The Washington Post recently flirted with suggesting that there’s room to argue that boys shouldn’t be competing against girls in sports.
The Post editorial board brought itself to utter heretical phrases such as “the realities of human biology raise legitimate questions about any notion that trans women should always and everywhere be treated exactly like cisgender women.”
“In athletic competition, male puberty confers significant advantages. While those biological differences vary by skill and sport, a 2023 paper by medical researchers in the United States and Italy noted that “it is well established that the best males always outperform the best females when the sport relies on muscle power, muscle endurance, or aerobic power.” The hormone therapy that many trans women take reduces some of those advantages over time, but research into how much those advantages can be mitigated, and over what time frame, is still ongoing. Other advantages, such as height, are fixed by the end of puberty. This poses obvious fairness and safety questions.”
“Notice that we say “questions.” The public needs more and better research to make those decisions. But unless the data show that transitioning can fully erase the effects of male puberty, the country will also need a frank and open debate about the trade-offs between inclusion on the one hand and safety and fairness on the other.”
“And yet too often, efforts have been made to avoid or prevent discussion of those trade-offs by labeling debate inherently transphobic. This is not how a healthy democracy makes decisions.”
That’s reasonable. But where was this sweet reason for the last ten years?
High school girls have been suspended and sanctioned for refusing to compete against men.
Did the Post editorial board just now discover basic human biology? Of course not. To see what’s really going on here, move on to the next paragraph.
“A 2023 Gallup poll showed that almost 70 percent of Americans think sports participation should follow birth sex, not gender identity. Pressuring Democratic politicians to side with the minority, without giving sufficient space to the other side’s argument, is a recipe for irresolution and resentment.”
Translation: Forcing Dems to advocate for something everyone hates is a losing strategy.
The Post is not proposing to uphold debate instead of cancel culture because it realizes that calling 70% of the country bigots was intellectually and ethically wrong.
It’s doing so because it decided that you can’t win elections by calling 70% of the country bigots.
And that’s the problem here. Like an alcoholic waking up in a back alley, parts of the party hit bottom and decided to get sober. They don’t regret anything they did. They’re not committing to never doing it again. For the moment they’re pondering the idea that drunken rampages are not conducive to winning elections.
This is not the Washington Post saying it was wrong. Tomorrow if it decides that the party can get away with sending the entire middle class to gulags, it may well do that.