A federal judge has ruled that Senate Bill 1100, an Idaho law banning transgender students from using the bathroom of their choice, would change the school-by-school status quo and temporarily blocked the bill from going into effect—right before many schools start in the fall. So, despite there having been a public discussion about this and the people having spoken through their elected representatives in an open democratic process, a single individual unilaterally decides that the people are wrong and blocks the law so boys can enter spaces where girls are at their most exposed and vulnerable.
“The court’s ruling will be a relief for transgender students in Idaho, who are entitled to basic dignity, safety, and respect at school. When school is back in session, they should be focusing on classes, friends, and activities like everyone else, rather than worrying about where they are allowed to use the restroom,” Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Peter Renn said (reported here). “No one’s return to school should be met with a return to discrimination.”
Except girls. They’re not entitled to basic dignity, safety, and respect at school. They aren’t allowed to focus on classes, friends, and activities like everybody else. They have to instead worry about where they are allowed to use the restroom where they won’t be in the presence of boys. There may be no such places now. When girls are developing UTIs because they are afraid to enter bathrooms where males are present this will be of no concern to the authorities whose task or is to protect them. It s all about affirming the trans identifying boy. His rights trump the girls’ rights to spaces free of the male gaze and presence.
Why do we have sex-segregated spaces? To discriminate against trans identifying males? Or to defend the basic dignity, safety, and respect of girls and women? Why does everybody have to bend to the small number of males who for whatever reason want access to female-only spaces? These are questions you’d better start asking yourself. The death of sex-based rights is rapidly approaching. (See Why Are There Sex-Segregated Spaces Anyway? Also NPR, State Propaganda Organ, Reveals Who and What have Captured the State Apparatus.)
In my state of Wisconsin, in the city where I live, in a closed-door meeting Thursday night between Green Bay school officials and parents concerned about a trans identifying male playing with their daughters, the parents were told that a boy will play for the girl’s team.
In the run up to the meeting parents told the media that their daughters will not be participating if the boy is allowed to be on the team. “They’re just not used to the ball coming at them that hard,” said Ryan Gusick, one of the parents. “A lot of these girls are specifically quitting this team because they’re concerned for their safety.” Parents are reporting that their daughters leaving with welts and bruises they’ve never received before.
After the meeting, Local 5 (CBS affiliate WFRV) interviewed Gusick who told them that the meeting was about fifteen minutes long and involved about forty parents, some district officials, and a lawyer who explained Title IX, which states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Before the meeting, the Green Bay Area Public School District had declined to provide anyone for an interview with Fox 11 News, but instead sent a statement claiming that the district “cares about the well-being of every student. All decisions regarding a student’s ability to participate in co-curricular athletics/activities are made in accordance with Title IX law, Board policy, and WIAA regulations.” It was clear that this was a matter fait accompli. The meeting was to give the appearance of hearing the parents’ concerns.
The WIAA (Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association) policy states that its goals are equity, physical safety, and competitive equity. That is a lie. The policy explains that “a male-to-female transgender student must have one calendar year of medically documented testosterone suppression therapy to be eligible to participate on a female team.” Suppressing testosterone is hardly sufficient to negate the differences between male and female bodies. Boys on average have physical advantages over girls even before puberty. Allowing males to compete against women is patently unfair—and dangerous.
WFRV reports that during the meeting a lawyer explained to the parents that, according to Title IX, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” If we are to take this framing literally, then how can there be sex-segregation in facilities or sex-based athletics? Clearly a girls team is established on the basis of sex and boys are as a matter of their sex excluded from participation on girls teams on the basis of their sex. That’s sexism, right?
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a federal law in the United States that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity that receives federal financial assistance. While Title IX does promote gender equality in education and sports, it also recognizes exceptions and allows for sex-segregated facilities and sex-based athletics under certain circumstances. These exceptions are typically based on ensuring fair competition and maintaining privacy and safety considerations. These concerns resonate with WIAA’s stated goals (which are at odds with its policy).
Title IX allows for sex-segregated facilities, such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories, as long as the facilities provided for each sex are equal in quality and availability. The key principle is that any differences in facilities must be based on genuine physiological, privacy, or safety concerns, and not simply on discriminatory grounds. Title IX also allows for sex-based athletics, mandating that educational institutions provide equal athletic opportunities for both sexes. This means that institutions must offer equitable athletic programs and opportunities for male and female students. While there are separate teams for male and female athletes, they should receive equivalent resources, facilities, coaching, and support.
Given this, it should be an easy decision to exclude boys from girls spaces and sports teams. The charge that this is discriminatory is false on its face, albeit a dramatic one that conjures the specter of racial segregation. The fact of sexual dimorphism in the human species, i.e., that is the fact that male and female are distinct and unalterable genotypes (the meaning of the synonyms sex and gender), makes segregation by sex fundamentally different from racial segregation, where separate but equality facilities and activities are inherently discriminatory since there is no objective or rational reason for separating people on that basis.
