Progressives love to congratulate themselves on being morally superior. But in fact, the opposite is true. Progressivism is an immoral, destructive ideology, to the extent it can be described as a coherent ideology at all rather than a set of irrational impulses. And its victims are disproportionately women and children.
Consider the current craze (and I mean that literally) of “transgenderism,” which I define as the belief that men are better than women at everything, including being women.
It’s true that women who believe they’re men are just as delusional as men who believe they’re women. But the former have virtually no affect on men. As a man, what do I care if some woman wants to cut her hair and wear men’s clothes? Or even take male hormones or have her healthy breasts surgically removed?
Of course, on one level, I do care. I feel sympathy for those women because they’re suffering from a mental illness. And I think their actions are bad for society, especially when we play along and reinforce their psychoses. If my daughter or granddaughter, or any woman I love, wanted to go down that road, I would do my best to talk her out of it.
But as a practical matter, when some random woman decides to “identify” as a man, it impacts me not at all. She cannot take anything away from me personally. Contrary to the progressive gaslighting, there are no “set-asides” for men in our society. She’s not going to wrest a promotion away from a man just by calling herself one; if anything, she’s more likely to get it as a woman. (I suppose, in today’s victimhood sweepstakes, she might receive points for being “trans”—but not for being a man.)
And if you’re a young, male athlete, a woman is unlikely to take your spot on the team—or on the dais. I was once a young, male athlete myself. (I’m still male, but no longer young or athletic.) And while I stressed about a great many things back then, including girls, being replaced by one was not among them.
Actually, I’ve never had a problem with women playing men’s sports, if they’re good enough—which is to say, they’re judged by the exact same standards. Why can’t a 6-5, 320-pound woman who bench presses 500 pounds and runs a 4.7 40 play offensive line in the NFL? (Apart from the fact that there's no such thing, I mean.)
The same holds true for other physical activities—like being a firefighter or an elite soldier. I’m fine with women in those professions, too, provided they meet the same stringent requirements as their male counterparts. Otherwise, their “inclusion” can cost lives.
But I digress. My point is that a female athlete is rarely going to take anything away from a male athlete. And if she does, based on merit, then she deserves it.
The reverse, however, is far from true: A male athlete who claims to be a woman can indeed take things away from female athletes, including awards, recognition, scholarships, and even opportunities to compete. That can happen outside of athletics, too, when specific financial aid opportunities or positions within an organization have been earmarked for women in the interests of “gender equity.” If a man can qualify just by “identifying” as a woman, what is the point of such measures?
Clearly, it’s the women who lose out, the women who suffer. And ironically, the very people who claim to be their allies are the ones pushing this discriminatory nonsense.
The other chief victims of progressivism, of course, are children. And while I could cite many, many examples (like drag-queen story time and welfare policies that discourage marriage), nothing illustrates this better than our collective societal response to COVID. We’ve all suffered as a result of hysterical, anti-scientific lockdowns, business closures, and mask mandates, but no one more so than kids.
They’re the ones who have, in many states, been kept out of school for months on end (although in some ways that might actually be a blessing). Though children need social interaction even more than adults in order to develop properly, they have been separated from their friends and isolated in their rooms, interacting mostly with a screen. No wonder the childhood suicide rate is through the roof. And when we do let them go to school, we force them wear a piece of porous, disease-ridden cloth over their young faces for hours at a time.
Why has society inflicted these injuries upon children? Or rather, why have progressives done so, since they are almost exclusively to blame? Conservatives have for months been calling for schools to reopen and kids to be unmasked.
The answer is, progressive “adults” have done all this solely to protect themselves at the expense of the children, who have never been at great risk of contracting the virus, becoming seriously ill, or passing it on. So I guess, to the long list of unflattering (but true) adjectives that describe progressives, we must add “cowardly” to “delusional” and “discriminatory.”
Unfortunately, such traits are not merely objectionable; they cause real harm. They create victims. And with progressivism, the primary victims are always the most vulnerable. That’s how we know it’s an immoral ideology: A moral society is focused on protecting women and children, not victimizing them.