Well, that’s embarrassing. A team compromised of former U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team stars was just beaten 12-0 by a mediocre men’s team. The women involved deserve credit for being good sports, but the outlier result nonetheless reminds us of several inconvenient realities that undermine progressive pieties.

Here’s the background.

Last weekend, a pseudo-professional soccer tournament was held in North Carolina. With a $1 million cash prize at stake, an interesting assortment of teams from around the world competed in a modified seven vs. seven soccer tournament with unconventional rules. In the match that garnered the most attention, the informal U.S. women’s team, primarily composed of former USWNT stars such as Heather O’Reilly, was demolished by a team with former and current Wrexham FC players.

Wrexham has risen to national fame in recent years after being purchased by celebrities Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. However, Wrexham is only a fifth-division British soccer team (which was just promoted to the fourth division for next season), meaning it’s a far cry from even a D League or Minor League equivalent team in American sports. Yet it nonetheless walloped the women’s team, which had top-level talents from the women’s game, in a match that wasn’t even remotely close.

It’s almost like men and women are fundamentally, biologically different.

One might understandably be hesitant to conclude anything too dramatic from a one-off outcome in an unconventional and not super-serious tournament (although there was significant prize money at stake). But it’s of a piece with other lopsided co-ed results in the soccer world. For example, the actual USWNT was beaten 5-2 by a men’s under-15 academy team in 2017.

When some of the best female players in the world nonetheless are easily swept aside by fifth-division pros and teenagers, there’s simply no denying the physical differences between male and female athletes that exist. Yet this reality has ramifications that undercut several progressive talking points.

For one, the deeply misleading , yearslong outrage over the USWNT not receiving “equal pay” to the men’s team was always based on a false premise. In reality, they were never competing at an “equal” level. Not even close.

Two, the undeniable sex differences in sports are what justify the right-of-center position that transgender women, who are born biologically male, ought not to compete in women’s sports. While some of the difference is removed through taking cross-sex hormones, not all of it is, and athletes who went through male puberty will have permanent advantages, from body density to wingspan, that don’t go away. So having sex-segregated sports isn’t, despite progressive name-calling, “bigoted” or hateful. It’s simply acknowledging and grappling with a reality that most progressives are instead choosing to ignore.

Hence, this is why legacy media outlets such as CBS News tried to spin the women’s 12-0 loss, a scoreline so lopsided it’s almost unheard of in soccer, as the women from the United States “bringing a fun and brave perspective” to the tournament.

They surely did do that. But they also reminded us, yet again, of the inconvenient reality of biological sex that progressives are desperate to deny.

Brad Polumbo ( @Brad_Polumbo ) is an independent journalist and the co-founder of BASEDPolitics .