Louder for the fools on the hill: Title IX recognizes that there may be inherent physiological differences between the sexes that could lead to disparities in athletic performance. As a result, in some cases, schools may establish separate teams for male and female athletes to ensure fair competition. These separate teams can be justified by the need to provide a level playing field and to accommodate the physiological differences that could affect performance. (See my essay Is Title IX Kaput? Or Was it Always Incomprehensible?)
Judges and school districts allowing males in female spaces and activities present communities with a hard paradox, one that they’re being asked to lie about in order to obscure that paradox. The lie is that there is a class of boys that constitutes a new type of woman, a trans woman, who can be classified with the other type of women, the cis woman. But the reality is that, if the team is girls only, then a trans identifying boy must be excluded since he is a boy. Female is an exclusive category. It is not excluding the boy from the girls only team that violates Title IX, but rather allowing the boy to play on the girls team that violates the rule, as well as the principle the rule expresses: that males in female competition creates an unequitable, unfair, and unsafe situation.
The only way out of the paradox it to either exclude the boy or end the girls only rule. Before the claims goes up that the boy is being denied participation in sports, the fact is that the boy can try out for the boys’ team. If he doesn’t make the team he will be one among others who did not make the team. Sometimes a boy isn’t good enough to make the team. The girls team is not a fall back position for the failed male athlete. (See The Thomas-UPenn Episode: A Textbook Case of Institutional Gaslighting.)
If sex-segregated sports is discriminatory because it excludes males on female teams, then it is irrelevant that the boy is trans identifying. Make it so that any boy can join any girls team, i.e., disband girls teams, since they are an establishment of sex-based rights which, under an interpretation of Title IX that abandons science and principle, is discriminatory. In other words, no more sex-based rights or sex-segregated spaces. Girls and boys (and men) can be in the same bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms together. Girls and boys can compete against each other in sports. To be sure, it will mean that girls will be violated, injured, and marginalized, but to hell with equity, safety, and fairness.
Can you see how all this is built upon a lie? The lie is intolerable and never should have been allowed to spread so far and wide that we actually find a significant proportion of the population who believe that a boy can be a girl. I apologize for my own role in perpetuating this. I hadn’t thought about the matter much before 2017. I thought keeping trans identifying males out of women’s bathrooms was discriminatory until I looked into the history of sex segregation and the consequences of dismantling the rules protecting women’s privacy, safety, and opportunities.
So let’s tell the truth about this. One doesn’t get to say he another gender and be another gender. Gender is not a subjective matter. Gender is an objective fact about the body. Roughly half of the human population is male (XY chromosomes and small gametes) and not one of these individuals can change this fact by taking substances that change his hormone levels or undergo surgeries that change the appearance of his bodies. He will remain male whatever he does. If you see him as female, then you are sharing in his delusion about himself (presuming he is deluded). Either boys are excluded from tryouts because the integrity of women’s sports must be defended, or women’s sports must come to an end because they exclude boys and men and are therefore discriminatory. (See The Casual Use of Propagandistic Language Surrounding Sex and Gender.)
In my state, there are two bills, Senate Bill 377 and Senate Bill 378, that would exclude trans identifying students in elementary, high schools, and public colleges and universities from participating in sports teams consistent with their identified gender. But the ACLU sees this as a bad thing. “Lawmakers should tackle the real issues with gender parity in sports, including unequal funding, resources, pay equity, and more,” Dr. Melinda Brennan, Executive Director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, said in a media release issued Thursday. “Promoting baseless fears about trans athletes does nothing to address those fundamental problems.”
The ACLU opposes the bills because, according to them, this is about what’s best for all kids, and research shows young people benefit from participating in athletics. But there is nothing preventing the boy in this case from trying out for the boy’s team. He is, after all, a boy. See how easily the ACLU slips in the false premise that the boys is in this case a girl who couldn’t be expected to try out for the boy’s team? Did you catch the red herring there about the “real issues with gender parity in sports”? (We heard this in the affirmative action debate when progressives kept asking about legacy admissions as if these have anything to do with race-based discrimination.)
The governor of my state, Tony Evers, has vowed to veto both bills. ACLU’s Advocacy Director Amanda Merkwae told Local 5 that the organization is confident Evers will follow through on his promise to veto, but they are concerned that the renewed debate will make transgender athletes targets. “The fight really isn’t about sports,” Merkwae said. “I think nationwide, we’ve seen this coordinated effort to erase trans people in all aspects of public life. Sports is just one of those examples. They’re trying to create solutions to problems that don’t really exist.”
This is why I resigned from the board of the Northeastern Wisconsin Chapter of the ACLU. The organization has abandoned reason—and girls and women. Nobody is trying to erase trans identifying individuals from all aspects of public life. All folks are saying is that there are males and females and males should not be allowed in female only spaces and activities. The ACLU is engaged in science denialism and at heart a resurgent misogyny in which the liberties and rights of women must bend and break to the desires of men. Either the ACLU defends women’s rights or it doesn’t. The same is true for all of us. I stand with girls and women.
freedom and reason 