Trans-confusion

For all the hysteria over Donald Trump’s “misogyny,” it turns out that the real attack on women’s rights may not be coming from the Right but from the Left. 

In my last post, I discussed the apparent disconnect between the Nike promotion of its Pro Sport hijab and the reaction of real women competitors to the hijab.

But the absurdities have reached entirely new levels under Title IX.  Underpinning the zeal to protect transgender individuals (an extremely rare condition – 0.3 percent of the population or 700,000 individuals) is the leftist narrative that gender is only a social construct, that it is, at core a consequence of a patriarchal society.  All one has to do is self-identify as your gender of choice and you become that choice.  Saying it makes it so in this new world order.

Rather than permit individual states or school districts to set policies as they saw fit, the federal government dictated and coerced schools into permitting transgendered students to use women’s locker and shower facilities.  Sweeping aside the privacy rights of girls and young women, the rights of 99.7 percent of the population were subordinated to the needs of .3 percent without discussion or vote.   Anyone that pushed back against this mandate was labelled “homophobic” or “transphobic.”

Last summer, I attended a presentation of a PhD candidate whose work demonstrated that the single biggest factor in whether young girls stay in school or not in India is whether they have access to private, girls only bathroom facilities, especially as they begin menstruating.  Girls need personal privacy—especially at that age when their bodies are undergoing transformation.  As written, the Obama administration guidelines would subject these girls to having their personal privacy invaded by boys and even adults that have male genitals.  Given the time athletes spend in locker rooms, the Obama  directive would likely reduce the incentive for girls to participate in sports.

But now women’s sports in general are at risk, and that would be a tragic and perverse consequence of the leftist agenda.

Girl’s and women’s’ sports have made tremendous strides in the past three and a half decades.   Just 33 years ago the first women’s marathon was won by Joan Benoit.  Professional women’s leagues have been established in several sports.  The quality of play, training, quality of coaches,  and access to facilities and coaching has exploded across several sports and at every level.    A girls’ basketball game at the high school level at a quality program looks nothing like the game played a generation ago.  The girls are so much more highly skilled, better trained, and better coached.  Yes, there is still a large pay gap at the professional level, but opportunities  to compete and excel  are way beyond  anything that existed a couple of decades ago.  At elite high school programs such as exist where I live, girls will not be able to make the local high school team unless they have played travel basketball for several years.

And the Left is about to trash it all.

By permitting biological males or women that are undergoing hormone treatments to compete with women, we are now putting all this progress at risk.   Why bother competing at high levels when a male that either self-identifies as a woman or a girl that is undergoing hormone treatment can waltz in and take away the opportunity to be champion?

The reality is that even though Title IX, along with other social factors have propelled womens’ sports, and the performance gap has narrowed, women probably will never be able to compete with men in any sport at the elite level.  Not in baseball, golf, basketball, hockey, track and field or even chess.  There is a reason that separation of sexes needs to be maintained.

• ·         The Texas state girls wrestling championship was won by a girl that was transitioning to a boy and undergoing hormone treatment.
•  ·  A New Zealand weightlifter that had formerly competed as a man won the Australian International Weightlifting competition as a woman.

We can expect much more of this in the future.  Permitting transgender athletes to compete in women’s divisions is a direct threat to women’s athletics.  Why reach for the ring when it cannot be reached?    It is simply not fair to distort the competitive field for 99% + of girls and women that want to compete on an even keel.

It is bad enough that girls would be subject to biological men in their locker rooms. 

The Left is pushing to take a statute that was passed to promulgate and promote women’s athletics, and will twist and pervert it so as to destroy women’s sports.  Title IX, passed to open the door for women’s sports is now being used to slam it shut again.  Sports governing bodies need to look hard at their rules and tighten eligibility to ensure that girls and women don’t have their sports dominated by the trans-athletes.   With all this talk of white privilege coming from the left, female athletes may be falling victim to trans privilege in athletics.