That all changed last month, when a series of high-profile stories swept trans issues into the national spotlight, starting with the victory of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas at the NCAA women’s swimming championship. Although Thomas was, for the most part, lauded by the press, the victory was accompanied by protests, complaints from the parents of other competitors, and a string of anonymous tabloid leaks from Thomas’s teammates — at least some of whom seemed opposed to her presence on the team.

The pictures of the broad-shouldered, 6’1” Thomas towering over her competitors, were striking. Long-winded explanations about the role of testosterone in athletic performance aside, it was hard for the average person to conclude she hadn’t had a competitive advantage.

Then, later the same month, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education Act into law. The “Don’t Say Gay” bill was vociferously opposed by the White House, much of the media, and major corporations such as Disney and Apple; it prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from preschool to third grade — roughly ages four to nine — and requires that parents be notified about any medical or mental-health issues with their children. Prominent liberals were scathing, with Biden denouncing the law as “hateful”, Pete Buttigieg’s husband warning that it will “kill kids”, and the hosts of the Oscars chanting the word “gay” in protest. The Right, meanwhile, has launched itself into a frenzy, accusing Democrats of wanting to “groom” children and insinuating that opponents of the law are pedophiles.

It is no coincidence that both pillars of the current trans controversies relate to education. A leitmotif of the post-pandemic world has been parental rebellion against progressive excesses in schools and instruction on issues such as race and gender. Remote schooling allowed parents to peek into their children’s classrooms, where they saw elementary schoolers being instructed to rank themselves on an intersectional privilege hierarchy and to celebrate the “black communism” of Angela Davis.

Republicans, sensing opportunity, have embraced the parental crusade with anti-CRT bills, curriculum transparency bills, and, in some states, new restrictions on trans athletes and “gender-affirming” medical procedures. They are responding to the fact that the woke extremism popular with professional educators is deeply unpopular with voters. Indeed, wokeness in general is unpopular, and “educators”, as a class, are something like the Salafists of social justice. This is a specific instance of a general problem for the Democrats: its professional and leadership class is fond of social positions that strike a lot of ordinary people as wacky or perverse.

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The failure of Jack Kerouac

By Park MacDougald

Democrats, however, have fallen into what Ruy Teixeira calls the “Fox News fallacy” — the idea that if Republicans are complaining about something, it must be made up. On CRT, for instance, they have used the unconvincing defence that CRT is only taught in law schools and dismissed parental concerns as a product of “disinformation.”

Similarly, they have cast the Parental Rights in Education Act as a homophobic attempt to “force kids back into the closet” and prevent gay teachers from discussing their home life in the classroom — when, in fact the main concern of the bill is gender identity. The strategy, as Leor Sapir has argued, has been to make the debate over the law a debate over gay rights — which are supported by the vast majority of Americans — while dodging the much more contentious issue of whether, and how, schools should be teaching about gender.

This is no idle concern. What evidence we do have suggests that paediatric gender dysphoria is rising at a rate that would be almost impossible to explain purely as a result of greater acceptance or diagnostic sophistication. One clinic in Northern California reported an 500% increase in paediatric referrals for gender dysphoria between 2015 and 2018, while in Sweden, gender dysphoria diagnoses among teenage girls rose by over 1,500% between 2008 and 2018.

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The importance of repression

By Park MacDougald

Some researchers, such as Brown University’s Lisa Littman, have argued that this rapid increase is consistent with other social contagions such as anorexia or cutting. This suggests that many children are adopting these identities due to peer influences and social media consumption rather than a stable and deeply felt sense of dysphoria. But if these messages are reinforced at school, they may be more likely to stick.  This is a particularly explosive issue given that schools have encouraged children to socially transition without notifying their parents, and some states, such as California, consider failure to affirm a child’s gender identity as grounds for stripping a parent of custody rights.

Although Littman’s work has been denounced as “misinformation”, it has received support from a number of “detransitioners” who have gone public with their stories. Their stories, on the whole, follow a pattern: a girl who is struggling with an unrelated mental health issue such as anxiety or depression falls down an Internet rabbit-hole, where she learns she is unhappy because she was born in the “wrong body”. She visits a psychiatrist who, instead of interrogating her feelings, “affirms” that she is actually a boy and sets them on the road to medical transition.

