British Vogue joined the league of magazines that feature transgender models on their cover this month, in honor of the 100 year anniversary of women’s suffrage in the UK.
Thank you @Edward_Enninful for including me in @BritishVogue, and this special moment, with these strong, smart and inspiring women. As we celebrate 100 years since women have been able to vote in the UK, let’s make sure we’re fighting for ALL women. Our diversity is our strength pic.twitter.com/ve8M9wzfDw
— Paris Lees (@parislees) January 4, 2018
The cover features seven women called “the new suffragettes,” with each person fighting for a new kind of equality and diversity in the 21st century. It features politicians and artists, one of whom claims that fighting modern stereotypes is harder than fighting for the right to vote.
One of the seven models featured is the self-proclaimed “trans awareness campaigner” and “former sex worker” Paris Lees.
Lees identifies as a woman but spent most of his life as a biological male.
Neato.
Listen. I’m not one to discriminate. I don’t care what color, pattern, sex, or material you are as long as you live your life as a decent human. But this has gone way too far. The entire purpose of February’s British Vogue issue is to celebrate women who bravely defeated the odds and stood up for basic civil rights.
Rosa Parks? Awesome. Susan B. Anthony? Great. But somebody who’s spent their life as a biological male and suddenly wants to identify as a female to possibly cop a sympathy feature in Vogue? No way dude.
There’s little difference between Paris Lees and Ja Du, the white guy from Florida who identifies as a Filipino. Last time I checked, you don’t get to identify yourself with a group that has a history of oppression just because you feel like fighting for a cause. The world doesn’t work that way.
I highly doubt those tough British suffragettes would go for a guy telling them that he’s now a woman and he understands all the hardship they went through to get a basic right. When did it become boring to just celebrate suffrage, emancipation, and other groundbreaking civil rights? When did we have to start embodying it to prove our political correctness?
I’m not sure I’m ready to live in a world where a man can be more of an activist than most women are because he throws on a wig and heels and says so.
