This post is talking about a man who identifies as a man pretending he identifies as a woman in order to access female spaces. I’m pretty sure anyone can look at this and realize that “predatory men should be allowed to prey on women as long as they go through X amount of trouble first” is a terrible take. Now, I could further critique this by talking about the men who have done insane things in order to prey on women, or self-id laws meaning that none of those things are necessary to get access to female spaces, but that’s not what stuck out to me when I first read this post.

What stuck out to me is the list of things this hypothetical man is doing in order to access the female spaces. The point of this list is to make it seem ridiculous that any man would do all of those things, go through all the difficulty, in order to prey on women. She describes it as “improbable” in the notes. She says it’s “a lot of work”- so much work in fact, that any man who does those things earns the right to be a predator.

But what stuck out to me is that with the exception of hormones and maybe going by a new name, all of the things on that list that are apparently *so* extreme and *so* over the top that not even a predatory man would do them even if it meant unquestioned access to those he preys on, are things women are expected to do just to exist.

Having breasts (of the “correct” size and shape), having long hair (or a long haired wig if you have a condition preventing long hair), shaving your body, wearing “women’s” clothing, wearing makeup, even changing your name if we’re discussing marriage- all of that is the bare minimum of what is expected of women to exist in public. Ask any woman who does not fulfill all of these requirements, or even just a couple. They’ve all been harassed, shamed, told they’re not good enough, shown they’re not good enough through media, etc.

So all of these things that women *must* do in order to receive basic acceptance, are *so extraordinary* when a man does them that he gets to be a predator as a prize. Why is it that we can easily see how ridiculous these expectations are, how extreme and degrading they are, how illogical and unnatural the expectations of femininity are, when they’re applied to a hypothetical male sex predator? How is it that when it comes to a woman, these things are “empowering”, they’re “choices women make for themselves”, they’re “no big deal”, but at the same time no man would ever do those things voluntarily, even predatory men for sexual gratification?

It doesn’t make sense. It can’t be both ways.