“The Princess and the Frog” shows that military and transgender don’t mix

A few striking visuals in a charming Disney movie perfectly illustrate the Big Lie hiding behind the transgender movement.

Transgender Military Bradley Manning Chelsea ManningBefore anyone asks, there is no actual transgender content in Disney’s delightful The Princess And The Frog, a movie I praised lavishly here. Nevertheless, after reading about the travails of a woman who identifies herself as a “transgender man” (meaning that she is a biological woman who believes she’s a man), but still has periods, I was irresistibly reminded of a scene in that movie.

Let me start with that poor woman who thinks she’s a man. Writing at a blog called Everyday Feminism, she explains that she suffered a lapse in her hormone therapy because her “government insurance” prevented her from finding a doctor with expertise on all things transgender. This hormonal lapse caused her to have periods again. Because the writer believes herself to be a man, she had to come up with creative ways to pretend that periods don’t mean what nature says they mean; namely, that she is not a transgender man but is, instead, a woman. The following paragraphs describe her hormonal travails:

You see, I decided I wanted to switch from needles to cream. No medical reason, I just wanted to. I’m not wild about needles, and successfully sticking myself an estimated 150+ times was enough adventure for me, thankyouverymuch.

But the fact nonetheless remains that, unbeknownst to me, my doctor decided to start me on a cream dose so low that it would’ve created virtually no effect on the raging estrogen of my body, now super-pissed because I’d caged it for so long.

And so, after so many blissful years of being blood-free, my cycle returned with a vengeance.

And because my doctor had flubbed as hard as she flubbed and I didn’t find out until significantly later – there was a fantastic while there where I was convinced something was seriously wrong with my body until she admitted that I had, in verbatim, been her guinea pig – the war is still waging as she ever-so-slowly ups my dosage back to cis levels.

Because—you know—no rush, right?

Suffice it to say that she never got how mentally debilitating man-struation is to me. No matter how much I tried to explain it to her. I can handle quite a bit in life – trans or otherwise – but I always stumble when I try to handle this.

If it were me, I’d work with this troubled woman to help reconcile her to her own body. However, we live in a different time, and instead we slice and dice her, pour potent chemical cocktails into her body, and pretend that her reasoning is sound, and that she really is transgender — meaning one who has successfully crossed the gender barrier.

No matter what modern medicine and magical thinking do, though, this woman’s body knows the truth. And that’s where The Princess And The Frog comes in.

For those unfamiliar with the Disney movie, the heroine, Tiana, is a hard worker who dreams of opening a restaurant in her hometown of New Orleans. The hero, who starts out an anti-hero, is a ne’er-do-well foreign prince, Naveen, who lives only to play. When he arrives as a guest in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, he has with him his valet, the portly, unattractive Lawrence.

Naveen treats Lawrence with careless disregard, adding to the already large chip on Lawrence’s shoulder. That’s why Lawrence is willing to conspire with the evil voodoo man, Dr. Faciliar, to turn Naveen into a frog and Lawrence into Naveen’s look-a-like. The rest of the movie sees Naveen accidentally turn Tiana into a frog, and then follows the adventure the two have in the swamp as they seek a cure for their froginess. Naveen learns responsibility, Tiana learns to have a little fun, their swamp friends have their own stories, and everything turns out well. It is, as I said, a delightful movie.

For this post, though, I want to focus on Lawrence’s nefarious little adventure. Lawrence has a problem, Lawrence’s borrowed good looks will continue only so long as Naveen’s blood flows in a charm that Facilier prepared and Lawrence now wears. To keep that flow going, before the clock strikes 12 on the Mardi Gras parade, Lawrence must woo and wed Charlotte, the ditzy, dynamic, affectionate daughter of a wealthy man who is the “King” of Mardi Gras, making her a sort of princess. To that end, in one short, memorable scene, Lawrence sets about wooing Charlotte, only to have the magic in his charm begin to wane:

When I read that poor woman’s story about the way in which inadequate government-sponsored medical care forced her to confront (and then deny) the truth of her body, all I could think of was the above scene. This “transgender” man’s words and the Disney images tell the same story: When you are dependent on external forces to put the lie to what your body really is, things can and will go wrong. And when that happens, you can embrace the truth, or you can lie and dissemble, both to yourself and to the world. And oh, boy! As you read the article, you will be stunned by the lies she tells herself and others, especially her last and biggest lie:

5. Embrace That Man-Struation Isn’t Inherently Female

And just like that, the cis world explodes.

But seriously, menstruation is simply a biological function for people with active ovaries. And man-struation is simply when it specifically happens to men. (Note: Men-struation holds the same point, but is harder to identify in verbal communication.)

There’s nothing female about your body throwing out some unused baby juice. It’s merely society that’s long since confused menstruation with being somehow female or feminine.

Viable ovaries do not a woman make.

Ask any infertile woman, menopausal woman, female survivor of ovarian cancer, or woman who has undergone a hysterectomy.

And if viable ovaries don’t make a woman a woman, then viable ovaries don’t make a man a woman.

Duh.

That being said, women who menstruate should feel free to embrace the tide and find it awesome and empowering. Go you! Yay for loving your body! Yay for refusing to be silent about your cycle!

Just please don’t do it in the all-encompassing name of female pride and showing your love for all things woman. You’re unfortunately inflating gender inequality by confusing gender identity with biological sex.

Thankfully, this oopsie is a pretty easy fix. Just a small recalibration of the ol’ brain there and you’re good to go! No need to feel bad about thinking you’re awesome!

Now, as the closing exercise to this post, I want you to imagine several thousand transgender individuals in the military, using government medicine, and desperately trying to maintain the fiction that their fundamental sexual self can be magically transformed through modern hormonal alchemy. They are as vulnerable to a voodoo witch doctor as were the fictional Tiana, Naveen, and Lawrence. The difference, though, is that life is not a Disney movie and, for a transgender person living the state-approved lie in the military, there isn’t likely to be any happy ending.

For more on the terrible damage this Big Lie does to Western civilization be sure to read Brendan O’Neill’s Spiked article, The Orwellian Nightmare of Transgender Politics.