February 7, 2025 - 10:20am
What do you do when you’re the perfect progressive — pro-kindness, pro-inclusion, pro-everything pure — and you realise an argument you should have been making has fallen into the wrong hands? Do you seek to reclaim it, or do you dig in?
The thought arises when looking at new images of Donald Trump signing an Executive Order excluding male people from female sports. Surrounded by young girls, Mr Grab ’Em By The Pussy chose National Girls and Women in Sports Day to play the feminist. It’s opportunistic, yes. It doesn’t make this — the most popular thing he has done since becoming President, gaining the approval of 67% of Democrat voters — a bad decision.
Despite the misleading headlines, suggesting that some marginalised sub-group of women, or “trans people” in general have been banned from all sporting activities, this EO should not be considered controversial. Nor should it, after decades of lip service being paid to women and girls’ right to equal participation in sport at all levels, have been remotely necessary.
Not so long ago, it seemed that the case for female people having their own competitions, changing rooms and prizes would never have to be made again. Then came “the transgender tipping point” and the progressive rush to swear allegiance to the dictum “trans women are women”. A sudden refusal to allow for any distinction between sex and gender identity threw women’s rights into disarray. It should never have been left to Trump to clear up the mess.
With sports, the problems were obvious from the start. One didn’t need to see photographs of trans swimmer Lia Thomas, weightlifter Laurel Hubbard or cyclist Veronica Ivy to know the situation was unfair. Female sports are for female, not feminine, people, and female people are not smaller, weaker, slower men.
Because this went against the TWAW declaration, it was decided by the righteous and good that this was a “complicated” and “nuanced” debate. Direct opposition to male people in female sports was coded as Right-wing and bigoted, a refusal to accept people for who they are.
Sporting organisations, eager to showcase their inclusive credentials, refused to commit wholeheartedly to safeguarding rights and opportunities female athletes had already fought hard to obtain. In its 2021 “Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations”, the International Olympic Committee insisted that “even the most rigorous scientific research may not be able to generate clear-cut, indisputable and universal conclusions regarding performance advantage and eligibility criteria for sex-segregated competition.” It also maintained that “no athlete should be made to compete in a category that does not align with their gender identity.”
In recent years, thanks in no small part to feminist-led campaigns, there has been some progress in the reclaiming of a female sports category. Yet even when organisations such as World Rugby and World Athletics have chosen to exclude males, it has been with the assurance that our knowledge of “the science” is currently too patchy, not that we already know what women are. As World Athletics president Seb Coe put it in 2023: “we’re not saying no forever.”
Why wouldn’t Trump take advantage of such a mess? The EO’s passing and the largely positive public response serve as an illustration of just how far a minority of self-identified progressives strayed from most people’s understanding of what is fair.
One can expect a ripple effect, due not just to the global nature of sporting events, but also to the feeling that if people on both sides of the political spectrum can support the policy there, why not elsewhere? We have always known why women’s sports exist. We don’t need more “science”.
It will be hard for those who betrayed women and girls so badly to admit they were wrong. How can you face the fact that on this one issue, Trump proved to be a more reliable feminist than you? Far easier to claim his wrongness on other issues makes you right on this one. Only you’re not.
Look again at that picture of the signing. Perhaps it shouldn’t be Trump surrounded by those girls. It had to be someone, though.
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SubscribeTrump does the right thing but Trump is not a feminist. Cue confusion outrage and hairpulling from Unherd’s feminist writers.
And cognitive dissonance. On occasion, Richard, you do hit the nail on the head.
“Trans activists only have themselves to blame for Trump’s success”Is a really stupid headline even for Unherd.
I’ll agree with you on one thing. Unherd headlines are awful, truly awful – with only occasional exceptions.
Look at that. I get all the downticks. You agree with me and get all the upticks!
I think Lost Boy has multiple accounts.
And I get reported!
He only agreed with you on one point the rest of didn’t agree with your comment in it’s entirety
It rings true to me…
Thanks AA. Yes I think Lost Boy is an Unherd mole.
Good, hopefully many organisations (Olympic Committee – looking at you!) will follow soon.
The poster boy for this madness is probably L Thomas, closely followed by that boxer and the sprinter. There was a recent picture of a runner with tight briefs and a visible p***s competing against girls.
“Perhaps it shouldn’t be Trump surrounded by those girls. It had to be someone, though.”
Be happy it’s Trump and not Biden surrounded by those girls. Who knows what Biden would have done if he had dozens of little girls around him, unhinge his jaw and try to swallow their heads or ask them to change his diaper…
Why do you describe Trump’s actions as ‘opportunistic’. I’m sure he’s just as disgusted by this perverse attack on women’s rights as every other sane person. Anyone who is outraged by his ‘p***y’ remark is either a complete phoney or someone who has never been on a construction site – where Trump spent his formative years. The guy likes women. Get over it.
But I thought the reason for keeping men out of the ladies was that they might grab a woman by the p***y while they were in there.
Yeah, that’s pretty appalling thing to say. Those are 10 and 11 year old girls waiting to enter sport, not established athletes like Riley Gaines.
In another discussion of this topic in the Free Press, a smart woman said to a man like you:
.
You should hear how women talk in the locker room, too. Grow up
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Let me repeat it to you: Grow up, buddy
Trump acts to support women. He doesn’t make a political slogan of it. He doesn’t consider himself to be a Feminist at all.
How is a Feminist writer going to deal with all this? Here you have the answer. It’s impossible. Cue more nonsense.
I personally find them pointless. If I was a woman I would be angry about all the nonsense they write here.
My sympathies are for the trans men athletes; even if they manage to get within spitting distance of qualifying for the men’s category of any international sporting competition in any sport, surely their testosterone supplements will rule them out. So sad.
