoria
is a real psychological phenomenon, that a just and compassionate society ought
to recognize the reality of the struggle people like Ponce face, and that
bullying and hatred directed at such people is evil and wrong.
We are also meant to chant along
with the crowd that Ponce is a woman. Anything less is transphobia. Decency and
charity are no longer enough; affirmation and glorification — ideally
before as large an audience as possible — are the only acceptable course.
And what does this new frontier of
progressivism mean for other planks of the platform? The unassailable dogma
that women are constantly oppressed and subjugated by the patriarchy — that we
can only be free if we recognize and disempower the tyranny of white male
privilege that prevents women from expressing ourselves and taking control of
our lives — requires that there is such a thing as womanhood, and that it can
be defined consistently.
Ponce’s much-hailed appearance in
the Miss Universe contest, on the other hand, implies societal acceptance of
the idea that men can in fact be women.
These two doctrines of progressivism
are in fundamental tension. Even if one accepts the notion that some biological
males can feel so female that they essentially are, in some intangible
way, women, such a view necessarily conflicts with the feminist claim that
there is something unique about being a woman — and that womanhood deserves to
be shielded from the encroachment of male power.
The wholehearted embrace of
transgender ideology necessarily, and quite intentionally, erases womanhood. It
allows biological males to don the mantle of femaleness simply by asserting
that it is their birthright. There has never been a more patriarchal claim.
Perhaps the far Left believes that
if its members force skeptics to nod along with Ponce’s pageantry, they can
avoid the schisms inherent to a movement that claims to value feminism while
insisting that being female has no meaning at all.
