The Left has sided with transgender “women” over natural ones in every facet of life, including sports, where the advantages are enormous. The question is why?
When I was at Harvard, there were several opportunities on campus solely for women. There were women-only grants, as well as women-only seminars. The 1980’s were possibly the height of feminism, and it was no surprise that Harvard catered to the interest of its women students and faculty. I remember a note going out just before graduation. Degrees would read “Harvard-Radcliffe”. Any woman who wanted a “Radcliffe” only degree, could request the same. I doubt that there were many takers on that one, but I can report that there was no option for the male students to receive a “Harvard” only diploma. The tilting of the field in favor of the sexes ran only one way, the argument being—like with affirmative action—that these efforts existed to even a wildly uneven playing field from the past. When former Harvard president Larry Summers was asked why there were so few women math professors, he should have noted that women had been at the highest levels of academic math research for a relatively short period of time and that the few tenured professors reflected this reality. Instead, he bluntly suggested that women have less aptitude for math and found himself a former president decades before most had expected.
Now, let’s fast forward to today. The Supreme Court’s newest justice could not define the word “woman” under sworn testimony in front of a Senate committee. In the 1970’s, she would have defined it and defended it with pride; today, her calculation is that she has no political benefit in going head-to-head with the trans movement and its supporters on the Left. So after years of college, law school, and service as a lawyer and judge, she realized that the best play was to say that the subject belongs to biologists and not to offer her own thoughts on such an important question. Every week, we read of another guy claiming to be a woman winning some sporting event. The number and types of such events is growing: poker, cycling, volleyball, running, swimming, weight-lifting. The obvious solution if people don’t have the stomach to tell an XY guy that he is no gal is to set up a separate competitive division for trans and let them fight it out there, but not with the girls or women. But there is little movement in this direction, and girls and women who have dedicated years of hard work are being beaten by guys who are bigger and stronger than they are.
In the 1980’s, there was a popular T-shirt that read, “A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle”. Women of that era would have been infuriated that men could so easily (just need to meet the testosterone requirements) identify as women and take all of their trophies. Yet, Gloria Steinem and other leaders of the feminist movement are still around and we either hear nothing from them or they fully go along with the farce. The question is why? Why are so few women standing up for women, and when they do, they are attacked or threatened with bodily harm? When did the feminist movement give up on defending women and instead cave to the ludicrous idea that a man can be a woman by simply saying that he is?
Think back around twenty years ago, when you went out for a family vacation you had to take a dedicated music player, a cellular phone, a laptop for internet, a GPS device and a digital camera. Each device did its job and you needed all of them to cover all aspects of your activities. Today, a cheap smartphone has all of those functionalities and more. Twenty years ago, my Garmin GPS device required $100 per year for updated US maps; today, my free Waze app can tell me in real time which roads are closed or congested. The smartphone became the Swiss army knife of handheld technologies. Everything was there, and initially they were good enough, and today they are generally better than their individual predecessors. I think that the Left has accomplished a similar feat. Pre-social networks, there were many left-leaning movements and organizations. Think of the conservation movement. They had a lot to say about acid rain or chemical landfills, or some endangered fish species. Feminists focused their efforts on equal rights and opportunities for women (remember the doomed Equal Rights Amendment?) They generally had little to offer on climate or Israel. Certainly, there was a lot of overlap of people in the various organizations, but they were not as monolithic in their world view as they are today. Now think of Black Lives Matter, the place where corporate millions go to disappear. Their 2020 manifesto, put out after catapulting to fame in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, discussed the need to destroy the nuclear family, and held a strong negative view of Israel. Why did a group that pretended to care about the needs and safety of the Black community delve into topics so far away from its mandate? The answer is that the Left has become the smartphone of ideology, an intellectual Borg of sorts. Because of intersectionality and CRT, you cannot just be a one-issue activist. If you say that the climate is changing due to human activity and that we need to phase out cars, but you are a proud Zionist, you are officially out. This happened at a “gay pride” parade in Chicago a few years ago, where the organizers threw out some women who brought an Israeli flag with them. J. K. Rowling is on the left of virtually any political issue, but because she holds that women are women and a guy cannot become a girl, she is ostracized, threatened, and canceled. A twenty-year Harry Potter retrospective did everything it could to keep the radioactive author out of the program; Quidditch has changed its name to get some miles between the “sport” and its inventor. The Left tolerates no opinion that does not fit with the program, so climate activists are against nuclear power which releases no carbon dioxide and are opposed to natural gas, which is far less polluting than any form of coal. Climate activists must also support trans rights and BLM. If they do not, they will be called bigots and removed from the program. So the best policy is either to shut up or support the required opinions, however far from the field of interest.
And that brings us back to our question: why do feminists support the guy with a ponytail and not the woman with the XX chromosomes? The trans movement is the latest gadget to be absorbed into the Left blob, and as all opinions must be completely acceptable across the issues, there is no room to come out in favor of the girls or young women. To do so is to repudiate the trans movement, which is a full card-carrying member of the Left. Just as BLM had to come out against Israel because the Palestinians are a favorite of the Left, so too feminists must now dance to the trans music, and J. K. Rowling is the poster child of anyone who gets out of line. Thus, the women swimmers at Penn were afraid to speak out against their male teammate who would shower with them. They understood that if they crossed the line of acceptable opinions, their career futures were in serious jeopardy. Riley Gaines is brave for speaking her mind and working to save women’s sports. The feminists who paved the way for Title IX are laying low and are too scared to say the obvious: guys should not be competing in women’s sports.
Joe Biden was for most of his career considered a moderate on the issues. Yet, his administration is to the far left on virtually every subject, from the border to energy to requiring pronouns over at the State Department. His staff understand how the game is played and will not hold or put forth an opinion that is not accepted by the Left. There is virtually no moderate wing in today’s Democratic party. It will be a great irony when a Republican president is the one who saves women’s sports for women. There is no one left on the Democrats’ team willing to do the same.
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