Break Out the Popcorn

Carrie Lukas at the NY Post: “There’s a feminist civil war brewing over Caitlyn Jenner”:

Feminist Stalwart versus Transgender Icon: It may sound like a warped new comic strip, but really it’s the first installment in what could be a series of very real conflicts between warring politically correct factions.

Germaine Greer, the 76-year-old author of “The Female Eunuch” making waves by lambasting the idea that Caitlyn Jenner may be honored by Glamour Magazine as “Woman of the Year.” Jenner isn’t a woman, says Greer. He’s just attention-starved and seeking to steal the limelight from the women in the Kardashian family…..

Greer also uncovers an aspect of the transgendered phenomenon that feminists really ought to find disconcerting. It’s more than just a rival victim group, but one that threatens to expose feminists’ contradictions when it comes to sex differences.

Feminists typically deny that meaningful gender differences exist between men and women, while allowing that there are some areas in which women are superior to men. Women are better at consensus building, listening, languages . . . but don’t anyone dare imply that men may have an innate edge in any hard science. Ask former Harvard University President Larry Summers how that one turns out.

Surely Greer doesn’t actually care whom Glamour magazine honors as woman of the year. (Aren’t old-school feminists supposed to object to such beauty-obsessed rags anyway?)

Yet what happens when transgender women start competing against plain old women in other areas of life? Say, in tennis matches and swim meets?

Or how about for slots on corporate boards and in top universities looking to meet targets for gender balance? Feminists may find their cause stalled and themselves forced to acknowledge that biology plays a bigger role than they care to admit.

The Germaine Greer and Caitlyn Jenner brouhaha is surely, taken on its own, a tempest in a teapot.
But it’s the culmination of a PC culture that may be beginning to implode.