Transsexuals exercise influence beyond their numbers. Woe to the public figure who offends them. A guy in drag was always good for a cheap laugh. Today there is no shortage of comic potential in the topic of former men/current women competing against female athletes but no one would dare attempt to make fun of the situation. What’s a young man to do these days? He looks around and sees females not just competing with him but being kicked upstairs while he remains on the ground floor. His upward mobility is stunted, his status is declining, his sex is anathematized at every turn. But if he’s willing to undergo hormone injections and invest in a new wardrobe…

Well, if women became masculine to gain an advantage in competitive circles, then doesn’t it make sense for a man to become feminine to gain an advantage in a matriarchal welfare state? Now I’m not saying that men who cross over are consciously seeking out a higher status. I think the concept has been absorbed by their subconscious, so when they come of age, they realize it is not possible to function in society as anything close to a traditional male.

Your manosphere reading list may include Norah Vincent’s Self-Made Man, her account of passing as a man for a year and a half. She went from being a masculine woman, as her friends described her, to an effeminate man, as her bowling buddies described him. Well, much to the consternation of feminists everywhere, she wrote, “I can’t help believing…that we live in parallel worlds, that there is at bottom really no such thing as that mystical unifying creature we call a human being, but only male human beings and female human beings, as separate as sects.”

Ironically, the trans woman may still be the object of the male gaze but out of disbelief rather than lust. Even a man well-schooled in etiquette can’t help but indulge in a few WTF double-takes when face-to-face with the likes of Levine.