The "Rights" of Transgenders Is the Leading Edge of the Culture War; Biden Admin. Wants That Fight

(Beth Hussey via AP)

Thought Experiment:

Out of a group of 100 — how many mothers with daughters under the age of 8 would walk with their daughters into a bathroom open to the public and lower their own underwear, knowing that within two minutes after going inside, a man would come into that same bathroom and remove all his clothing and stand naked in front of her and her daughter?

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Unless you think that number is 51 or higher, the fight for “transgender” rights is one that will ultimately be lost, as it is elevated in the public consciousness by the aggressive advocacy of the Biden Administration.

I believe the number would be quite low — single digits? — and probably shockingly low to the most outspoken advocates for transgender rights. But this is the political “blind spot” of the 2021 Democrat Party — the belief that the most radical views on social issues within the ranks of Democrat party activists appeal to the spectrum of views within the party that stretch from the center to the most moderate.

Take a look at this — the video on the bottom involves a “woke” male who comes to challenge the views as expressed by the mother in the video on top.

The Biden Administration, through the Democrat Department of Justice and the Department of Education, is championing policies that will produce more episodes like this in the days/weeks/years ahead.

The main legal proposition being advanced is that the “right” of the lone individual forces all “rights” and “norms” of collective or societal conventions to yield, because the individual will be offended, traumatized, or otherwise damaged if not allowed to act in a manner that makes him/her most comfortable.

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Showing that no good deed goes unpunished, only days after West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin provided the key vote to confirm Kristin Clarke as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Clarke’s attorneys in the Civil Rights Division filed a legal brief in litigation pending in West Virginia federal court seeking to overturn a West Virginia law to limits participation in school sports for biological girls to students who were born as biological girls.

The Democrat Department of Justice argues in its “Statement of Interest” — it is not a party in the litigation — that laws such as the one passed by the West Virginia legislature and signed by the West Virginia Governor violate Title IX of the Civil Rights Act and the United States Constitution.

The West Virginia case is B.P.J. v. West Virginia State Bd. of Educ., filed earlier this year.

The facts of the case are more nettlesome than the facts of many other cases that involve high school-age male athletes who “transition” and suddenly experience remarkable improvements in performance, when measured against their competitors who are all biological females.

B.P.J. is an 11-year-old student moving from elementary school to junior high school, and the West Virginia law bans B.P.J. from sports participation, unless B.P.J. participates on the boys’ teams while presenting as a girl.  The lawsuit contends — not surprisingly — that being allowed to participate only on that basis would traumatize B.P.J.

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B.P.J. does not seek to join the boys’ crosscountry and track teams because she is a girl and such participation would “devastate” B.P.J., “completely erase who she is,” and undermine her social transition.

But because forcing transgender girls to participate on boys’ teams also causes discriminatory harm, H.B. 3293 affords them no opportunity to participate on single-sex sports teams at all.

Put another way, it is B.P.J.’s supposed right to “not be devastated” which is the basis for turning societal conventions on their heads.  That’s the purpose of the litigation — to save B.P.J. and others acting in a similar fashion from the emotional consequences of childhood behaviors that are being fostered by parents.

This is the same justification that later in adulthood demands that a transgender man be allowed to walk into a publicly accessible bathroom at a health spa and expose his genitals to women and little girls who have gone into the “Women’s Restroom” as opposed to the “Men’s Restroom” — presumably, they were acting intentionally in making that election.

In the case of B.P.J., it is not so much the little boy’s conduct that is at issue. The core problem is the willingness of B.P.J.’s parents to embrace the idea that somehow B.P.J. is communicating to them accurate biological information that “she” was mistakenly born into a boy’s body, and knows this to a degree of medical certainty such that her parents are convinced they must allow her to live her childhood years as a girl.

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As for transgender adults, the balance comes down to a question of whose “trauma” is more important to safeguard against:

  1. The “trauma” experienced by a man — representing himself as a woman — being told that he must use the Men’s restroom in the same manner as all other persons born with penises — mistakenly or not — out of respect for the rights of others;  or
  2. The “trauma” experienced by women and girls who opt to use a Women’s restroom with an expectation that they won’t encounter individuals with penises therein.

The Biden Justice Department says the former must win out.

That brings us back to our sample of 100 mothers with little girls.

How many would pick No. 1 over No. 2?

On the sports participation issue, I’ve long predicted that this question will swing dramatically against Democrats, as soccer moms begin to notice how dramatically “success” on the field begins to swing against their biological daughters in a favor of the transgender girls as players “transition” from under-12 to over-12 age groups. The number of such participants and episodes has always been too minuscule to really impact the broader youth sports playing population.

But as Democrat-sponsored social programs and the ultra-left “woke” medical community works harder to mainstream this subject, the more the “soccer mom” population will be confronted with the losses of opportunities by their biological female daughters to the biological male daughters of other parents.

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I think the Democrat Party is about to learn the reality of this lesson, as episodes like the one captured in the videos begin to play themselves out in greater numbers and in a more public fashion.

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