Why All Men Are Transgender

It’s true: All men are transgender. Literally.

As usual, it’s all about context. Let’s get us some!

Recently I mentioned in an article that my wife, Cheri, is usually right. Joel Smith, in a guest post, said the same a few days later about his wife, Roni.

You’d think we guys might get credit, would we not, for owning up and coming clean? No! We instead received a flurry of emails admonishing us that:

• Our wives are always right (not just “usually”);
• It’s women who are always right (not just our wives); and
• We guys need to accept that this invariable womanly rightness is “for our benefit”.

My job as a journalist isn’t to take sides here. It’s just to report that this point of view seems to represent an emerging consensus.

Then another letter offered the following added insights:

“This is a scientific theory, according to my scientific discovery:

“As you know, God created man (Adam). He looked at his creation and said ‘Hmmm. He looks good, but needs improvement.’

“So being the first hypnotist, God put Adam to sleep and sort of touched him from head to toe like a parent with a new baby. He found two extra ribs, so he took them out and made a new person. He looked at this new creation and said ‘woman!!!’

“Well, the man became even more good. But — those two ribs were the ribs of common sense. So we women are made of the ribs of common sense, and you poor creatures don’t got none, and can not be expected to be right as much as we are.

“I hope this is a good enlightenment for you. Please let those two wonderful women [Cheri and Roni] know about this and know that you need to be forgiven for your nonsensical actions since you do not have any common sense.”

Okay, Joel and I — as instructed — have alerted Roni and Cheri. (Not that they weren’t already on board.)

Still, I feel the need to flesh out our benefactor’s “scientific discovery” with even more science. Hang on! Science doesn’t get any better than this:

The Embryonic Female Template

The eventual gender of a typical embryo depends on its chromosome structure. Those with an XX structure develop into females; those with an XY structure, into males. Note that we’re talking about “eventual” development.

Anatomically, however, every embryo, without exception, starts out female!

For about the first 60 days of gestation, the embryo/fetus follows a “female blueprint”. There are rudimentary female reproductive organs. There’s a rudimentary womb. There are rudimentary mammary glands. It’s all there.

Everything is on track for the in-utero baby to blossom into a fully formed, fully functioning woman. This will happen, unless something interferes.

About half the time, of course, something does interfere: It’s that pesky Y chromosome. Once it wakes up, all bets are off. The Y starts to stomp and spit, scratch under its arms, strew its laundry across the floor, and leave the toilet seat up.

This bizarre behavior so traumatizes the other fetal tissues that they reverse course. Mini-ovaries morph into mini-testes. Innies become outies, and the intended mechanisms for feeding future offspring simply stop growing. They do, however, leave behind those little nip-tips known to physiologists as “mammary papillae”. (Haven’t you ever wondered why men have these?)

You can’t make this stuff up! I can’t, anyway. If you think maybe I’m pulling your leg, just web-search “embryo starts out female”. (That’s how I found the link cited above. There are dozens more articles.)

The point is that all of us — male or female — once were little girls. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hulk Hogan once were little girls. Even I, towering mountain of testosterone-infused muscle and virility that I am, once was a little girl.

Why is this science important? Because it stands our standard cultural paradigm on its head.

In traditional Judeo-Christian symbolism, Eve is a modified rib of Adam. Man is therefore the starting point — the default, the baseline, the foundation, the original template. Woman is derivative. An improvement she well may be, but derivative nonetheless. Man is primary; woman is secondary.

In scientific reality, however, it’s just the opposite: Woman is the original template. She is the default pattern. Masculinity is an aberration, a deviation from baseline norm. Woman is primary; man is secondary.

For us guys, this is worth thinking about, next time we’re tempted to hog the remote.

Not that it makes any difference to me. In my home, Cheri controls the remote anyway. Somehow it all fits together.