Only later, sometimes after painful surgeries, do the girls realise that whatever was bothering them was not gender dysphoria but another unresolved psychological issue. They are left wondering why the adults in their lives allowed them to damage their bodies in the name of what they later come to believe was a delusion. Due in part to stories like these — and to the lack of solid evidence in favour of “gender-affirming” care — a number of European countries have begun to discourage medical interventions for youth gender dysphoria in favour of psychotherapy.

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Do we need a Trans Olympics?

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The Biden administration’s great strength so far has been its ability to recognise when the preferences of the Twitter class are deeply out of step with those of the public and then side with the public. Here, it has done the opposite. Last week, in response to the Florida and two recent Arizona laws (one banning biological males from girls’ sports, the other banning medical transitions for minors), the administration announced that it would be expanding its interpretation of Title IX — a federal law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in education — to include protections for gender identity.

The full implications of the move are unclear, but they could include denying federal education funds to states that bar trans athletes from girls’ sports. Separately, the Justice Department warned states that any attempt to limit access to “gender-affirming” care for children could be in violation of the Constitution and federal civil rights law.

Biden may be miscalculating. Americans are by and large tolerant of differences and tend to take a laissez-faire attitude when it comes to how individuals choose to live their own lives. But they also have a basic sense of fair play and proportion. Majorities oppose laws, such as Arizona’s, prohibiting “gender-transition related medical care for minors”, presumably because they seem to legislate individual medical decisions. But a solid majority believe that trans athletes should compete on teams that match their birth sex, and polling suggests that even a majority of Florida Democrats supports the language of the Parental Rights in Education Act.

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Have we reached peak trans?

By Andrew Doyle

In short, Americans tend to support trans rights when they are analogous to gay rights, meaning when they are seen as a simple matter of accepting those who are different. But they are more sceptical of the maximalist positions pushed by elite progressives — that the Lia Thomases of the world should be permitted to compete as women, or that schools should be allowed to facilitate major medical decisions for children without parental notification or consent.

By picking a national fight over these issues, the Biden administration risks stepping into a trap it has so far avoided: siding with the common sense of college-educated progressives against the common sense of the electorate as a whole. For a GOP attempting to rebrand itself as the party of ordinary people, this could be a blessing in disguise.

But don’t panic! I am here to tell you that you can make it to the other side. It’s been a little over a year since I decided to enter into the heated debate around currently fashionable gender ideology and the same activists who smeared the former tennis player Martina Navratilova and the singer Marc Almond as transphobic have thrown everything they could at me too. And yet I have not changed my position one iota from what it was when I began.

I can summarise my position thus: women exist. They are not just an idea or a feeling. They have the right to assembly, the right to organise, the right to demand private and safe spaces free of men and the right to assert these rights without being tormented online by the first generations who didn’t go outside to play. 

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Why don't trans activists practise what they preach?

By Meghan Murphy

This is what I was able to hang onto in the worst moments: gender ideology is so incoherent that almost everything is now transphobic, including the National Health Service, dictionaries, the Venus symbol on Always sanitary products, The Vagina Monologues and Lou Reed. If they can take a transwoman to court on a charge of transphobia, if they can bully a transwoman, Debbie Hayton, for refusing to adhere to current orthodoxy, they can certainly give you a hard time for whatever transphobic thing it is you’re doing at the moment. 

So here are some things to bear in mind while enjoying your turn in the stocks.

First of all, remember that the Equality Act states that you must not be discriminated against on the basis of your sex, not your gender. The singer Sam Smith may ask you to use ‘they’ and ‘them’ when speaking of him, but you are under no legal obligation to do so. 

No two people seem to be able to agree on what the word ‘gender’ means, but many, myself included, feel it is the name for the stereotypes associated with either of the sex roles, male and female. Someone feeling an affinity with sex-role stereotypes is not the same as literally being that sex, and many brave transwomen are being forced to confront their dysphoria daily by fighting publicly against this concept, a concept that they feel is cruelly misleading fellow sufferers.

