Over the past week, the trans issue has finally found space in more mainstream media outlets in a slightly more balanced way than we’ve seen.
More questions being asked, but still, not quite the correct, fundamental question that’s in that bulls-eye.
Three examples:
Note that while the article was nervously open to questions, the comments from readers are strongly anti-intervention.
The three top-rated reader comments give me hope:
As a parent of a “trans” teen, I ask you: In what other medical area would it be possible for the patient (an adolescent, no less!!) to not only self-diagnose but also prescribe treatment, including drugs and surgery that are potentially irreversible and for which the long-term effects have not been studied? The social media-fueled trans contagion among adolescents, particularly girls – further exacerbated by activists (no matter how well-intentioned their support for trans people) – has gotten out of control. Especially among the white upper-middle class youth and their enabling schools, psychologists and psychiatrists. True gender dysphoria is one thing. This craze is another thing entirely. YES, teens need to be screened thoroughly, if not to say aggressively, NOT just affirmed.
If you can’t, as a doctor, answer how many children will later want to detransition (“it’s thought to be rare” is shoddy data), and there is no formal system for tracking this data, you’re running an uncontrolled experiment.
Simply stated, it should be against the law to let any person under 18 years of age have gender reassignment treatments of any kind. As a gay boy, most of my friends in school were “sissies” or “tom boys” and were very seriously into hacking the opposite gender, as expressed by all sorts of behavior that in this climate would likely be called “gender fluidity.” Not a single one if asked today would say they wanted a sex change. It’s bizarre and unthinkable to take developing adolescent minds and imaginations so seriously as to prescribe such treatments.
And believe me, if you keep going on that list – the comments rated by readers – they are overwhelmingly gender-critical.
Lesson: Don’t be gaslit into thinking that you’re alone or part of a bigoted minority if you share this skepticism.
Note to McArdle: Some of “us” have been talking about it for a while.
(Note to new readers. I don’t use “preferred pronouns.” Here’s why. I don’t use “trans” as a noun or even an adjective. Here’s why. Men and women experience mental illness, dysphoria or are fetishists. That makes them men or women experiencing dysphoria or engaging in a fetish. It doesn’t make them the opposite sex. Just as a 70-pound person suffering from anorexia is not “obese” and shouldn’t be described as such.)
First, on Sullivan.
The guy is desperately trying to have it both ways. He wants to affirm “trans rights” but also sees that to deny the biological reality of sex is insane and, as he puts it, a “cultural revolution.”
What the trans movement is now doing, after this comprehensive victory, is not about rights at all. It is about cultural revolution. It’s a much broader movement to dismantle the sex binary, to see biology as a function of power and not science, and thereby to deconstruct the family and even a fixed category such as homosexuality. You can support trans rights and oppose all of this. But they want you to believe you can’t. That’s the bait-and-switch. Don’t take it.
You can support trans rights and oppose all of this.
Really?
How?
The “rights” to do what?
The problem is that aside from the knotty question of Lia Thomas, Sullivan is just not getting into the weeds of where his “trans rights” will take us – and the impact, primarily, on women – and, I might say, vulnerable women.
He might hope for a middle ground, but to tell the truth, there isn’t one. There just isn’t.
Once you have admitted “trans” as a category of being and identity, there’s no defense. It’s done. For “trans” is a state of mind and can be applied anywhere by anyone. “Trans” as understood in this moment by activists, has nothing to do with the body. If a genitally intact man wants to declare himself a woman, the rest of society – including prisons, domestic violence shelters and changing rooms – must bow.
And in this context, when I say there’s no defense, what I mostly mean is that vulnerable women have no defense.
Sullivan needs to pay attention to the question of prisons. This might clarify things.
Violent men were secreted into a women’s prison in Illinois over recent months without public notice while and after a District Court decided state prisons should not automatically house inmates on the basis of genitalia or physique. One of the men had to be put in isolation after an investigation determined he raped several of the women after stopping his hormone use.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worked closely with the men to help them get the transfers, filing a class action lawsuit on their behalf. Although the men’s birth names remain their legal names, the ACLU had the men use feminine, false names on all court filings. This had the effect of keeping the violent and sexually predatory criminal backgrounds of the men seeking transfers from becoming easily discoverable to the public.
