On Bench Memos this week, I’ve covered the EEOC’s crazy ruling that an employer unlawfully discriminates on the basis of sex when it bars a man who thinks he’s a woman from using the restroom, locker room, and shower facilities reserved for women. I’ve also exposed a manifestation of judicial-identity disorder — rulings last month by a California judge requiring state officials to provide a prisoner sex-reassignment surgery.
On the same broad topic, I’ll highlight Smith College’s decision last Saturday to begin offering admission to so-called “transgender women” — i.e., men who identify as women. In the PC doublespeak that pervades discussion of the transgender phenomenon, Smith College declared that the decision to admit men somehow “affirms Smith’s unwavering mission and identity as a women’s college.”
Smith College also claimed that the decision “affirms Smith’s . . . commitment to representing the diversity of women’s lived experiences.” But while it will admit men who identify as women, it won’t admit women who identify as men. So much for its “commitment to representing the diversity” of actual women.
As the article I link to notes, Smith’s decision to admit men who think they’re women follows the path already taken by several other previously all-women colleges, beginning with Mills College last August and including Mount Holyoke, Simmons, Bryn Mawr, and Wellesley.
— Ed Whelan is president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a regular contributor to National Review’s Bench Memos blog.