While the Village People, a disco group famously associated with gay culture, were performing with President Donald Trump over inauguration weekend, progressives were busy freaking out about his reign of terror against LGBT rights. On Day One, it began.
That is, if, by reign of terror, you mean recognition of basic biological reality. “There are only two genders: male and female,” Trump declared in his inauguration speech before signing an executive order later that day to affirm this simple idea. The order means no more “gender X” passports, no more official documents based on gender identity rather than biological sex, and no more trans-identifying men in women’s prisons.
And no one overreacted. Just kidding.
“Trump rolls back trans and gender-identity rights,” the Guardian declared.
Matt Bernstein, a gay social media personality with over 1 million followers, posted dramatically, “The sun does not care if you sign an executive order telling it to stop rising each morning. It just continues to rise.” Perhaps a poet laureate candidate for the next Democratic administration?
Bernstein also suggested the executive order was meant to distract from the cost of groceries and instead target “the nonbinary eighth grader who wants to play field hockey.”
Episcopal Bishop Mariann E. Budde, preaching to Trump and others at the Washington National Cathedral on Jan. 21, produced a plea for “gay, lesbian, transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
Bernstein’s and Budde’s arguments, pulling from the most sympathetic examples, real or imagined, represent what author and commentator Allie Beth Stuckey calls “toxic empathy.” Empathy can sometimes push us in the right direction, but it can’t be our basis for policy — perhaps most importantly because progressive empathy is highly selective.
Recognizing two biologically based genders will not harm a “nonbinary eighth grader,” and a confused middle schooler who doesn’t want to identify with either gender shouldn’t be driving policy, anyway. But it will protect girls and women in single-sex spaces: in sports, where they are being injured; in prisons, where they are being sexually abused; and in spas, restrooms, women’s shelters, and other areas in which women should feel safe around other women.
Yet in the name of gender ideology and imaginary “transgender children,” women are being silenced. At least the federal government is no longer complicit.
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This is a far cry from the recent Biden days, as the former president tried to enshrine the gender ideology-pushing Equal Rights Amendment on his way out the door. Before the 2020 election, when asked how many genders exist, Joe Biden inexplicably responded, “There are at least three.”
Now, it is federal policy that there are exactly two — no more, no less. And before more sympathy-driven citizens believe the frightening rhetoric surrounding transgender and nonbinary children, they should remember that, for once, women’s rights are really on the line.