The leading U.S. weightlifting association has formally excluded transgender males from its women’s division, marking another win for supporters of women’s athletics.
Delegates at USA Powerlifting voted 46 to 4 to keep their transgender participation policy amid pressure from well-funded transgender athletes.
“We commend USA Powerlifting in their decision to preserve women’s sports,” said a statement from Beth Stelzer, founder of Save Women’s Sports. She continued:
Some strong women and men dug in their heels in defense of the truth. It is not fair to force women to compete with men. USAPL proved it honors and values women in this sport. We won’t forget it. I encourage women and men who support this decision to let the leadership know.
The decision came a week after another weightlifting association withdrew several awards for women given to a male weightlifter who is living as a woman.
The weightlifter, Mary Gregory, told Outsports that an official for the association — 100% Raw Powerlifting Federation — asked to observe a routine pee test after the competition:
I said, “Well, this is kind of embarrassing for me, because I don’t have the correct anatomy.” Still, I did my business while somebody watched me sitting on the toilet. And so that’s where that statement comes from, because I’m sure she told them, “Hey! This girl’s got a penis!”
Fewer than ten percent of men living as women undergo cosmetic surgery of the genitals. According to Outsports:
Gregory is a construction worker, and said she lacks the insurance coverage for bottom surgery. Although she is a lesbian, she said she isn’t in any hurry to get it.
“Perfect world, under perfect situations, probably, yes, I would have the surgery,” she said, “because I’m not that attached to that part of my anatomy. It doesn’t define who I am, but I don’t hate it. I don’t need it to be gone to be able to live my life and be whole. It’s more of a case that it’s inconvenient that it’s there.”
…
“One reason why I decided to continue lifting is because I wanted to give the middle finger to that stigma that you can’t be a strong, muscular female. I feel being strong and having muscles actually makes me feel sexy, and makes me feel more comfortable in my own skin.”
There is growing and organized opposition to the transgender demand that women accept men into their sports competitions.
Steltzer, for example, is a weightlifter who has rallied opposition to men’s intrusion of women’s sports. She said:
Those calling themselves transgender women are, in fact, men. The defense of biological reality is not bigotry; it is an attempt to champion women’s right to fair play and bodily privacy. If you don’t want men on your sports team or in your locker rooms and bathrooms, now is the time to speak up.
This defense of women’s sports is being aided by some left-wing and feminist groups, including former tennis star Martina Navratilova, despite intense peer pressure from progressives:
But Democrats are nailing their colors to the transgender cause, despite the political risks for 2020. For example, nearly all Democrats endorse the Equality Act, which would require sports clubs to treat men as if they are women if the men say they have a female “gender identity.” Rep. Joe Kennedy, head of the transgender caucus, told Breitbart News that sports competitions should be for “human beings,” not for men or women.
In general, the transgender ideology says a person’s sex is determined by their “gender identity,” not their biology. The ideology also insists that men and women are more or less identical, and it objects to the public’s view of the two sexes as simultaneously different, complementary, and equal. The transgender advocates want to impose their ideology on Americans by establishing “transgender rights” laws, which would require the Department of Justice to penalize individuals and groups who insist that women and girls are different — and have different priorities — than men and boys.
Polls show the transgender ideology is deeply unpopular, especially among women and parents. In 2017, former President Barack Obama told NPR that his promotion of the transgender ideology made it easier for Donald Trump to win the presidency.
Multiple polls show that most Americans wish to help and comfort people who think they are a member of the opposite sex, even as they also reject the transgender ideology’s claim that people’s legal sex is determined by their feeling of “gender identity,” not by biology. A U.K. survey shows a similar mix of sympathy for people who say they are transgender alongside lopsided opposition to the ideology.
The transgender movement is diverse, so its different factions have competing goals and priorities. It includes sexual liberationists, progressives, feminists who wish to blur distinctions between the two sexes, and people who glamorize the distinctions between the two sexes. It includes high-profile children, people who are trying to live as members of the opposite sex, troubled teenage girls trying to flee womanhood, and people trying to “detransition” back to their sex. It also includes men who demand sex from lesbians, masculine autogynephiles who say they are entitled to women’s rights, parents eager to support transgender claims, wealthy donors, politicians, political professionals, revenue-seeking drug companies, and medical service providers.
Transgender advocates claim that two million Americans say they are transgender to a greater or lesser extent. But very few people who describe themselves as transgender undergo cosmetic surgery of the genitals. Only about 4,118 Americans surgically altered their bodies in hospitals from 2000 to 2014 to appear like members of the opposite sex, according to a pro-transgender medical study. A Pentagon report commissioned by former Defense Secretary James Mattis said that “rates for genital surgery are exceedingly low- 2% of transgender men and 10% of transgender women.”
Yet the gender ideology is rapidly gaining power, aided by huge donations from wealthy individuals and medical companies. In Ohio, for example, in February, a judge forced parents of a teenage girl to give up custody so she can begin a lifetime of drug treatments and surgery that will allow her to appear as a male.
The progressive push to bend Americans’ attitudes and their male-and-female civic society around the idea of “gender identity” has already attacked and cracked many of the popular social rules that help Americans manage the cooperation and competition among and between complementary, different, and equal men and women.
These pro-gender claims have an impact on different-sex bathrooms, shelters for battered women, sports leagues for girls, hiking groups for boys, K-12 curricula, university speech codes, religious freedoms, free speech, the social status of women, parents’ rights in childrearing, children’s safety, practices to help teenagers, health outcomes, women’s ideals of beauty, culture and civil society, scientific research, prison safety, civic ceremonies, school rules, men’s sense of masculinity, law enforcement, military culture, and children’s sexual privacy.
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