The Patriot Post® · Boys Will Be Girls?

“Clearly that can’t be right. You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.” —a tweet by former women’s tennis star and current LGBT activist Martina Navratilova

On Feb. 7, “transgender” athletes finished first and second in the 55-meter dash at the state of Connecticut’s open indoor track championships. The winner was Terry Miller, a boy who set a girl’s state indoor record of 6.95 seconds. Second place finisher, Andraya Yearwood, is also a boy who completed the dash in 7.01 seconds. The third-place competitor, who is female, finished in 7.23 seconds. Miller and Yearwood also ran first and second in last year’s 100-meter state championship race, and Miller won the 300 meter this season as well.

According to Transathlete.com, a website that insists transgender athletes “should be allowed to use locker room and bathroom facilities without harassment and discrimination,” Connecticut is one of 17 states that allow transgender high-school athletes to compete without restrictions. In seven states, athletes are required to compete under the gender on their birth certificate, switching only after undergoing sex-reassignment procedures or receiving hormone therapy. The remaining 26 states have no policy, or handle the issue on a case-by-case basis.

The common denominator with regard to coverage of this story? Walking on eggshells, lest “progressive” sensibilities be offended. The Associated Press typifies that approach, stating, “Critics say their gender identity amounts to an unfair advantage, expressing a familiar argument in a complex debate for transgender athletes as they break barriers across sports around the world from high school to the pros.”

There is no “complex debate.” There is the simple biological and chromosomal reality that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, men are stronger and faster than women — and transgenderism is engendered by a psychological condition known as gender dysphoria. Yet as Dr. Paul McHugh, the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School, warns, challenging progressive dogma elicits hysterical blowback. “Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle,” he asserts.

Tragically, vested interests currently prevail. “We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing,” said female competitor Selina Soule. “I fully support and am happy for these athletes for being true to themselves. They should have the right to express themselves in school, but athletics have always had extra rules to keep the competition fair.”

Not anymore. Because Soule finished eighth in the 55 meter dash, she missed qualifying for the New England regionals by two spots. Thus if Miller and Yearwood had not run, she likely would have been on her way to a meet where her talents would have been seen by more college coaches — possibly eliciting scholarship offers.

Regardless, Glenn Lungarini, executive director of the Connecticut’s high-school-sports governing body, toes the politically correct line. “This is about someone’s right to compete,” he insists. “I don’t think this is that different from other classes of people, who, in the not too distant past, were not allowed to compete. I think it’s going to take education and understanding to get to that point on this issue.”

Really? Then why not openly allow boys to compete in the same races? If the sole determinant of one’s gender comes down to nothing more than the assertion of such, there is no substantial difference between the two positions, other than the aforementioned — and seemingly automatic — surrender to progressive dogma.

Joanna Harper, a medical physicist and “transgender” runner from Portland, Oregon, suggests that there should be a standard based on hormone levels. “The gender identity doesn’t matter; it’s the testosterone levels,” she asserts. “Trans girls should have the right to compete in sports. But cisgender girls should have the right to compete and succeed, too. How do you balance that? That’s the question.”

(“Cisgender” is the near-pejorative term “transgender” advocates assign to people who still “identify” with their birth sex.)

Navratilova answered the balance question in an op-ed published on Feb. 17 by the UK’s Sunday Times. After reiterating her position that allowing men to compete as women “simply if they change their name and take hormones is unfair — no matter how those athletes may throw their weight around,” she addressed such “solutions.”

“Simply reducing hormone levels — the prescription most sports have adopted — does not solve the problem,” she wrote. “A man builds up muscle and bone density, as well as a greater number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, from childhood. … Training increases the discrepancy. Indeed, if a male were to change gender in such a way as to eliminate any accumulated advantage he would have to begin hormone treatment before puberty. For me, that is unthinkable.”

For the dedicated dogmatists of progressivism, nothing is unthinkable. Despite extensive data collated by Dr. James Cantor revealing “60-90% of trans-kids turn out no longer to be trans by adulthood,” Boston Children’s Hospital endocrinologist Norman Spack revealed in 2013 that his idea of industry practice “is to prevent pubertal progression in the first place.” He advocated “biological clock-stopping drugs” for boys as young as 12 and girls as young as 10, lest the biological immutability of testicular development and breast development, respectively, make it harder to transition.

In short, members of an ostensibly “first do no harm” medical community are advocating for life-altering procedures that will ultimately be rejected by a minimum of six in 10 who received such procedures in the preadolescent stage of their lives.

That’s not medicine. It’s child abuse.

Regardless, Navratilova’s candidness has cost her. Homosexual advocacy group Athlete Ally has cut ties with the tennis champion because she perpetuated “dangerous myths” about “transgender” women. “As an organisation dedicated to addressing root causes of homophobia and transphobia in and through sport, we will only affiliate with those committed to the same goal, and not those who further misinformation or discrimination in any way,” the group stated.

Where are the so-called feminists? Likely calculating the political costs of championing the genuine victimhood of real women forced to compete against biological males over that of yet another “protected class” whose arrogance is exceeded only by their militancy. The parents of short-shrifted biological females? Also walking on eggshells due to that same militancy.

The female athletes themselves? Force-fed a transgender agenda as early as kindergarten, all the attendant propaganda included.

Why do Americans tolerate this government-sanctioned, tyranny-of-the-minority insanity? Insanity epitomized by the reality of a dominant, record-setting NCAA track star competing as a woman — one year after competing as a man at the same level? Moreover, why shouldn’t a majority of parents, as opposed to ideologically driven school officials, have the ultimate say with regard to dissemination of transparently political agendas in classrooms?

Americans need to understand that if biological and chromosomal reality is “negotiable,” every aspect of reality is equally negotiable.

Is the nation ready for “two plus two equals five” — and other equally totalitarian permutations?