Feminist Hypocrisy on Display as Feminists Ignore Transgender Athletes By Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.
The National Organization of Women is one of the leading “women’s rights” organizations with a stated goal, “Dedicated to its multi-issue and multi-strategy approach to women’s rights and is the largest organization of feminist grassroots activists in the United States.” What are those rights?
Their home page has a flashing banner of “reproductive rights” front and center, which can be assumed to mean abortion on demand, anytime from conception to birth and perhaps even beyond birth, a decision made solely by the mother, without any restriction by law, government, morality, or the aspirations of the soon to be destroyed little girl who might someday want to join the National Organization for Women.
NOW also supports racial justice, which includes men, the evil oppressors railed against by the more militant feminist organizations. Interestingly the public cases of supposed racial injustice mostly involve men, George Floyd, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and others, some of whom ironically have a history of assaulting women. George Floyd, for example served, “Five years in prison in 2009 for aggravated assault stemming from a robbery in 2007 where he entered a woman’s home, pressed a gun into her stomach and searched the home for drugs and money.”
Yet he is a hero to the NOW gang who is defending and lionizing George Floyd, despite being an organization of women and Floyd a victimizer of women. While this seems ironic that NOW would support a brutish man who assaulted a woman, the transgender movement provides another look at hypocrisy on an even much larger scale when it comes to transgender athletes, specifically biologic males competing as females.
NOW has as one of its core issues, “LGBTQIA+ rights.” I must pause here for the benefit of myself and readers who are lost in the alphabet soup of wokeness. I understand LGBT, as did a gay New York Times writer who is similarly befuddled, “When I came out as gay more than 10 years ago, there were only four letters commonly used to group various sexual and gender minorities: L, G, B and T.”
The article explains the current lingo, at least for now until more letters are added to unending alphabetic litany of gender identities beyond male and female, which remarkably served humankind well until just a few years ago. Q is for questioning, I stands for intersex, A is for ally, and the + sign is to cover the 64 and counting other gender identities.
As to NOW’s core issue of LGBTQIA+ rights, “NOW is committed to fighting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in all areas including employment, housing, public accommodations, health services, child custody, and military policies.” There is no mention of athletics.
NOW’s recent news releases on this subject are about pride month, abortion, and the Equality Act. They say nothing about the big recent elephant in the room of transgenderism, biologic males competing as females in high school, college, and elite sports.
This story broke last fall and in brief involves a University of Pennsylvania swimmer named Will Thomas, an unremarkable member of the men’s team until COVID put college sports and the rest of life on hold. During his year off, Will became Lia, and is now a member of the Penn women’s swim team, and while a mediocre men’s swimmer, is anything but as a women’s swimmer. “UPenn trans swimmer, 22, sparks outrage by smashing women’s competition records after competing as a man for three seasons.”
In November 2021, Thomas competed in a tri-meet between UPenn, Cornell, and Princeton, “where the senior ‘blasted’ UPenn records in the 200m and 500m freestyle – posting times that beat almost every other female swimmer across America.”
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These times were so fast that, “Thomas would have been in line to secure a silver medal at the NCAA Women’s Championships, while her 4:35:06 in the 500m freestyle would have been good enough to win bronze.”
As a dude, Thomas was second team All-Ivy in several events but not good enough to qualify for the NCAA Championships. As a gal, Thomas will not only compete in the NCAA Championships, but likely be on the medal stand. Meaning that some biological gal won’t be competing or receiving a medal because a dude took her spot.
Where are the feminists and women’s rights advocates? Where is NOW? Don’t they have a problem with this? Remember the pink-hat brigade marching in protest after Donald Trump’s election? Are they marching to protest this mockery of women’s sports?
The sporting regulatory authorities are twisting themselves into woke pretzels to accommodate this new generation of Lola’s where, “Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls.” In 2015 the International Olympic Committee guidelines were based on testosterone levels being below a certain amount for a year.
Then last year, the IOC issued new guidelines, “dropping controversial policies that required competing athletes to undergo ‘medically unnecessary’ procedures or treatment,” — meaning testosterone.
Testosterone levels are a red herring, as even the IOC acknowledged. They correctly note, “A number of scientific papers have recently shown people who have undergone male puberty retain significant advantages in power and strength even after taking medication to suppress their testosterone levels.”
Puberty is when boys differentiate from girls through muscle mass, strength, and power. Once the engine is built, adult testosterone levels matter little. Ferrari and Toyota engines are differentiated once they come off the assembly line. Trying to equalize them based on the fuel grade powering these engines will make little difference, just as testosterone levels matter little once the human athletic engine is built during puberty.
What is puzzling is the silence of NOW and other groups supposedly advocating for women’s rights and equality. Girls, women, their coaches, and parents should all be outraged. Why are they not marching in protest wearing the pink hats which represent the bit of anatomy that biologic men identifying as women will never really have, even those seeking the care of aesthetic gynecological surgeons.
If biologic men can compete as women, it makes women’s sports irrelevant. And dismisses the years of early morning swim practices and sacrifices girls and their families made to have a chance to compete against other girls and women on an equal playing field, or in this case swimming pool.
University of Pennsylvania is also choosing wokeness over sanity or fairness. They are threatening to sue if the NCAA changes any rules which would preclude their new women’s swim star from competing in the NCAA championships. Too bad for the other Penn women’s swimmers who might have otherwise legitimately earned an invitation to the national championships.
Why bother with the pretense of men’s and women’s anymore, just make it a free-for-all, where anyone can compete with anyone, regardless of biologic sex, weight class, or any other physical parameter than confers advantage to some. Let’s see how that plays out.
The silence of women’s rights groups displays their hypocrisy, as they are in reality just another left-wing political advocacy group, pushing the latest progressive hot button issues. Forget calling themselves the National Organization of Women.
They should just keep it simple and call themselves the modern Democrat Party. This is the party that claims, “We are committed to ensuring full equality for women.” Tell that to the women now swimming in the wake of biologic males who have no business competing against women. While NOW and the progressive left just yawns.
Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., is a physician and writer. On Twitter as @retinaldoctor.
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