On Transgender

Firstly, I totally respect people's right to choose their own identity. I am never going to tell someone that they do not have the right to be whomever they want to be.

However, I think it is a shame that men feel like they have to become women to be 'true' to themselves. Why can't they be a man and be themselves?

What is it specifically about womanhood that they are aspiring to? The monthly periods? The ability to carry a child? The ogling from the age of 12 onwards? The little sexual comments that you're supposed to just ignore? The subtle but insidious manipulation from media images on how women need to be beautiful, and from films on how women need to have a boyfriend to be complete?

The fundamental difference between transgender people and women, is that women have no choice. Transgender people might say they have no choice, but they do. They could choose to be a man who wears woman-like's clothes, get surgery to have woman-like breasts, take pills to have smooth skin etc.

They can be a man and do all these things, they don't need to call themselves a woman to do it.

The real problem is that our society does not allow men to wear the floaty skirt, to laugh in a fluttering way or manifest other characteristics which are deemed exclusively feminine. But this is not something that women can change. It is something that men need to challenge.

So, transgender people, rather than tell people that you are a woman, tell men that you are a different kind of man. Why are you renouncing your manhood so easily? Reclaim it for yourselves, define it for yourselves.

Make manhood more diverse and interesting. We would all benefit.