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The birth of the transsexual empire

By Julie Bindel

You will be told there is NO DEBATE. Just talk around anyone who lays that one on you. There is quite clearly a debate needed on the subject of how these ideas impact women’s rights, sports, dignity and safety.

Even Hillary Clinton, perhaps speaking with the freedom that comes after a failed presidential run, said: “I do think there is a legitimate concern about women’s lived experience and the importance of recognising that.” Direct your correspondent to the first point on the SNP’s Women’s Pledge, which states that women have “the right to discuss policies which affect them … without being abused or silenced”.  No reasonable person could object to this principle, and their attitude to your asserting it will tell you how seriously to take their concerns. 

Many of those writing to you will think they are behaving honourably, even as they direct the most appalling abuse at you. Don’t be intimidated. Be polite if you can, and remember that there are bad-faith actors working the controls and ensuring the temperature of the conversation is kept extremely high. Accusations of bigotry are the first stop on this journey, not the last, so get used to them. 

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All the world's a stage for the trans ultras

By Stephen Pollard

Don’t be fooled into thinking your principles are somehow outdated. Women are just as vulnerable to male power and coercion as they were during #MeToo or, indeed, a hundred years ago. Pretending that men have suddenly decided to reform overnight — worse yet, designing policies around that pretence — could result in dreadful things, as when “Karen White”, a male sex offender, successfully identified himself into a position where he was able to sexually assault several female prisoners.

You will see some very frightening and upsetting stats about trans people and suicide, and how you are contributing to those statistics by your continued association with the writer/academic/doctor who has somehow transgressed some arbitrary rules. These statistics have very flimsy underpinnings. The “fact” that 48% of transgender teenagers have attempted suicide is based on a study involving just 27 young people, 13 of whom self-reported having attempted suicide in the past. Of course, any suicide attempt is a tragedy, but these are not the figures of a meaningful and robust study.

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Why I've reported Douglas Murray to the police

By Titania McGrath

You will be accused of causing violence against transwomen. Murder rates will be quoted. This is deceitful hyperbole. Trans people are one of the safest demographics in the UK. The statistics quoted usually relate to poor transwomen of colour in the USA / South America, many of them driven by poverty into drugs and dangerous sex work. In a like-for-like comparison with statistics on the prospects of poor female sex workers of colour in the same geographic regions, this argument falls apart. Ask your correspondent, finally, if they have any suggestions for actually addressing how poverty and male violence impacts all sex workers, and remind them politely that male violence should never, ever be blamed on women.

There’s more, there’s so much more, and every case is unique. I can’t pretend it’s enjoyable, what you’re about to go through, but at least you will be remembered as one of first who didn’t capitulate to bullies and stood your ground, knowing you will make it easier for the next victim.

Let your principles be your compass, and you will always do the right thing.

But get some Valium.

The Associated Press report which followed that headline related one of the records now regularly being broken in women’s sports. That these gains (in college and professional sports) are coming from male to female transsexuals is a detail you can either celebrate or find troubling.  Though woe betide you if you choose the wrong reaction there.

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Trans athletes make a mockery of women's sports

By Meghan Murphy

For if you find such developments remotely troubling you will simultaneously find yourself in a majority and yet exiled. Martina Navratilova chose to raise her concerns about transsexual athletes, and instantaneously a woman who has been a trailblazer for women – especially gay women – in sport was accused of undermining LGBT rights and expelled from an LGBT activist group.

In a world where born-men beat born-women at women’s sports and everybody is meant to just shut up about it nobody could possibly be surprised if reality and satire begin to grow thin and one eventually begins to resemble the other.

Perhaps it is for this reason that the art of satire has developed a new platform and a new audience. In recent years, real satire has emerged not on the tired, stale and ‘safe’ platforms of the BBC and other mob-vulnerable old media platforms, but in places which allow people to be nimble, swift and independent as they hover over every necessary target of our time.

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Liberal smugness will destroy the Left

By Giles Fraser

A couple of years ago, Twitter discovered the genius of Godfrey Elfwick. The “genderqueer Muslim atheist”, though born white claimed to be black, and became famous for his ability to fudge the boundaries between the zeitgeist and the inventions of his head. Among his masterpieces was his contribution to the Social Justice Warrior movement’s brief post-Trump election qualms over when and where to punch people you suspected of being Nazis. Elfwick answered this question with the statement: “I’d rather punch 300 innocent people and 1 genuine Nazi, than punch no Nazis at all”.

