March 12, 2023

“A pox on both their houses,” we may say, when wishing both sides in a contest could lose. I surely feel this way, too, with the “transgender” vs. feminist debate over men masquerading as females entering women’s sports and private spaces.

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609268089992-0’); }); }

Oh, I don’t fence-sit. Not only have I likely written more pieces on preposterous “transgenderism” than most any other commentator, but I even reject the term and coined a more accurate characterization of the phenomenon — the MUSS (Made-up Sexual Status) agenda. Yet I also know this:

While leftists may call that agenda a men’s-rights-movement monster, the foundation for it absolutely was laid by feminists.

You won’t hear this much in a land so “patriarchal” that a common refrain is “My wife is always right.” Of course, the poor saps thus confessing don’t really mean their wives are infallible and are actually always right; they mean the missus will never, ever admit being wrong.

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609270365559-0’); }); }

The sexes have different characteristic weaknesses, with lust being one of men’s. One of women’s involves greater difficulty admitting error. Also said is that it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, and, boy, have feminists ever done a 180 on sex differences.

That is, MUSS activists have been accused, understandably, of trying to “erase women.” Yet conveniently forgotten is that theirs wasn’t the first movement to attempt such.

Feminism was.

Up until about last Thursday (speaking metaphorically), and far from today’s dominant “gender identity” theory, feminists upheld and socially enforced an outgrowth of “gender neutrality” theory: that the sexes are the same except for the superficial physical differences and, therefore, raising them identically ensures they’ll end up identical in inclination and, even, the devout believers insisted, in abilities.

This sameness-of-the-sexes dogma (SSD) was the wokeness of its day, enforced with a pink fist inside an iron glove. An example: Self-professed feminist academic and lesbian Camille Paglia once mentioned that fellow feminists would corner her on college campuses in the ’70s and, glaring, insist that hormones didn’t exist and that, even if they did, they couldn’t possibly influence behavior.

SSD was applied to sports, too. A 2008 article titled “Women and men in sports: Separate is not equal,” whose feminist authors ask “Why is gender segregation in sports normal?” is representative. Yet certain feminists (some of whom were male, mind you) were even more radical. Two exercise physiologists predicted decades ago, after analyzing the sexes’ world records’ progression, that women would overtake men in track and field by the late ’90s. (In reality, the intersex performance gap actually widened again that decade owing to better performance-enhancing-drug testing.)