As I write this, I have absolutely no idea what the election outcome is, but I know for certain that at least it’s over (assuming there are no legitimate reasons for lawsuits; not getting the result you wanted isn’t one). I don’t think I could have taken another minute of that lunacy (now watch lunatics get mad at being lumped in with politics, not that I’d blame them).
I have hopes for the future of our country, and have to believe that other voters are more interested in building us back up than in razing the whole thing (just because you don’t like other voices having a say doesn’t mean you get to take the ball and go home, especially if the ball belongs to everyone).
I’m looking forward to a cessation of some culture-war scare tactics now that the election’s over and there’s really no reason to continue them. And I really have to hope that the thin skin of certain males toughens up a bit because as I’ve often noted, I’m too clumsy to be trusted around fragile masculinity. Then again, some just can’t seem to help themselves in calling women who speak out feminazis (I’m fairly sure that would fall under Godwin’s Law, created to encourage people to eschew lazy rhetoric like calling opponents Nazis when they aren’t … but you do you, Mozarky).
So many of the culture-war arguments have me and others (like Megan Rapinoe; more on that later) remembering that 2014 Esurance ad with the exasperated woman telling her friend, “That’s not how it works! That’s not how any of this works!”
The arguments assume that the listener will just accept whatever is said without question. Schools are performing gender-reassignment surgeries without parents’ permission? Sure, public schools that can’t afford to provide teachers with basic supplies like crayons and where nurses have to keep track of every bandage and packet of acetaminophen are performing or sending kids to hospitals for surgery that costs $100,000-plus. (And seriously, the president said the kid comes back a different gender four or five days later? Really? Tell me you don’t have actual experience raising children without telling me, because all the parents I know would be on the phone to police the first day their kid didn’t come home.) Maybe in private schools that’s a possibility (sarcasm, people, because it’s just not happening), but definitely not in public schools, which have to be accountable to the public since they are supported with public tax dollars (ahem, and private schools receiving public funds should also have accountability to the public, but that’s another matter).
And while we’re at it, there is rarely gender surgery done on minors except for that permitted by the parents, usually soon after birth because of ambiguous genitalia; medical guidelines generally put gender-affirming surgery off-limits till the age of 18, leaving therapy and hormones as the standard for trans minors. The lead author of a 2019 study on the subject, Dannie Dai, said, “Our findings suggest that legislation blocking gender-affirming care among TGD youth is not about protecting children, but is rooted in bias and stigma against TGD identities and seeks to address a perceived problem that does not actually exist.”
I’m shocked. See how shocked I am.
As for hospitals performing reversal surgeries at the president’s command … well, if you believe that, I hope you have someone in your life who’ll check in on you to make sure you are fed and watered and will save you from yourself. I’m gonna also hope you have someone to hold your hand as I tell you this: That ain’t happenin’ either.
Soccer legend Rapinoe, in an interview on the “Who’s With Me?” podcast, took on another of those culture-war talking points, the idea that male athletes can simply declare themselves women to compete against weaker athletes. (Enjoy this video of men trying to outrun female track athletes. Just ‘cuz. 😏) “There’s a lot that trans people have to go through if you’re a trans person in sports to even play. It’s like you couldn’t just say one day, ‘I’m a woman,’ and go play. That’s not how it works.”
On Royce White and Kanter Freedom, two former NBA players who said they planned to register for the WNBA draft by identifying as women, Rapinoe noted, “Sad. I’m like, ‘Y’all have nothing better to do?’ What? Like, wow. Just grifting. It’s kind of … it’s embarrassing.”
Why would she say that? Because she knows, as do so many of us who have friends and family who have transitioned, that it’s not a simple process that takes literally years. You can’t just put on a dress and say you’re a woman. There are years of therapy, then social transition and hormones before you get to the point of gender-affirming surgery. Hormones alone play a big part in the transition, and, in the case of trans women, remove much of the physical advantages of the male gender.
No matter how many Riley Gaineses (and she tied for fifth with trans woman swimmer Lia Thomas, so she didn’t get beaten by her) out there say otherwise, it’s not something someone would do just to get an advantage in athletics. As Rapinoe said, “God forbid a trans person play sports and they’re halfway decent at it.” Not that that will stop culture-war gnats from claiming that an army of boys with bad intentions are trying to game the system. Have they seen how little respect women’s athletics (or heck, women in general) get?
The mind wobbles at the eye-rollingness of it all. Per NCAA President Charlie Baker, in 2024 Senate testimony before the 2025 ban of trans women athletes, there were fewer than 10 participating trans athletes out of more than 510,000 NCAA athletes nationwide. (Yes, there are female-to-male athletes, some of whom have won titles.)
That’s no tsunami of trans scariness. The firehose of the same few examples in high school and college sports being blasted ad nauseam is not evidence of anything but the power of fear and ignorance of biology. Those include, for example, trans girl Logan Mihailoff in Camas, Wash., who started the track season on the boys’ team before switching to the girls’ team; allegations about her conduct were found to be groundless, but as Cyd Zeigler notes, the rules, not the athletes, deserve more blame and need clarity.
And I’m really worried about the biology being taught, considering I know of at least one high school biology teacher, who I went to college with, who is posting anti-vax propaganda on social media. I haven’t dived into her views on gender, but I can make some assumptions that make me fear for the kids at that school.
As I’ve said before, gender is not binary. Dr. Helen Webberley of Gender GP notes, “While XX and XY are common chromosome patterns, they are not the only ones. There are many natural variations—such as XXY, XYY, XO, XXX, and XXYY—that show that sex is not simply binary. These differences, known as sex chromosome variations or differences in sex development (DSDs), can affect a person’s development in many ways, including how their body grows, how they experience puberty, and how they understand their own gender.”
Add to that intersex people like Jackie Green, who has complete androgen insensitivity syndrome so developed as female despite her XY chromosomes, and others who just don’t neatly fit in the strict male-female binary idea (some of whom were born with ambigious genitalia, so their parents decided what gender they’d raise their child as and had surgery performed on them without the child’s consent or full knowledge of what was happening and why), and you’ll see the issue is not black and white.
There will always be reports of men dressing as women to rape women in restrooms, but in most cases, those aren’t trans women, who simply want to pee in peace like the rest of us do (women’s and all-gender restrooms have locking stalls and are generally not as nasty as men’s rooms, so can you blame them?). It’s not hard to get into a restroom or dressing room, so unless we want to station guards outside them, things will happen because some men just want to hurt women. If the issue is truly about safety, we have to accurately diagnose the problem.
We can keep banging the culture-war drum or we can start looking where the real problems lie. Trans women on the whole (there will be exceptions, but they aren’t the rule) are not the ones perpetrating sexual and other violence against women; cishet men are. The problem does not lie with a tiny minority of trans people who just want to live their lives.
Seriously, that’s not how any of this works.