And then there was his response to the pussy hat protests:

“When the next generation ask: what did YOU do when Trump came to power?  I’ll proudly say: ‘I called him a Nazi while dressed like a vagina.'”

The boundaries between fantasy and reality sometimes blurred so close that Elfwick fooled even the wisest of minds. In November 2016, the Guardian published a piece titled “‘Alt-right’ online poison nearly turned me into a racist.” The anonymous author described his descent as starting at the work of Sam Harris until, “On one occasion I even, I am ashamed to admit, very diplomatically expressed negative sentiments on Islam to my wife.”

I must shamefully admit that I was among those who fell for this piece, assuming that the Guardian had only gone slightly further down a trajectory it had long been on. But the piece turned out to be the work of Godfrey Elfwick, who had ‘punked’ the Guardian into running a piece from an anonymous writer sending up an argument the newspaper so desperately wanted to hear.

Much more of this, of course, and a lot of serious people from all sides begin to look silly. And so, eventually, Elfwick became a victim of his own success and was barred from Twitter last summer for reasons that only a multi-billion dollar public platform could justify or successfully keep private. But from the rubble emerged Titania McGrath. For a time it seemed as though McGrath and Elfwick might be one and the same person.  But sources suggest otherwise, pointing to the fact that there may be more than one person on the planet able to use social media against Social Justice Warriors and the old media that seems so supine before them.

Like Elfwick, some of Titania’s critics assumed that her arguments must be for real, so close did they come to arguments seriously put forward by real people. Private Eye – the relict of what used to be British satire – even put Titania in ‘Pseud’s Corner’, unaware that Titania was heading for targets Private Eye could barely even see. She was there for her claim that people should buy her book Woke: a guide to social justice not for her own sake, but for ‘the sake of humanity.’

Her book is now out, and extends in long-form the style that Titania has perfected on Twitter. As her freshly revealed creator, Andre Doyle says:

“She is named after the queen of the fairies because I think all of this ‘woke culture’ is an utter fantasy world. The people who promote this hyper inclusive culture are fantasists.”

Titania is a creation of genius. The lady herself is truculent, privileged and incapable of self-reflection. She scythes her way through Twitter like an avenging SJW angel. Anybody who suggests that there are biological differences between men and women will find Titania coming down on them from the greatest height, berating them and demanding that Twitter remove them from the platform for “hate speech”.

The joke is partly on the platform, for Twitter has been willing to suspend people for precisely this sin, although Twitter executives have attempted to simultaneously deny and defend precisely these actions.

Wow, the entire interview is fascinating & disturbing. @joerogan @Timcast catch Twitter in multiple lies/misrepresentations. Illuminating.
pic.twitter.com/TkGs9CDPHo

— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) March 6, 2019

Like Elfwick, Titania has found herself the target of Twitter’s efforts to police its own platform. Last December she was suspended from Twitter for a day. She returned with a Tweet pointing out that her suspension demonstrated the systematic oppression of women in our society, and wrote a piece pointing out that after her 24-hour suspension from Twitter “I now understand how Nelson Mandela felt“.

Though in this latter piece Titania explained that “If anything, my ordeal was even more damaging. Mandela may have had to endure 27 years of incarceration, but at least his male privilege protected him from ever having to put up with mansplaining, or being subject to wolf-whistling by grubby proles on a building site.”

The way in which Titania has broken out from Twitter is a magnificent thing to behold. Finally, the plodding, establishment satire of recent years might have finally been subject to the disruption it has so badly needed. For decades in Britain, being brave in satire has consisted of making jokes about the Duke of Edinburgh, or saying “the Tories” or “Thatcher” and expecting a great panto boo followed by a forced laugh at whatever inanity follows.

Titania, like the now resurrected Elfwick, show what true disruption of a tired genre looks like. For just as the legacy media and social media make claims which are maddening, presumptuous and untrue, so these creations of the new media have emerged to shine a light which is not just funny, but fatally accurate and true.

