60 Minutes has jumped on the trans train, airing a story about a man who appropriates stereotypes and wants to be accepted as a woman.

The program tweeted, “For decades, Australia knew Danielle Laidley as Dean – a tough-as-nails premiership player and coach at the North Melbourne Football Club. But on the inside, she was fighting who she really wanted to be.”

Laidley was an AFL player and later a senior coach who was arrested and pleaded guilty for stalking his estranged girlfriend. He was sentenced to an 18-month good behaviour bond, without conviction or even a fine.

Dean Laidley and other male athletes who have ‘come out’ as women merely appropriate stereotypes of women. Long hair, a face full of heavy makeup, dresses, high heels, long false nails and a feminine name do not make a man a woman.

They can’t describe why they “feel” like a woman without using out-dated and often false stereotypes of women.

It is insulting.

It is also cruel for society to reinforce the lie – cruel to women and cruel to gender dysphoric people who will never achieve becoming the opposite sex.

Many males who appear as hyper-sexualised women are often expressing their autogynephilia, being aroused by dressing up as a woman.

Others have been abused, are autistic or have suffered a trauma that warrants intensive counselling and expert medical care.

To empower the lie that a man can be a woman, or a woman can become a man, is harmful to society.

It is simply not possible.

The cognitive dissonance required to live out the lie has too great a cost, usually to women and children in terms of their services, spaces, privacy and safety.

As an adult male Laidley is more than entitled to dress as he pleases, but for 60 Minutes, the courts or anyone else to insist we relate to him as a woman, is ridiculous.

It requires a level of mental gymnastics that most of us are not capable of.

Or willing to engage in.