Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Equally valid.

What follows is likely old hat to many here, but it’s something I’ve come to realize, partly in the course of writing this very comment. It might be completely off-base, but still, I’ll run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.

Tatchell is being surprisingly candid, and perhaps unconciously so. First, he’s distinguishing between biological women (in reality, the only kind there is) and socially constructed “women” who do not share the biological characteristics of actual women. The claim of “both” being “equally valid” depends on the admitted existence of actual, biological women. The putative “equal validity” of “socially constucted women” (i.e. TiMs) has nothing to emulate, aspire to or usurp without the existence of an original, authentic prototype or exemplar. Without women, TiMs have no destination, no end point to aim at. And everyobody knows this. Everybody knows what a woman is. Without women, TiMs have nobody alongside of whom they can declare themselves to be valid. The paradoxical attempt to dilute or dissolve the definition of “woman” is an attempt to lower the drawbridge long enough to be admitted into the inner circle of the definition they must overthrow to be included in. Once they’re “inside” they need a definition of “woman” that includes them, but still permits actual women in whose reflected existence and validity they can bask.

Like the contradictory and self-defeating need of TiM sports cheats infiltrating women’s leagues and teams, it stops offering affirmation and validation if everyone else on the team or in the league is a TiM. They’re no longer “one of the girls” because at this point there are no real girls left. Ultimately, this is as disastrous as “lesbian” TiMs having only other TiM “lesbians” from whom to find dates. They know that other TiMs are not really women either. Cheating is only a worthwhile strategy so long as there are enough honest players against whom it can be deployed. It’s like the Larson cartoon where a group of wolves in sheep’s clothing are just realizing to their surprise and disappointment that there are no real sheep left. It’s not really much of a “community” at all if the presence of other ostensible “community” members ruins your strategy of selfishness, which only works for “lone wolves.” It’s a pyramid scheme that can only ever satisfy the first ones in. Johnny-come-lately joiners fail to win the big payoff of validation, which has been skimmed off by the pioneering TiMs who managed to gain access while there were still enough women to satisfy the TiM-narc supply.

The near pathological contempt and hatred that some trans activists evince comes across as a variation of the Madonna/whore dichotomy. How can it be that men who are claiming to actually be women despise the sex they aspire to be or become so much? If they loathe women as much as they do (and far too many of them do), why on earth would they ever want to be one? Perhaps it’s more than just the realization that, because humans can’t change sex, they can never achieve their goal. Maybe discussion of exclusively female experiences and issues is triggering for more reasons than the fact that TiMs will never experience them. Maybe part of the rage is their unacknowledged dependence upon the existence of female humans as a role model or standard in the first place, and why erasing them completely is self-defeating for their own impossible goals?

TiMs count on women’s socialization to “be kind” in trying to gain access to women’s spaces, yet never show “womanly” kindness themselves. Yet if they drive women from single sex spaces, the absence of women will deprive them of the validation they’ve come for in the first place. A women’s rape crisis centre that ends up having only TiMs as clients stops being attractive to them because there are no real women among whom they can situate themselves, which was the point of accessing these spaces in the first place. It’s the “team full of TiMs” all over again. Forced inclusion ends up being self-defeating. Would Clymer and Admiral Whatshisname have been happy to preside over a group of “lesbians” made up of TiMs only? No. It would be like ending up with a gender neutral toilet. That’s like getting a participation award when what you want is to win the gold. Being given a space of your own is pointless when what you really want is access to women’s spaces. That doesn’t happen if all the women have left. Then you’ve got to go find out where the women have gone, locate whatever facilities and services that they’ve set up for themselves, and then demand access to that. It’s a never ending cycle of perpetual dissatisfaction. They can never win for long. They will always need women to intrude upon, to be “women” alongside them. They realize, as does Tatchell, that they are not actually women. Never have been; never will be.