Let me paint you a picture, albeit with the names changed.
It's my second year of university and I am at a house party with a bunch of people from the uni's gaming society. It's fairly standard nerd party stuff; plenty of booze and conversation about nerd stuff. A guy I met back in first year enters the room with a troupe of troons in tow. He has shoulder length hair and extremely heavy handed contour. His name is Alice now. The party gets back to talking now that the new arrivals are settled and due to the now 50:50 ratio of troons to normal people, the conversation inevitably shifts to Alice's transition plans since this is all new to him and the zeal of the convert is a very real thing. He expresses his hopes that he will get prescribed hormones in a timely manner, which is fair enough I suppose, NHS wait times for anything brain related are known for being a bit shit. Then he says he can't wait to pass well enough that he gets catcalled, specifically by homophobes, presumably because since he's actually a man that would make the catcaller gay and therefore be a big gotcha moment. Checkmate homophobes!
My brain surfaces from its pool of vodka to form a coherent thought:
And then in my weird moment of clarity I form several more.
Literally no woman I have ever met has expressed a wish to be catcalled more than they already are. Sexism doesn't make us feel ~validated~ it's just annoying and/or scary. Only a man would think that catcalling is even remotely enjoyable, and the thing that makes the prospect enjoyable to this man is the deception involved, because
he is not a woman.
He is transitioning to what he, as a man, thinks women are. It is then that I realise
I am the only actual woman in this entire party. There are a few others in the society but they couldn't make it. I am on the periphery of this party, a party that the university would probably consider to have a very equal ratio of men to women.
This is a lad's night in where half the lads are in drag. I feel like I've unmasked the monster at the end of an episode of Scooby Doo.
But alas, I can't vocalise any of this to anyone since I'll probably get cancelled so I go up to pour myself another drink.