How The Transgender Agenda Derailed The Left’s Support For Women

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Recently we have had two contrasting phenomena.

One is that President Donald Trump had issued an executive order suggesting or maybe threatening K-12 sports programs—and indeed, college and higher education as well—that if they allowed biological men to compete in women’s sports, then he was going to consider cutting off federal funds for that.

But at the same time he did it, the number of transgendered women—that is biological men who have transitioned to supposedly women—has increased and soared in women’s sports.

So, here on the West Coast, a trans athlete dominated the state high school track and field competitions, winning three or four main events. The same thing happened in Oregon. The same thing had happened in Washington. The same thing is happening in Minneapolis with girls baseball in the finals.

The point is it’s usually a phenomenon in blue states and in particular, blue cities. And Donald Trump’s executive orders are going the way of sanctuary cities. People are just ignoring them because they feel that he wouldn’t dare cut off federal funds because it would shut down the whole school.

But let’s get some background on this whole transgendered sports phenomenon. And maybe there’s five or six things we should keep in mind.

No. 1: We know a lot about gender dysphoria. There’s a long history of sex research about people whose psychological or hormonal makeup does not match their physical characteristics. But here’s the key: They’re very rare.

Until the transgendered—I don’t know what we would call it—phenomenon in the last 10 years, we accepted classical epidemiological studies that showed there were about five people who suffered from genuine transgendered phenomenon per 100,000 people: 0.005%. If you do the math, in a country of about 340 million people, we’re talking maybe 20,000, maybe 0.005%, or five per 100,000, maybe 10.