Pearls of wisdom from the @chicagotribune 2001:

And man "becomes a woman" and suddenly

- cries more
- believes men are sexually intriguing
- drives more slowly
- is less confident with auto mechanics
- has more friends
- wants less sex more love

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-04-08-0104080312-story.html

Another man who "becomes a woman" suddenly finds

- he's more curious
- his interior decorating skills improve
- he doesn't have to watch sports

(This btw is Rikki Swin, a wealthy industrialist whose collection of materials was the start for @uvic's transgender archives)

Short definition interlude, during which we pretend that words mean things.

So.
On the one hand, gender is biological, and may reside in the soul. Which is therefore biological.
Or in the brain, which is not part of the body, because that's option three.

No one knows.
But the evidence is there, a surging tide of it.

Right, @chicagotribune?

52-year-old Mr. McCloskey, married with wife and children, knows it's not his XY chromosomes that make him more weepy and diffident with auto mechanics, but he does have theories on why he began acting out clichés when he decided he was a woman.

Editor: Please insert standard phrase #17 from the Transition Story Stylebook

Journalist: I did! I did! Look:

In which we discover that 52-year-old Donald thinks becoming a woman is like becoming a child again.

[do not think of mid-life crisis]

Journalist Julie briefly exits the realm of soulful butterflies and love inhabited by men who let their true selves emerge to become women, to now discuss the acne-filled realities of "genetic females taking testosterone", and suddenly we're in a totally different genre.

Ok, we now come to the shrinking penis.

You can be a 68-year-old male with prostate cancer yet frequently live as a female. Frequently. Maybe even three times a week. As a female. With prostate cancer. As a female with a prostate. A female prostate.

You can pop hormone pills and suddenly see colours like a woman.

Well hang on, just a few paragraphs ago we heard that when a man becomes a women he suddenly acquires more friends, so what's this now about ruined relationships?

(And of course we must pity the men for using the wrong bathroom and making women wait in line even longer)

Remember Deirdre? Deirdre who turned himself into a woman (or so he thought) and instantly began performing all the stereotypes of femininity he could think of? https://twitter.com/yatakalam/status/1224492501379231749

Deirdre is a professor of Economics, History, English, Communication, Philosophy and Classics, has 6 honorary doctorates, has authored 16 books and 400 articles in various fields, and describes himself as a Christian libertarian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre_McCloskey

But when he was young, before he was Deirdre... Donald would "commit sexual burglaries of neighbors' homes, dressing up in the crinoline dresses favored by young women of that era, in addition to 'shoes, garter belts and all the equipment of a 1950s girl.'"

Do not say he has autogynephilia though.
He does not like that at all. He refutes the very idea.

Donald McCloskey announced he was changing his gender in 1995. By 2000, the Des Moines Register had published TEN ARTICLES about his transition. TEN.
MOSTLY ON PAGE 1.

And then did another one in 2016, just for good measure.

https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2016/10/13/iowa-professor-deidre-mccloskey-making-transition/91874942/

Here we come to the part of the story where the middle-aged, powerful man fears he'll lose his job if he starts claiming he's a woman.

But surprise! All he gets is applause!

The dean was initially shocked at the news that Donald was becoming Deirdre, but as a fellow conservative economist, he was mainly relieved Donald wasn't transitioning into a socialist.

Then the two conservative economists considered the fact that women were paid less than men, but Donald did not offer to fully "live as a female" and accept a hefty salary cut.

Hahaha, they guffawed, good joke!

As we know, being a woman is about the makeup, not about the wage.

And that's that./