There’s nothing wrong with the idea that men could champion women’s rights. There are plenty of men who have done more for women than women. You’d be crazier than a bag of cats to think otherwise. So where’s the crime in ‘UN Women UK’ naming a transwoman as its champion of Women’s rights in the not-so-United Kingdom.
According to UN Women UK, it supports the “empowerment of women equality globally within civil society, government, and the corporate sector.”
However, the group of charities [Fair Play for Women, Sex Matters, Transgender Trend and the Women’s Rights Network] wrote: “We wish to register our dismay and disappointment at the appointment of … Munroe Bergdorf as a UN Women UK champion. Munroe Bergdorf is unsuitable in every regard.
“Munroe Bergdorf’s well-publicised activism is not pro-women. This person has objected to women making references to our female bodies.”
Munroe Bergdorf, born a man, believes he is a woman and goes to great lengths to achieve the physical appearance, mannerisms, and social behaviors of a stereotypical woman. Becomes a model as a woman but objects to “references to female bodies.” Let’s assume that’s true, and these charities have the receipts. What, then, is the issue? What is it about women to which Bergdorf objects?
Maybe he’s just a bitch? It wouldn’t be the first time someone went to great lengths to emulate female beauty and became catty. If the stereotype is to be believed, it’s quite common.
I’m going with womb envy, but that’s no excuse. There are plenty of actual men and women who are envious of their own sex for any number of reasons. Human nature makes us want things we have no interest in doing the work to achieve. It is easier to covet the finished product and the focus needed to achieve it than to do the work ourselves.
Look at Munroe. No small amount of work went into turning that guy into the person we see today. They are obsessed with a traditional standard of female beauty. Having achieved it is as subjective as attraction itself, but there is no denying the goal. Munroe’s vision for women is classic. But this is the sort of thing feminists have been working to escape since Elizabeth Smith Miller started wearing pants. Maybe escape is the wrong word, but you take my meaning, I hope.
Munroe is, therefore, retrograde. Nothing progressive about that.
Munroe is also a man. Removing and adding bits does not change that. Beneath the facade of flesh is the skeleton of a man who, if unearthed thousands of years from now, would be identified as such, and there’s no cure for that. So, the only thing UN Women UK has done is deny an actual woman something to which they are entitled by birthright – a well-known concept the English have preserved into the 21st century by tolerating their monarchy.
There’s nothing wrong with that or awarding a man with a title like “champion of women’s rights” if they deserve it. Still, by all accounts, Bergdorf is a Potemkin woman – pretending for points and attention, even deception, and little else, and by choosing him, that’s what UN Women UK has become.
