Are t-girls truly women? Or are they doomed to be men, no matter how convincing and beguiling their exterior packaging? Having recently spent an intriguing evening at Toronto’s Goodhandy’s night club (www.goodhandys.com) covering the 10th birthday bash for Shemale Yum (www.shemaleyum.com), I actually believe that I can answer this question; at least to my own satisfaction.Picture this: An elegant two-story night club filled with t-girls of various advancement and sophistication. Some are merely guys in drag; others are masterpieces of surgical and hormonal manipulation. Some comport themselves like caricatures of bitchy drag queens, others with soft, demure feminine elegance worthy of the Madonna herself.

Meanwhile, on Goodhandy’s table-topped barrels, many t-girls display raw fluid sensuality as they bump and grind to the music. To the trained eye, and I like to consider my own to be so trained, they are easily as femininely erotic as any ‘gender girl’ [i.e. biological female] strutting her stuff in an A-level strip club.

But are they women, or just men in ultra-drag? Had you asked me before I attended this event, I would have said women. Now, I say men. Beautiful, sexy men who I would not recommend throwing out of bed at any price, mind you, but men nonetheless.

The reasons is that she-males represent the male ideal of *femininity*: The beauty, grace, and everything else that goes with being a goddess, as seen from the male perspective. But they are not *female* in the biological sense. There’s more to this than the fact that she-males don’t have periods; their auras and very natures are simply different. At the end of the day, they are still men.

Now, I don’t believe that women are from Venus and men from Mars, because I have known some pretty tough women and some very meek men. But I do believe that there is something definably different between the two sexes, just as there is between, say, cats and dogs. Now I like cats and dogs, and I have known cats who act like dogs and vice versa. But at the end of the day, a cat is a cat and a dog a dog. The same, I’m sad to say, is true of men and women; no matter what wonders medical science may dream up.

Does this mean that she-males are thus somehow “wrong?” Not in the slightest! I encountered some of the most delightful and feminine people at the She-male Yum party that I’ve ever met. In particular, the way some men embrace and express their personal feminine ideals is both sexually stunning and spiritually moving. For them not to do this would be a loss to the world at large, and a betrayal of who they know themselves to be.

This said, I have learned that there is a distinction between feminine and female, just as there is between masculine and male. The first is a state of mind; the second a fact of biology. That some people feel the necessity to mix-and-match the two is of no consequence. In fact, I welcome, respect and particularly enjoy the added variety! But for those tussling with the question, “is a shemale a female?,” the answer as far as I am concerned is “no.” Still, I am willing to be convinced otherwise.