We respect his choice. The effort and desire he's put into attaining the physical appearance of being female. But this space, we tell him in a gentle, sensitive way, this space is only for women born women.

He was born Miranda Joyce Williams. He says this and snaps open his little pink lizard-skin pocketbook. He takes out a driver's license. With a long, pink fingernail he slides the license across the table, tapping where there's a letter “F” under the category of sex.

The state may recognize his new gender, we tell him, but we choose not to. Many of our members suffered childhood traumas regarding men. They fear being reduced to their bodies. Being used as objects. These are issues he could never understand, being born male.

He says: I was born female.

Somebody in the group says, “Can you show us your birth certificate?”

“Miranda” says: Of course not.

Someone else says, “Are you menstruating?”

And “Miranda” says: Not this minute.

He's playing with a rainbow-colored scarf tied around his neck, twisting and pulling it. Preening in a caricature of female nervous behavior. He's playing with the sparkling, shimmery scarf draped around his shoulders, letting it fall down behind him, to hang from his elbows. He's combing his fingers through the long fringe at each end. He pulls a little more scarf to one side, then the other. He crosses his legs, one knee over the other. Then the bottom one on top. He lifts and folds the fur coat in his lap. Turning it, he pets the fur with one open hand, his fingernails together, painted pink and bright as jewelry.

His lips and shoes and handbag, his fingernails and watchband, they're all as pretty-pink as a redhead's asshole.

Someone in the group gets up, glaring. She says, “What's the goddamn point?” Cramming her knitting and bottled water into her tote bag, she says, “I look forward to this all week. Now it's ruined.”

“Miranda” just sits there, his eyes tented under long, thick lashes. His eyes floating in blue-green pools of eyeliner. He tubes red lipstick onto his lipstick. He smears blusher on top of his blusher. Mascara on his mascara. His cropped blouse rides up on his chest. The pink silk of it seems to hang off the two points of his nipples, each breast roughly the same size as his face, both ballooning off the tanned ripples of his rib cage. His stomach showing, tight and tanned, it's a male stomach. He's a total sex-doll fantasy, the kind of woman only a man would become.

For a rap group, “Miranda” says he expected a little more rap.

We just look at him.

This silly man. This “Miranda.” Here's every male fantasy brought to life in a kind of Frankenstein monster of stereotypes: The perfect big round breasts. The hard muscle of long thighs. The mouth, a perfect pout, greasy with lipstick. The pink leather skirt too short and tight for anything but sex. He speaks with the breathy voice of a little girl or a movie starlet. A huge gush of air for what little sound comes out. It's the kind of whispery voice Cosmopolitan magazine teaches girls to use, to make listening men lean closer.

We just sit here, nobody talking, nobody sharing. You just can't be honest, knowing there's a penis under the table. Even in the middle of Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe posters . . . apple-cinnamon candles . . . the bookstore's calico cat.

Okay, “Miranda” says, then I'll start.

“Miranda,” his bleached hair is piled beauty-parlor tall, stiff with spray, and wired with bobby pins.

There's this guy at work who “Miranda” fell just train-wreck in love with. The guy won't flirt back. He's just this totally cute number, a slick-haired junior sales associate who drives a Porsche. He's married, but “Miranda” knows there's sheer animal interest on the guy's side. This one time after work, “Miranda” says, the guy came over and put his hand—

And we all just stare.

The guy put his hand on “Miranda's” arm and asked about going out for a drink.

“Miranda's” arms are thin, tanned muscle with no jiggle to them. Smooth as tan plastic. He giggles. “Miranda” actually giggles. He rolls his eyes at the ceiling.

“Miranda” says how the sales associate from work drove the two of them to this very dark bar, the kind where you'd go to not be noticed by—

This is so like a male, all this me, me, me stuff, all night.

We come here to get away from men, from husbands who won't pick up dirty socks. Husbands who slap us around, then cheat on us. Fathers disappointed that we're not boys. Stepfathers who diddle us. Brothers who bully us. Bosses. Priests. Traffic cops. Doctors.

Most time, we don't allow cross talk, but somebody in the group says, “Miranda?”

And “Miranda” stops yakking.

We tell him that consciousness raising is rooted in complaint. What so many people call a bitch session. In communist China, in the years after Mao's revolution, an important part of building a new culture was allowing people to complain about their past. At first, the more they complained, the worse the past would seem. But by venting, people could start to resolve the past. By bitching and bitching and bitching, they could exhaust the drama of their own horror stories. Grow bored. Only then could they accept a new story for their lives. Move forward.

This is why we come here every Wednesday night, to this bookstore backroom without windows, to sit in folding metal chairs around a big square table.

The revolution called this “Speaking Bitterness.”

“Miranda” shrugs his shoulders. His eyebrows raised, he shakes his head and says he doesn't have any horror stories. He sighs and smiles and bats his eyes.

And someone in the groups says, “Then we don't want you here.”

The whole idea of men creating perfect robot women for their own pleasure, it happens every day. The most “beautiful” women you see in public, none of them are for real. They're just men perpetuating their perverted stereotype of women. Just the oldest story in the world. There's a penis on every page of Cosmopolitan magazine if you know where to look.

“Miranda” says how we're not very welcoming.

And somebody says, “You're not a woman.”

We meet in the women-only safe gathering space behind the Wymyn's Book Cooperative. No way do we want our space polluted by oppressive phallic yang energy.

Being a woman is special. It's sacred. This isn't just some club you can join. You don't just get a shot of estrogen and show up here.

“Miranda” says: You just need a little makeover. To pretty yourself up.

Men, they just don't get it. Being a woman is more than just wearing makeup and high heels. This kind of sex mimicry, this gender parroting, is the worst insult. A man thinks, all he has to do is put on lipstick and cut off his dick and that makes him a sister.

Someone gets up from her chair. Someone else gets up, and they both start around the table.

“Miranda” asks: What are they planning?

And a third woman, standing, says, “A major makeover.”

“Miranda's” pink fingernails go to her pocketbook. He takes out a canister of hot-pepper spray and says he's not afraid to use it. He puts a silver rape whistle between his pink lips.

Someone else goes around the table to stand too close to him, his hand clutched white around the pepper spray. Then somebody in the group says, “Let's see your tits . . .”

In our group, we don't have a leader. The rules of consciousness raising don't allow cross talk. No one can challenge the experience of another member. Everyone gets a turn to talk.

“Miranda,” the silver rape whistle drops out of his mouth. His Paris lips blown up with collagen. The pout of a fashion model saying, “Thursday.”

“Miranda” says we have to be joking.

It's so typical, men want all the perks of being female, but none of the bullshit.

Somebody else says, “No, really. Show us . . .”