A few summers ago, I took my oldest two children to a water park. One of the sections was labeled “ages seven and up.” My boys were then five and seven. I knew that the one who was five looked at least seven; he stood eye to eye with his big brother, and they weighed the same. He talked and carried himself like the average nine-year-old, and he was beginning his first season as a competitive swimmer.
So, I quietly disregarded the “seven and up” sign. The boys had a pleasant and uneventful afternoon in the water. If people suspected that my five-year-old was not yet seven, they kept it to themselves; there was no reason to do otherwise.
Until quite recently, this is pretty much how things worked in women’s bathrooms and locker rooms for people who identify as transgender women.
As Abigail Shrier pointed out in her best-selling argument against the contagion of adolescent girls suddenly adopting nonbinary or transgender identities, very small numbers of people born male but identifying as (and, in many cases, medically transitioning to an approximation of) female have existed throughout history. Many of these people live uneventfully as apparent women for decades, using women’s locker rooms and bathrooms without issue or comment.
Who disrupted this status quo? Most obviously, the revolutionary wingnuts of the far left. But more damagingly, the cowards of the mainstream left, who failed to clearly and consistently stigmatize those wingnuts despite knowing better.
How did they do this? First, by declaring the scientific reality of biological sex a myth and further politicizing the country’s educational system under the banner of that lie.
Second, they did it by insisting on the broad acceptance of a loud and proud “trans community” that promotes the interests of so-called “educators” intent on making us all list pronouns but none too concerned about whether our increasingly illiterate children even know what pronouns are.
Third, they did this by parroting “trans women are women” up to the point of allowing males into female sports — and fully intact males into female bathrooms and locker rooms. Even worse, they justified and made excuses for the physical and psychological butchery of American children in deference to an ideologically motivated encouragement of 90-plus “gender identities” (many of which smack more than a little of homophobia).
Fourth, and finally, they did it by calling anyone who references these uncomfortable and unconscionable realities a bigot.
Imagine if I told everyone at the water park that my five-year-old was in fact born five years ago, could not swim and often behaved in preschool-appropriate ways — but because he identifies as seven, he is seven, so, he is going into the seven-plus area! And if you try to stop him, you’re the problem.
Imagine if, when the water park staff objected, I called them small-minded and backward. Imagine that I could convince most of the mainstream media to take my side. Imagine if professors, thought leaders and politicians insisted Americans accept that lots of five-year-olds have always wanted to be seven, but that our oppressive insistence on the reality that they are five has kept them down. Imagine if, suddenly, polite society decided that we should constantly ask kids how old they are, celebrate “age-fluidity” and treat kids as though they are the age they profess, regardless of when they were born.
Within months, there would be all kinds of rules, laws and resolutions doubling down on the reality that seven means seven, and that those who disregard that will face consequences.
Folk ways (i.e., you’re effectively seven at the water park if your parent says you’re seven and you don’t bother anyone by acting like you’re five) would therein be broadly replaced by state ways (wherein we require proof of birth date to enter water parks).
That would be a real shame, and it would also be entirely the fault of those who tried to make “age-fluid” happen — not the fault of those who painted with a regrettably broad brush to reassert common sense.
I find it sad and, frankly, enraging that we now live in an America where someone born male who has been uneventfully living as a woman for 25 years is forbidden by federal resolution to quietly and comfortably use a bathroom. Having to legislate common sense that was once common and custom that was once customary makes us both less free and less compassionate.
Sure, we can be annoyed with the far left and its inane, fact-free worldview. But such nuts and their drivel have always existed and will always exist. The real culprit here is the gutless mainstream left, which, despite knowing better, paid obeisance to these overeducated, sophomoric activists in defiance of reality.
The adult, truth-telling center-left must now expel from respectability in public discourse what has become the infantile, cowardly, sycophantic mainstream left. And we must do so with the same breadth and depth with which the right is now expelling trans women from women’s bathrooms and locker rooms. Seth Moulton (D) and Bill Maher are in; AOC (D) and John Oliver are out.
Seem harsh? Maybe so. But let’s remember who started this nonsense. And let’s once and for all acknowledge that pseudo-empathy that defies truth is not just fundamentally false, but also ultimately fruitless even on its own terms.
Elizabeth Grace Matthew writes about books, education, and culture, including on Substack.