Last month, it was Yearwood’s turn to take second place, this time in the 55-metre sprint at the state open track championships. First place went to Terry Miller, another transgender student, who in the process set a new girls’ state indoor record. Last year, the two students had sparked controversy when they took first and second place in the 100-meter race at the State Open Finals.

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How have we let scientific study become hate speech?

By Meghan Murphy

It was back in 1972 that the United States enacted Title IX of the Education Amendments, to ensure that high schools and universities had to offer equal academic and athletic opportunities to both men and women. Prior to this, women’s and girls’ sports were not taken seriously, not supported, and not funded.

The impact of this legislation was revolutionary: in 1974, 300,000 girls played high school sports in the US. Today, it is well over three million. But, like so many other hard-fought women’s rights, today’s generation seems to have forgotten the history and importance of the laws and policies that ensured females were no longer treated as second class citizens.

Today, we are at risk of losing women’s sports entirely. All in the name of ‘trans inclusivity’.

That women’s sports had to be specifically and explicitly supported should signal to people that, without sex segregated athletics, females will be out of the game. We simply cannot compete on equal ground against men. And this has nothing to do with lack of talent — there are basic physical differences between male and female bodies that are unchangeable.

To start, men, in general, are bigger than women. They have larger bones and organs than women. They have longer limbs, bigger hands, and larger lungs. They have more muscle mass, which means they are stronger than women. As females, our ability to reproduce has meant that our bodies have evolved for different purposes than men’s, which affects how our bodies develop and function. There is no self-identifying out of biological reality.

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Why the transbullies are a threat to us all

By Julie Bindel

Fair Play For Women (FPFW), a grassroots campaign group fighting for women’s and girls’ sex-based rights, explains that peak male bone mass is around 50% more than women’s, and that women are around 30-35% muscle by weight, while men are 40-50% muscle. While of course muscle mass can vary based on factors like age and fitness, FPFW point out that “women can’t match the bulk or strength of men’s skeletal muscles.” In measuring hand grip, a widely-used marker for strength, FPFW found data that showed the strongest 10% of females can still only beat the bottom 10% of men.

There is a mistaken view that feminists see men and women as exactly the same. That, in other words, they take the word ‘equality’ literally. This is not the case. Feminists are well aware that male and female bodies are different, and that our lot in life has been determined in many ways (though of course not in all ways) by reproductive capacity.

Indeed, women’s oppression has been historically rooted in men’s desire to control their so-called bloodline and, therefore, the means of reproduction. What feminists have fought against is the notion that women should not be allowed to participate in public life — to live full and independent lives, outside the home, and have access to things like education, political power, and a full range of career options – because of their ability to bear children.

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What does gender have to do with genitals?

By Julie Bindel

Feminists are rejecting gender stereotypes, not biology. We don’t agree that simply because one is born female, we must dress a certain way, act a certain way, think a certain way, or be treated as second class. We do know women are physically weaker, and that this makes women vulnerable to male violence.

There is little women can do, no matter how many push ups they perform, to fight off a male attacker. Men are, simply, stronger. This reality — tied to social and cultural norms that put men in positions of power — is why feminists have fought hard for legislative and social changes to deter male violence against women, protect females from being assaulted, and hold men who do perpetrate violence against women accountable.

Because men are most commonly the perpetrators of violence against women, women and girls have had access to separate spaces, where they might otherwise be particularly vulnerable: changing rooms, washrooms, shelters, and transition houses for women escaping male violence for example. These physical and social realities have also meant female and male prisoners are housed separately.

And, of course, the reality of physical differences between men and women have meant that almost all elite sports are sex-segregated. If women were forced to compete against men, they wouldn’t just lose, they would cease to exist in sport at all.

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When did women's rights stop being human rights?

By Jo Bartosch

So forgive our “feverish hysteria” – as The Independent’s chief sports writer Jonathan Liew recently put it – over the new policies being adopted by athletic bodies around the world which allow males who identify as transwomen to compete in female sports.

Liew’s patronising call for us women to “chill out a bit” is based on his view that “hordes of male athletes” will not “suddenly declare themselves female simply to game the system”. But why not? Why wouldn’t mediocre male athletes declare themselves female in order to win at competitions they couldn’t otherwise win? There is, after all, power, glory, and financial gain in being a top athlete.

