RUTHFULLY YOURS

It seems that the transgender revolution sweeping the globe has finally caught the eye of merchandisers.

Consider the Bitty Bug Soft Packer, a custom made prosthetic for your (gender ambiguous) toddler. Vaguely reminiscent of a knitted glove, the Bitty Bug is actually a miniature knitted penis that parents can pin to their female child’s underwear to give a life-like impression of the male gender. The crocheted device is manufactured by Stitchbug Studio for just $6 a pair and guarantees that your biological female child will never be mistaken as female. Bitty Bug penises come in a variety of colors like pink, hummus, brown, black, white, blue, and purple. There are also a variety of sizes: 1 inch, 1.5 inches, 2 inches, and 2.5 inches.

Daily Mail.com reported,

The controversial £4.20 item is available in multiple colors and was even advertised on the company’s website using a photo of a teddy bear with a bulge protruding from his children’s underpants. Similar adult ‘packers’ have become popular in the trans community to help reduce gender dysphoria and anxiety, however this range were noticeably smaller than usual.

At first glance, the Bitty Bug Packer looks like unhinged satire, but it as real as UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas, aka Will Thomas, a tall transgender woman with big hands and feet who regularly crushes biological female competitors while making many of them feel uncomfortable in the shower.

Lia Thomas, who has retained her essential male body parts, is on record as being attracted to women, which in effect makes him/her a lesbian according to old school definitions.

Similarly, Amy Schneider, the transgender Jeopardy! super champion, was referred to as a manly man until his transition in 2016. Schneider currently lives with a girlfriend, in effect making him a lesbian too. Of course, I am in no way denigrating Lia Thomas’ or Amy Schneider’s humanity because they chose to become transgender. Both deserve to live in peace, free from harm and discrimination.

Why Thomas and Schneider became transgender is another story, perhaps too complicated for this piece. No matter the reason, this fact still stands: underneath the costuming — the pearls, the female swimsuits, and light touches of lipstick — both are still biological men and will remain biological men for the rest of their lives.

This means that when it comes to athletics, transgender men like Thomas and Schneider will have huge advantages, although trans activists would like the world to shelve biological reality in favor of a narrative that states that you are whom you identify with.

UPenn, an Ivy League school located in the Woke stratosphere, initially issued a warning to Thomas’ female teammates to refrain from any references to Thomas’ so-called unfair biological advantage. Thomas’ teammates kept quiet for months but then 16 members of the team signed a letter that was sent to the University requesting that it not pursue legal action to challenge the NCAA’s new transgender policies. That policy states that transgender athletes’ participation for each sport will be determined by the policy set by each sport’s governing body. The new policy was seen as potentially banning Thomas from participating in March’s NCAA championships, but on February 10, the NCAA ruled that Thomas could compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Championship and that the new policy would not take effect until next season.

The letter to the University was an heroic act on the part of Thomas’ teammates, given the political orthodoxy of UPenn and ferociousness of transgender activists at the first hint of what they perceive to be transphobia or transmisogyny.

Transgender activist retaliation for perceived transphobia can border on the psychotic and comes in many forms: boycotts, threats, letter-writing campaigns, personal attacks. I speak from personal experience. Years ago I offended a group of trans activists when I unwittingly used the wrong pronouns when reviewing the book, Balancing on the Mechitza, Transgender in the Jewish Community for a Washington, D.C. magazine. The piece generated a tsunami of hateful pushback lasting for weeks, as if I was discovered to be a sort of Ted Bundy transgender serial killer rather than someone who had misgendered a person or two in the article.

The trans activist cabal (TAC) has succeeded in hoodwinking corporate America, academe, arts and cultural institutions, as well as the media to believe that whatever comes out of a trans leftist “think tank” is infallible dogma that cannot be questioned. TAC has done its fair share of damage, especially in its assault on the English language with its insistence that biological men and women be known as “cisgender,” and that persons who identify with multiple genders be addressed as “they” or “them.”

Leftists, in order to show solidarity with trans people, will insert their own preferred pronouns in parentheses after their printed name on press releases, city documents, and other official papers. To refuse to cooperate in this manner is to stand out and be noticed (and possibly be subject to criticism later). A leftist trans ally is always on guard to use the correct terminology lest he, she, or they slip and commit a political sin for which there is no forgiveness.

When Lia Thomas’ teammates at Upenn went public with their concerns, many news sources referred to the event as “controversial” while other media outlets, especially the LGBT media, categorized the 16 swimmers as insensitive and transphobic. The LGBT media, of course, is fairly robotic in its adherence to the latest transgender dogma. Whether the issue is puberty blockers for small children (those Bitty Bug Soft Packers), or the preponderance of very tall, strong biological men competing in women’s sports, the LGBT media will never object to the newest trans insanity to come down the pike.

Yet even in this airtight monochrome world, there’s been a backlash, which now seems to be spreading – finally – into the larger society as well. Facebook groups with the header LGB without the “T” are gaining in popularity although these groups are constantly subject to threats and intimidation from trans ideologues. Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner, for instance, has been consistent in speaking out against biological men competing in women’s sports. The price Jenner has paid for her unorthodoxy is being labeled a self-hating transphobe.

Finally, we come to President Biden’s full embrace of the transgender agenda when he signed an executive order allowing transgender women who have gone through male puberty to compete in women’s sports. The best one can say about this travesty is that one day in the future — when the White House is not occupied by the ringleader of a Fellini circus — this executive order can be rescinded and forgotten.

In the meantime, Biden’s trans erreur volontaire created some pushback when in 2021, West Virginia’s governor Jim Justice signed House Bill 3293 into law, which bans trans girls and women from girls sports in elementary, secondary or post-secondary level schools.

The governor’s approval did not sit well with the ever-vigilant Human Rights Campaign which stated,

By letting this cruel and discriminatory legislation become law, Gov. Jim Justice is not only hurting the health and safety of transgender children, but also West Virginians who will suffer the consequences of this law — including economic harm, expensive taxpayer-funded legal battles, and a tarnished reputation.

What’s wrong with this statement?

Why don’t we start with the ludicrously corrupt assumption that there’s such a thing as transgender children that need lawful protection?

Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism.  He is the author of fifteen books, including Philadelphia Architecture (2005); Literary Philadelphia and From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.