In his review of the new film “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” Daily Beast critic Fletcher Peters writes that the film “will appeal to any audience member, no matter their age, gender identity, or relationship to the book.”

I’m not sure that’s true. While the film is based on the seminal book of the same title by Judy Blume, in the 1970s the book was controversial for its honest depiction of religion and female puberty. Today the same story comes across as downright conservative.

After all, one of the dramatic themes driving the story, and something that was scandalous even in the 70s, was the tremendous, life-altering significance of being a young woman after getting her first period. The girls in Are You There God? ask each other constantly if they have gotten “it.” They write notes about “it,” they see cringe movies about “it” at school, they buy the proper supplies at the local drug store in anticipation of the moment “it” finally arrives.

The message is clear: girls are different from boys in a cellular, soulful, and metaphysical way. The difference is not slight, it is vast. It is life changing for them in ways puberty cannot be for boys.

Transgender women do not get periods. Despite makeup, dresses, and surgery, in an elemental way they can never be part of the sisterhood. This is the kind of argument one hears these days on Fox News, not MSNBC.