"Don't blame men. It's not our fault that men make better women than women do."

Quips Instapundit, linking to "Women's opportunities are being taken away by 'womxn'/Biological men that identify as women are invading the area created specifically for women and are not only doing a disservice to the women but themselves as well" (Campus Reform). 

I'm not blogging this to engage on the issue whether transwomen belong in women's sports. But I will say, as I've said before, that I think women's sports has to do with the physical body, and not with the mind. Transgenderism radically prioritizes the mind over the body. Each of us holds dominion over our own mind, and that includes power to think of yourself in gendered terms and to give any meaning you want to the idea of what it means to be a woman. In your mind, you can believe it refers only to the body or only to the mind or to something in between or to nothing at all.

The reason I'm blogging this is to extract an unexamined question from "men make better women than women do." And that is: What makes a woman?

If you Google that question, the first thing you'll see is probably the Katy Perry song with that title:

 

Katy says you "could spend your whole life, but you couldn't describe what makes a woman/She’s always been a perfect mystery... and that's what makes a woman to me." That is: It's a mystery! There's no answer — even if you spend your whole life looking for the answer. There's a problem with the question! There is nothing that "makes a woman." 

I quoted the chorus. The verse contemplates the possibility that it has to do with speaking in a sweet way, having soft skin, being a bitch, buttering up her man, changing her mind, fearing abandonment, having a particular sort of hairdo, not wearing makeup, having intuition, crying, or nursing a broken heart.

I see there was an op-ed in the NYT with the headline "What Makes a Woman?" back in 2015. The author, Elinor Burke, remembered the way Lawrence H. Summers — president of Harvard at the time — was denounced as a massive sexist because he simply wondered aloud about the possibility of difference between the male and the female mind. But more recently Caitlin Jenner had announced, "My brain is much more female than it is male." We're told:

“You can’t pick up a brain and say ‘that’s a girl’s brain’ or ‘that’s a boy’s brain,’ ” Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist at Britain’s Aston University, told The Telegraph last year. The differences between male and female brains are caused by the “drip, drip, drip” of the gendered environment, she said. The drip, drip, drip of Ms. Jenner’s experience included a hefty dose of male privilege few women could possibly imagine.... 

After [Ms.] Jenner talked about [her] brain, one friend called it an outrage and asked in exasperation, “Is he saying that he’s bad at math, weeps during bad movies and is hard-wired for empathy?” After the release of the Vanity Fair photos of Ms. Jenner, Susan Ager, a Michigan journalist, wrote on her Facebook page, “I fully support Caitlyn Jenner, but I wish she hadn’t chosen to come out as a sex babe.”

From the comments: "I was disappointed that Caitlyn Jenner came out as a sexpot. A stereotypically male stereotypical vision of what a woman is."

Here's a 2016 article in The Atlantic: "What Makes a Man or a Woman?" We're told of the "internal tension on the left":

On one hand, we are told that gender is simply a social construct; that there is no such thing as a “male brain” or “female brain,” as we all exist on a spectrum; and that we should break out of the rigid “binary” modes of thinking about male and female, allowing for a broader range of personal expression.... 

But the transgender movement... argues that a person who conforms outwardly to socially conditioned, feminine gender roles is actually and truly a woman, irrespective of sex, while a person who adopts stereotypical male behaviours and dress is actually and truly a man. How regressive! 

Moreover, in arguing that a biological man can have a female brain or vice versa, the transgender movement seems to be saying that gender is not a social construct, but is instead rooted in biology—but, apparently, not the biology dictated by chromosomes. The alternative theory is that trans people’s bodies don’t align with their souls.... 

Is gender a mere social construct, or is it biological? And if gender is a meaningless social construct, while sex is a set of immutable biological characteristics, then why is there a push in progressive circles to eliminate sex-based protections in favour of gender-based ones?

And here's an article in Elle from 2015, "What Makes A Woman?/Three women discuss how they defined femininity on their own unique terms." 

Is femininity just a performance, as gender theorist Judith Butler once argued? Or is our sense of womanhood beyond our control, shaped by early experiences in our childhood? Indeed, femininity is personal, complex and tied irrevocably to circumstances that we often have no control over. So the best way to understand is to listen to each other’s stories. And so we've asked three women....

If it's really all about telling your own story, then if "men make better women than women do," it would be because they tell better stories about their womanhood! And why wouldn't a transwoman tell a better story about what it means to be a woman? In their circumstance, they have so much more incentive.

Indeed, the first of the 3 women who tell their story to Elle is a transwoman, a model named Hari Neff:

I do feel a certain amount of pride as someone who completely constructed herself from the ground up. None of this was given to me – this body was not given to me and my standing as a woman was not given to me. I had to earn all of this for myself; every trans person has to make that for themselves and I think that’s why trans people are so strong....

I was just going out and changing up my look, experimenting with drag. I didn’t dive into being a woman – I added elements piece by piece.... I was shaving my eyebrows, had bleached hair and wore make-up...

I think I internalised femininity through fashion and through pop culture, and started to create a woman in my head.... I began to attach desires and value judgements to things, and eventually understood that this woman was stronger and better equipped than I was to deal with the world. I came to the point where I had no doubt that I would be a better person, a happier person, if I inhabited her....

Radical feminists ask, ‘Why would you ever want to be a woman? Why would you ever want to give up that male privilege?’ And I don’t really have an answer for that other than the burden of being a man, for me, was far more severe than anything I’ve experienced on the other side.

Once you’ve changed gender, the annoying aspects of daily life become secondary. I sweat the small stuff less. I’m very happy. I’m not saying that trans women are more evolved than other women, but I really do think they are the coolest, most beautiful people in the world because everything about them in relation to their gender, their appearance, the people they ‘are’, they built.

And there you have it, Neff seriously makes the point that Instapundit put in a quip.