That’s why Quinn still plays for the Canadian women’s football team.
Quinn is non-binary, you demented transphobe! 😀
Not being men might have something to do with it. Perhaps they could try qualifying among the other women, though you are probably right that their supplementation would be an issue.
Yep that’ll be the reason. Important to pi££ off the right people!
You are the reason why childless cat women should be denied the right to vote.
In the Olympic Women’s Boxing last year (recall how there were so many ‘fact checks’ pointing out that Imam Khelif was not transgender, but never a one addressing the issue of whether she was biologically female) there was one boxer who styled herself as a man, but took no hormonal treatment to validate that. She competed in the tournament without debate. She was female, at the end of the day. https://www.unilad.com/news/sport/olympic-games-trans-athlete-loses-boxing-333296-20240802
I am not sure understand the downvotes.
It would be interesting to investigate, do trans men (aka women) athlete actually exist? By this I mean women athletes who go through “gender affirming “care” ” (double quotes needed). One other commenter pointed out that boxer who said was a (trans) man, but took no action, so participated with the woman with no fanfare; she wouldn’t count in this statistic.
One other aspect is that the life span of an athlete, especially an elite one, is relatively short, so why not defer any “gender affirming care” till when you retire? Wouldn’t that be easier and, likely, healthier?
What’s sad about it? Anyone using anabolic steroids, male or female, that enhances performance should be disqualified. Testosterone is an anabolic steroid.
There’s your problem – nobody is made to compete. Indeed, no-one even has an entitlement to compete at the Olympic level.
Lots of people are excluded from competing for any number of reasons. Being excluded from the competition class of your choice (rather than the competition class offered to you) does not deprive you of practicing your sport.
Sport is, after all, not about winning, but about the joy of friendly competition.
Thirty three percent of democrats are not in favour of the decision. That’s still tens of millions of voters wedded to the utterly irrational.
We must give thanks they are outnumbered by all those terribly thick ‘rubes.’
That’s possible and very disturbing, however I wouldn’t be surprised if a good number of that 30% are simply more anti-Trump than they are pro-trans.
But the Democrat Party has an approval rating of only 31% as of yesterday. Maybe they can get it even lower by sticking to their guns.
That poor young female athlete being punched to the ground in under a minute in the Olympic boxing last year was the tipping point for most people. It was outrageous male on female violence and brought the Olympic committee into sordid disrepute. The price of being woke is gross unfairness and dangerous for real women.
Yes, the progressive left are completely horrified about violence against women unless of course the man in question is wearing a dress.
At last! … a western politician who is a real leader, who stands for common sense and common decency … and has the courage to tackle the utter madness that has been foisted on tyrannised electorates for decades. What has been stealthily constructed and inflicted on us over the past four decades will hopefully be demolished, permanently, and replaced by sanity over the next four years.
“female people”; “male people”? In English we have words for these: ‘women’ and ‘men’. There is no need for contorted Wokist expressions, which should be expurgated like the athletes who try to claim they belong in the wrong category.
More bullshit from VS and UnHerd. Stupid feminist’s brought this on themselves and yet they persist in calling women “female people” to appease the woke deviants and perverts.
Bring on Caliphate educate them.
If it weren’t for perverted selfish men intruding on women’s sports and spaces this wouldn’t be a problem at all. Yeah some liberal feminists have welcomed these fetishistic losers into our spaces but the fact of the matter is, men are the ones intruding. If these men were less entitled and narcissistic and sex addled, we wouldn’t be facing this problem.
Ya. I thought the language was weird and awkward too. Very noticeable.
Tens of millions of women voted for Trump. Hundreds of millions more outside the U.S. support him. They back him and his movement for a reason.
So, as conservatives, non-woke, let’s celebrate the magnificent work of conservative women – the real feminists.
Far-left feminism, like all leftist ideology, is a toxic purity spiral. I can’t see any scenario where it would ever stand up for women’s and girl’s rights on this issue.
Scientism has gotten such a hold on people that many doubt they know anything that hasn’t been “proved by science,” regardless of how simple and obvious. It’s as though they needed a physiologist to tell them which hand is right and which is left.
It is also thanks to feminist campaigners that we got into this mess in the first instance
Future civilizations will ask the question:
Why was it okay for the powerful on the Left to assert by force that biological women were not women (but were, rather, ‘people with uteruses’), while the one percent of biological men who called themselves women must be called women and have all of the rights of women, to the unfair societal damnation of biological women?
The generations living today will never have a rational answer to address this question. I myself am confused by such totalitarian overreach.
Perhaps ‘too clever by half’ academic navel-gazing is the best explanation.
Get off your high horse maybe.
Did we really need another piece in which the author is simply trying to resolve her cognitive dissonance. Welcome to the dark side.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be Trump surrounded by those girls. — But no one else was willing to do it. Even a mild case of TDS is TDS. The man told a truth out loud and the vapors among some are laughable.
Not a single Dem would have the guts to do something like this, not even the self-proclaimed femenists. It is beyond perplexing when women actively or passively participate in their own erasure.
Women wear burka by their own choice.
That is patently untrue. Women wear Burka with NO choice except if they want to become the instigator of a rebellion and all that may entail in the society they exist in.
Second Robert Conquest’s Law
That Trump campaign ad used the ridiculous and ridiculously imposing they/them pronoun trend to reopen the memory of trans among the American public. Then all the thoughts of college swimmers and children being fed pills and plastic surgery came flooding back to the culture. From there, it was confirmed for so many that liberalism had embraced the dark side.
Trump should not have had to do it but then again the number of EOs he has signed since resuming office (excluding the one on ICC sanctions) testifies to the number of things that he is trying to rectify.