Also, buried in the Biden justice reform:
In short, under this executive order, the federal government will house criminals based on subjective, self-declared “gender identity” rather than biological sex.
We could go on and on – and I have, obviously.
But the question stands, and while Sullivan is getting closer, he’s not yet wrestling with the heart of it: Is “trans” an actual, singular “identity?” If so, how is it determined?
Talk about that. And then get to the “Rights” part.
She says:
If cases like Thomas are few, it’s relatively easy to make inclusion paramount.
Why?
Poor thing. For God’s sake don’t exclude him. Paramount!
Every Lia Thomas replaces an actual female who has worked very hard to succeed in her sport, usually since childhood. Every Lia Thomas takes a place on a team away from one of those females. Every record-setting Lia Thomas claims a record that should belong to a female. Every Lia Thomas on scholarship takes a scholarship away from a female.
And…paramount?
Women being “kind” and accommodating men’s feelings is paramount?
Well, historically, that’s true, I suppose.
The highest-rated comment on this piece, gives hope though:
I am perfectly willing to accept Ms Thomas choice to identify and live as the female gender but that choice cannot impinge on and eradicate the entire concept of women’s sports which is in fact based not on gender differences but on chromosomal based sexual characteristics between males and females which produce radically different aptitudes for almost all physical activities. Those sexual differences remain and should obviously disqualify an XY Ms Thomas from competing in the women’s leagues.
Back to McArdle:
So if we keep finding ourselves in these situations, we’ll need to settle whether we still think it’s important for cisgender women to have a place where at least a few of us can experience the thrill of victory. Maybe that isn’t an important social goal. Or maybe it is, but just not as important a goal as trans inclusion. Either way, that question will have to be asked and answered — out loud, where everyone can hear it.
What does this even mean.
The “social goal” of women’s sports is not giving the gals a chance to “experience the thrill of victory.”
Is that the “social goal” of men’s sports? No. The “social goal” of men’s sports is complex and about being able to use bodies in active, usually competitive ways that prompt us to push limits, develop strength, dexterity and intelligence. This “social goal” also involves others, in teams, competition or community support and identity.
**Not a sociologist of sport. Just spitballing here.
Let’s allow a woman from the team to speak for herself:
“It just seems like if you say anything, everyone is just going to attack you and call you transphobic, and it’s not even true,” she said. “We just want to have what we were promised by joining the swim team, which is fair competition and equal opportunities. It’s been really frustrating because we all agree, and I have yet to meet anyone or talk to anyone who thinks what is going on is OK. But yet somehow, these are the rules and allowed.”
There are a few sports where that can happen in mixed-sex contexts. But in most, because of the physical differences between male and female, especially after puberty, females need their own single-sex athletic space in order to achieve those “social goals” without being beaten down by male strength. And, frankly, having to accommodate narcissistic male egos who, like Thomas can actually brag about being the “Jackie Robinson” of his era.
Gross.
Here’s a very good response from a coach and kinesiologist:
Self-identity is not of primary concern in sports. What we care about is the fundamental biological blueprint that predestines an athlete to be either male or female from conception onward. The distinction between male versus female biological design is categorical; in the same way that, say, a NASCAR vehicle is distinct from an F1 car in auto racing.
Different design. Different category. Different races.
So again, it all comes down to the real question “we” need to talk about – McArdle takes trans as an identity for granted.
Should she? Should “we?”
Why should Lia Thomas be considered a woman for sports or any other purpose? Because he wants us to? Why is the definition of “woman” now about …. men’s feelings?
Why?
Exactly! Yes, I’m glad that there is a tiny breath of “wait a minute” around these trans issues, but it’s infuriating that part of Sullivan’s givens is a claim that maximal inclusion for trans identification is a moral duty. Why???
Sullivan’s post made it to Drudge, and he does feature the “best” dissents in his next week’s entry, so I am leaving this comment in the hopes that you will respond to him. You’re a talented and persuasive writer, and the possibility that a dissent you craft could be prominently featured to a broad audience, is an opportunity I hope you will seize. Please. dish@andrewsullivan.com