We all know, deep down, that there’s something fundamental and real about being a man or a woman. We all know that it is fundamentally impossible for a man to be a woman or for a woman to be a man. While it is true that some people believe themselves to be other than what they are, that fact doesn’t make their belief true. It isn’t. And it isn’t compassionate toward those individuals — let alone right for our society — to pretend otherwise.
Yet that’s what our society has decided to do over the past few years, a drastic and sudden decision made not by the gradual reaching of a consensus but by the imposition of elite will from on high. We are now meant to permit biological men who identify as women into female-only spaces — locker rooms, dressing rooms, dorm rooms, homeless shelters, prisons, sports teams — no matter the ramifications for the women involved.
Those with reasonable concerns about this arrangement, far from being taken seriously or responded to thoughtfully, are dismissed as backwards bigots, as “transphobes,” as any other moniker that allows the proponents of this unjust schema to avoid defending their position.
The unfairness and, in some cases the dangers, of this status quo have been evident for some time, but they’ve been brought into particular focus with the case of Lia Thomas, a biologically male college athlete who identifies as a woman and thus is permitted to compete on the female swim team at the University of Pennsylvania. Compete isn’t quite the right word, as Thomas regularly blows the female athletes out of the water.
Yesterday evening, Thomas won the Division I national championship in the 500-yard freestyle, hailed by media outlets as the first “openly transgender” athlete to win a national championship — the implication being that, first, this is a milestone to celebrate and that, second, there very well might have been scads of closeted transgender athletes who won national championships in the past.
The entire thing is a lie. We all know it. And the obvious injustice of Thomas’s victory should bring the charade to an end.