I would like to get on the right side of history regarding sex and gender, but I can’t figure out where it is.

My liberal friends—what few remain—regularly remind me of the relentless advance of “history” as it progresses towards a certain eschatological state of complete peace and utter equality. I am told that I, a citizen of the old patriarchy, am to get on the right side of history” and stop making a fool of myself.

I do not want to be a fool, and I have always liked being right, so perhaps it is time to forsake the ways of my fathers and allow myself to be guided by feminist visionaries and gender theorists into the gilded byways of the coming new order. I repent of my sexist and hetero-normative ways. My consciousness-raising has begun.

But I must confess that it will be very hard for me to make this transition, for I am even now deeply consumed by patriarchal modes of thought and masculinist conceptions of logical rigor.

The Patriarchy Has Hindered My Ability to Contradict Myself

For example, it is very hard for me to understand how a transgendered person can claim they should become the other sex because they feel like the other sex; for how can they know what it is like to feel like the other sex if they have never been the other sex?

But if women and men have the same minds, how is it then that women can have a peculiar perspective or insight which they contribute?

Similarly, if I understand correctly, it is impossible for males to understand the experiences of women, which is why we men must ever check our privilege; but if it is therefore impossible for men to know what it is like to be a woman, how can one who claims to be transgender know what it is like to be a woman and therefore know he feels like a woman?

It is also said that to be transgendered means to have a male brain in a female body, or a female brain in a male body; yet are not we told the minds of men and women are equal and identical, and that to argue biological differences between the minds of men and women is a particularly devious trick of the patriarchy to marginalize women’s thoughts?

But if women and men have the same minds, how is it then that women can have a peculiar perspective or insight which they contribute? It still seems to me that if women have special thoughts and special insights, it must come from a special mind, yet a special mind by definition could not be the same mind as a male mind; otherwise neither would be special, but normal.

I know that I am merely in need of further education from my superiors in progress, and it is of course no surprise to me that I cannot discern the new order’s inner logic; for deep was my involvement in the patriarchy. Indeed, I may never be able to completely overcome its influence on my mind, so greatly did I benefit from systemic sexism, so high was I in the conspiracy’s ranks.

Why Enslave Gays to Marriage?

I am sure in time I will come to understand, but until then I still wonder about things—many things, really. I wonder how is it possible that to be gendered is a social construction, but to be transgendered is a biological necessity.

If a dress, then, is oppressive by nature, should it not be discouraged among transitioned females just as much as among born females?

I find myself confused about how it is possible that high-heeled shoes, dresses, and lipstick are all tools of the patriarchy to oppress women and transform them into mere objects of male desire, yet it is considered necessary that men who transition to become women must wear high heels, dresses, and lipstick in order to “express themselves as women,” which would suggest that there is something innately feminine about these objects.

But that cannot be the case if they are tools of masculinist oppression, unless femininity itself were an invention of the patriarchy with no basis in reality, which would mean it would be impossible to have a biological necessity to transition to being a woman, since femininity is not biological in nature at all, but political. If a dress, then, is oppressive by nature, should it not be discouraged among transitioned females just as much as among born females? Such would seem to be the case unless born females and transitioned females are different, but I am then reminded they are not!

I realize now that marriage is an institution invented to enslave women and keep them from actualizing their career potential. Yet if marriage is an evil to straight women, why is it a right for gay men? Or, for that matter, for lesbians, who are, from what I am told, actually women, too?

Also I wonder how gender is fluid, yet if one is transgendered, it is set in stone. For them, the body is fluid, and must be brought into line with an unchanging gender. Yet to me very little seems fluid about my body, as I am often reminded when I bump my head.

Again, if gender is fluid, what determines wherein one’s gender flows? We are told that it is not a matter of choice. Perhaps there is some writhing, uncontrollable gender force that dwells deep within each person, manipulating him/her/zer to express as a woman sometimes, as a man at other times, as queer at some third time.

But if we are so ruled by unconscious forces, a sort of fate within as opposed to the Fates above, what comes of freedom and choice? It would seem that to the pro-choice there is no choice.

Feminists Appear to Love the Patriarchy

I am told that if women ruled the world, there would never be war, since women are gentler and less violent than men. But recently I was told that it was due to institutionalized sexism that women underperformed in military combat drills. If the glory of women is in their non-violence, how can the same also be their shame?

We are told that churches and religion are evils the patriarchy created to oppress the minds of all common people, yet that it’s a travesty there are not women clerics or, even more so, a woman pope!

On occasion my thoughts grow darker. Indeed, I wonder sometimes if the leaders of the new order are not entirely benevolent. For, you see, we are told that capitalism and big business are evils created by the patriarchy to oppress our nation’s common people, yet that it’s a travesty more women are not at the top of businesses.

We are also told that the military and war are evils created by the patriarchy to oppress other nation’s common people, yet that it’s a travesty women are not fighting on the front lines or, even a greater travesty, that they are not commanding the armies!

We are told that churches and religion are evils the patriarchy created to oppress the minds of all common people, yet that it’s a travesty there are not women clerics or, even more so, a woman pope!

If only oppressors seek to lead oppressive endeavors, and if business, war, and religion are oppressive endeavors, and if feminists desire to lead businesses, wars, and churches, does it not follow that feminists are oppressors—by their own admission? Far from seeking to abolish the patriarchy, they only seek to lead it! Is that all the new order was ever meant to be? Were all its words of love and peace only lies of Lilith for power? It seems to me the pigs are walking upon two feet, and drinking the drinks of men.

Remember, There Is No Truth (Except Our Truth)

The oneness of heart and mind I had once had under the patriarchy, a oneness born of reason, which I know now to be masculinist, competitive, even violent in nature (since it seeks to destroy all “false” answers for a single “true” answer)—this oneness I have lost, and in its place I have been possessed by a diversity of “truths,” “truths” which in my past life I may have called mutually exclusive and contradictory. However I must remember that the sword that cuts and makes distinctions has been replaced with an embrace which holds all without distinction.

Our new age is one of new life, a sort of rebirth of (hu)mankind from the loving womb of feminist luminaries.

Even so, I cannot help but feel that these many truths are like many devils in my soul, which not only do not bring me to be at peace with the world without, but bring me to conflict with the world within. Perhaps I am beginning to understand that inner agitation which leads feminists to their great anger and unending disquiet, their ceaseless complaint and protest, to the agitation born of the embrace of contradictions, the agitation born of what we once called under the old order “insanity.”

I could go on, but there is no use complaining. Of course, when the times change, one must change with them, and no change is without a little friction. Progress, after all, is happening, even right now! I have no doubt it will be good for all of us, whether male or female, boy or girl—or “other.” It is time for all of us to find a place in the new order.

But this raises a question. How shall we now call this new order? If the old were the patriarchy, I would think perhaps the new should be called the matriarchy. However, since the new order understands motherhood primarily as a burden, a disease at worst and one among many paths to self-fulfillment at best, and in most cases a form of masculinist slavery, this would seem unfitting, a mere holdover from the last age.

Perhaps the feminarchy would be right, to contrast it with the toxic masculinity that defined the lives of Alexander and Aristotle, of Siddhartha and Socrates. Yet this too shows the stain of the old ways, for it is well-known now that femininity is an invention of the patriarchy to “other” women. This, then, cannot be allowed.

Our new age is one of new life, a sort of rebirth of (hu)mankind from the loving womb of feminist luminaries. Indeed, the womb should be made the symbol of our new life, for if the patriarchy was embodied in the piercing sword of the phallus, this new order is embodied in the caring and protective embrace of a woman’s womb.

Ah—I know now. The Hysteriarchy. May its reign never end.