And while Liew may see a transphobic “straw man”, women are already seeing it happen. That males would compete against women and win is not, it turns out, a figment of our imaginations.

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Can academia be saved from the mob?

By Debra Soh

It was Canadian cyclist Rachel McKinnon’s world championship win last year that led tennis legend Martina Navratilova to tweet: “Clearly that can’t be right. You can’t just proclaim yourself female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as women would not fit that standard.” Other elite female athletes, including Olympic swimmer Sharon Davies and Women’s World Marathon Record holder Paula Radcliffe, have since expressed their concern.

In January, powerlifter JayCee Cooper set a new state record in Bench, becoming state champion, and winning best overall lifter. This was in the women’s division at the USPA Minnesota State Championships. Cooper, who was born male, but now identifies as a woman, lifted 57.5kg more than the closest female competitor.

After this happened, USA Powerlifting (a different organisation) instituted a ban on males competing as women, meaning Cooper’s application to compete was denied. The USAPL explains that “Transgender male to female individuals having gone through male puberty confer an unfair competitive advantage over non-transgender females due to increased bone density and muscle mass from pubertal exposure to testosterone.”

This comes after Laurel Hubbard, representing New Zealand in women’s weightlifting, won gold after beating fellow competitors by 19kg in Melbourne in 2017. Hubbard, who transitioned to female in her mid-30s, went on to compete in the Commonwealth Games last year.

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The media could make a serious difference to trans lives – why won't it?

By Owl Fisher

The very real results are being felt by girls already. Last week, Selina Soule, one of the female students who lost to Miller and Yearwood in Connecticut, told Fox News that, when applying for track college scholarships, it is not specified if an athlete is transgender — students are either in the boys’ category or the girls’ category.

“So if a college coach looks at the results in the [championships], they will see the wide margin between first and/or second place, and the rest of the places … and they’ll say, ‘Hey, why aren’t the rest of these girls running as fast as these two’.

“It’s very frustrating because I know I have put in, and some of my friends and fellow competitors have put in, so much time and effort to take down our times and compete ourselves better, but we are not physically able to be competitive against someone who is biologically a male.”

Liew calls the scenario being painted by critics of this ‘trans inclusive’ approach to women’s sport “fantastical”, in part because he doesn’t believe there will suddenly be an influx on male athletes undertaking “the protracted and often traumatic transition process, securing the necessary medical and psychological documentation”.

But this fails to recognise that under new gender identity policy, males are not required to go through lengthy “transition processes” in order to declare themselves female. This is precisely why such heated debate has erupted around gender identity, as self-declaration is fast on its way to becoming the sole determiner of sex. Fill out a form, and you can now legally become the opposite sex in many countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Ireland, and Norway, where there are no judicial or medical requirements at all to change your sex.

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Twitter's dangerous approach to 'hate speech'

By Meghan Murphy

In the UK, this is what changes to the Gender Recognition Act propose. In Canada, you need only a note from an accredited physician or psychologist stating that an individual identifies as a different sex; there are no medical requirements.

Many states, including Washington, Oregon, New York, California, and Connecticut also only require a note from a doctor or nurse practitioner (or a note from someone even less qualified, including, in Washington, a naturopath or social service worker). Nevada requires an affidavit from the individual, stating they are the opposite sex, and an affidavit from a second person confirming this.

Naturally, this new normal has impacted sport. Until 2016, the International Olympic Committee required male athletes who wished to compete among females to undergo sex-reassignment surgery. Under the new rules, they need only declare themselves women and demonstrate that their testosterone level has been below a certain point for a year before their first competition.

But lowering testosterone levels for a year does not change the physical body to such an extent that it negates the inherent advantages of being biologically male. It does not alter bones, limbs, or organs. It does not decrease muscle mass to an extent that renders the body equal to a woman’s. These men will still be much bigger and stronger.

Women’s sport is the just the latest example of the fundamental problem at the heart of trans activism: if we dissolve the definition of ‘woman’ to mean nothing more than a declared ‘identity,’ women – along with our hard-won rights – cease to exist.