PURELY POLITICAL, By James Buckley
No doubt you’ve read of Lia Thomas, the swimmer who identified as female and has has shattered virtually every record for women swimmers at UPenn. Up until two years ago, Lia competed as a male and didn’t do particularly well. But, since Lia’s “transition,” Lia has become the hottest female athlete in college sports.
Lia is not alone in shredding female sports records.
Recently, men competing as women have broken women’s records in …
Hurdles: CeCe Telfer is a senior at Franklin Pierce University who became NCAA women’s track and field national champion in 2019. When CeCe competed as a man in Division III, CeCE failed to finish inside the top 300.
Weightlifting: Mary Gregory “broke” four women’s world records: Masters World Squat, Open World Bench, Masters World Deadlift, and Masters World Total. The good news is that when the Raw Powerlifting Federation learned that Mary was a man at birth and hadn’t mentioned the transition before the competition, they revoked her world records and decided they’d form a brand new “Transgender Division.”
Sprinting: Two boys calling themselves girls competed at a Connecticut high school track championship in 2019. Biological male Terry Miller set a girls’ state indoor record for the 55-meter dash (6.95 seconds). In second place was biological male Andraya Yearwood.
Cycling: Biological male Rachel McKinnon now holds the world record for the Women’s Sprint World Championship. As a male, Rachel’s time wasn’t fast enough to even qualify in the men’s competition.
Amy Schneider recently became the biggest female winner of all time of the TV show “Jeopardy!” Not only that, but she also holds the title of being the woman with the longest winning streak, and now, she’s reached a new milestone: becoming one of only four players to reach seven figures in regular-season winnings. Amy was a biological male who now identifies as a woman.
And one need look no further than to Assistant Secretary of Health & Human Resources Rachel Levine, a biological male who became the “first female four-star admiral” in U.S. history.
What’s going on here? And, perhaps even more importantly, why is it going on? One would think that after, say, Lia Thomas’s record-breaking performances, officials who accredit these events would have asked themselves questions about assigning female attributes to obviously male athletes.
But you would be wrong.
Quickly, and in lockstep, all eight members of the official Ivy League (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, Cornell, Brown, and Dartmouth), America’s most elite enclaves of “higher” education, tweeted the following statement: “The Ivy League reaffirms its unwavering commitment to providing an inclusive environment for all student-athletes while condemning transphobia and discrimination in any form.” UPenn then confirmed that Lia Thomas would be participating in other events designated for women.
“Penn Athletics,” it went on, “is committed to being a welcoming and inclusive environment for all our student-athletes, coaches and staff and we hold true to that commitment today and in the future. As a member of the NCAA, Penn is governed by the policies of the national governing body. Lia Thomas has met or exceeded all NCAA protocols over the past two years for a transgender female student-athlete to compete for a women’s team. She will continue to represent the Penn women’s swimming team in competition this season.”
Case closed.
“Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time,” claimed President Joe Biden in one of his easy-to-forget “speeches,” so you may find yourself in a dilemma if you have a son or daughter who says he or she is “transgender.” You need to find out more about the subject, to help him/her with sound advice. You probably believe that offering hormones might be dangerous and even the suggestion of some kind of surgery troubles you. You probably also feel that your child will “grow out of it” and go on to develop a more normal teenage angst. Which, statistically speaking, is an accurate assessment.
But good luck with that.
Seeking help from the “professionals” isn’t likely to help. In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that pediatricians “affirm” their patients’ chosen gender without taking into account mental health, family history, trauma or fears of puberty. Many professionals fear the negative repercussions if they dare take a different tack, so they toe the line.
Diane Ehrensaft is another high-profile professional; she is the mental health director at the University of California San Francisco Child and Adolescent Gender Center Clinic. She claims that even very young children have the cognitive ability to come out as transgender, and admits to having helped children as young as 3 years old transition socially.
Whoa. Let’s hang on here.
That’s not where you want to go. You just need some sage advice as to how to respond to your child’s apparent dysphoria. So you Google “Transgender.” Most of what you’ll find will only be helpful if you’ve decided that your son or daughter is already on the road to changing his/her… gender (sex). What you’ll get is a list of organizations that “treat” sex dysphoria and that such “treatment” almost always features helping children and others make the transition from one sex to another.
The very first Google reference, for example, is from an organization calling itself Plume, which states that it “provides gender-affirming hormone therapy, by trans people, for trans people. Provides Everything You Need To Begin Your Journey Or Maintain Your Routine.” You are then advised to download their app in order to receive “safe trans care.”
That is followed by Planned Parenthood’s site that explains that “Transgender is a term that includes the many ways people’s gender identities can be different from the one they were assigned at birth …”
Assigned at birth?
WebMD explains that “Assigning someone’s sex is based on biology – chromosomes, anatomy and hormones.”
Ok, now we’re getting somewhere.
Well, not really; WebMD goes on to advise that “a person’s gender identity – the inner sense of being male, female, or both – doesn’t always match their biology… It’s how they feel inside.”
Hmm, OK, it’s all about feelings. But still, kids “feel” so many things that aren’t “real,” and your child is only 10 years old. So you punch in “transgender treatment for children under 12.” Maybe you’ll find something more appropriate.
You’ll find Newport Academy’s GD (Gender Dysphoria) Treatment, offering “comprehensive care in a supportive environment.” Newport advises you to “not try to change how the person feels about their gender,” and after suggesting that “family therapy” and “support groups” could be helpful, they go on to recommend that “transitioning to one’s true gender can help ease gender dysphoria.”
Hmm, so one’s “true gender” is neither the more obvious male and/or female organs one is born with, nor apparently the gender one has been “assigned” to later. According to most of these sites, it’s really all about what your child believes he or she is meant to be.
For parents who worry they may be doing permanent damage, Mayo Clinic helpfully offers a list of “temporary” puberty blockers “for transgender and gender-diverse youth.” There are questions about how “temporary” those blockers really are, however.
You’ll also discover that California now permits children as young as 12 to access transgender treatments and services without parental consent. In other words, trust the kid, not the parent. In fact, parents who resist their child’s transition are the enemy of the professional class whose goal, it seems, is to “help ease gender dysphoria”… by transitioning!
As of January 2020, Washington state offers “confidential treatment for mental health conditions and gender dysphoria” using their parents’ insurance plan – without their parents’ consent.
But there is some pushback.
While most “progressive” states such as California, New York and others, almost seem to promote transitioning from one sex to another, some states have taken steps to combat what they see as dangerous and destructive medical practices.
For example, Arkansas recently passed a “Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act,” (vetoed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson but overridden by the legislature) which includes the observation that according to the American Psychiatric Association, only a small percentage of the American population experiences distress at identifying their biological sex.
“For natal adult males, prevalence ranges from 0.005% to 0.014% and for natal females, from 0.002% to 0.003%,” and the majority of children who experience such distress “come to identify with their biological sex in adolescence or adulthood, thereby rendering most physiological interventions unnecessary.”
But most governors and/or legislators aren’t prepared to combat the forces arrayed against them if they choose to stand up to the current orthodoxy.
James Buckley is a longtime Montecito resident. He welcomes questions or comments at jimb@substack.com.
