RUTHFULLY YOURS

Before US president-elect Donald Trump has even taken office, the Republicans are coming down hard on gender ideology. Trans athletes’ chances of beating women to scholarships, to medals and to a bloody pulp suffered a significant setback this week, when the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Bill was passed in the House of Representatives.

This bill is the first step in ensuring that schools receiving federal funding bar males from female sporting competitions. The legislation still needs to make it through the Senate to become law, but, interestingly, it did gain support from two Democrats. It seems that at least some left-leaning politicians are beginning to return to reality.

Of course, rather than being reported as a measure to ensure safety, privacy and fairness, ‘progressive’ media outlets from CNN to the Guardian described the proposed act as a ‘ban’ on transgender athletes. But what the bill ultimately aims to do is to amend Title IX – the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools – to define sex as ‘reproductive biology and genetics at birth’ rather than being based on magic gender words.

Transgender Delaware representative Sarah McBride (a white male politician whose election was widely heralded as ‘making history’ because he has long hair and wears a dress in public) claimed to be ‘mystified that this is a priority’. In fairness to the fella, it does seem strange that, when it comes to the trans vs women debate, the focus has been sport rather than, say, ensuring women in prison are no longer locked up with rapists.

Nonetheless, sport is central to the self-image of the US. Sporting scholarships in particular are big business. In many ways, there is no better symbol of the unfairness of allowing men to identify as women than seeing men and boys destroying female sporting achievements. Nothing has swayed public opinion against the trans movement quite like the widely shared photos of the 6’4’’ male swimmer, Lia Thomas, towering on a podium above his female competitors. The general public were understandably horrified to learn that the women he competed against were even forced to share a changing room with the fully intact Thomas.

Sportswomen have been particularly brave in taking a stand, risking their reputations and careers to speak out against gender ideology. Riley Gaines, a swimmer who tied in fifth place with Thomas at the NCAA Women’s Championships in 2022, has long railed against this obvious unfairness. When the 24-year-old attempted to speak out at a meeting against trans-inclusion policies at San Francisco State University, she was physically attacked and forced to barricade herself in a room for three hours. That this was less than two years ago shows how much progress has been made.

Thankfully, Americans are now catching back up to reality. It’s impossible to ignore that Trump’s re-election was based at least partially on the fact that he went so hard on the trans issue this time around. Senator Tommy Tuberville, who introduced the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Bill, told Fox News that ‘President Trump ran on the issue of saving women’s sports and won in a landslide’. Like most Republicans, and indeed most Americans, Trump is no feminist. But he clearly is a man with his finger on the pulse of public opinion.

Americans are clearly sick of being told they are ignorant or cruel for daring to object to men trampling over the rights of women and girls. That even some Democrats now agree is a sign that the end of trans supremacy is perhaps in sight. Women and girls may now have a sporting chance of winning.