It’s a curious thing that the Trump Administration wrested concessions on transgender athletes from the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), rather than the governing bodies that oversee collegiate sports where trans women have competed against, and outperformed, biological women.

Under pressure from Trump’s Department of Education, UPenn agreed to revoke the swimming records of Lia Thomas, assign those awards to biological women swimmers, and to issue letters of apology to all the female swimmers who were competitively disadvantaged or subjected to anxiety by Thomas’s participation.

Thomas became a cause célèbre for trans rights in 2022, winning a national championship that year in the women’s 500-yard freestyle event, thereby becoming the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title. The controversial swimmer, who was born male and swam on the UPenn men’s team before coming out as trans, attained three individual records at the university as a trans woman and swam with two relay teams that held programme records.

That most news outlets are still referring to Thomas as “she” underscores the fragility of the Trump Administration’s supposed triumph over trans activist overreach. After all, Thomas competed under National Collegiate Athletic Association rules that explicitly allow biological males who identify as women to participate in women’s sports. The NCAA has since revised those trans-affirming rules, in February banning an individual “assigned male at birth” from competing against women, but the locution “assigned sex at birth” strongly suggests that the institution using the activist language of queer theory does not believe there are only two sexes, or that human sexes are immutable, or that trans rights are up for debate.

From the perspective of trans activists and allies, UPenn’s capitulation is a moral reversion to the Dark Ages. Civil rights are the oxygen that sustains modern global progressive movements, and once elevated to that hallowed status, a political cause can’t be quietly abandoned. Democrats have consistently hailed trans rights as the civil rights issue of our time, with President Biden declaring on Transgender Day of Visibility two years ago that “Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul”.

The movement’s goals were never in doubt: trans women in women’s sports, trans folx in the military, “gender-affirming care” for minors, the right of schools to conceal student transitions from parents, queer-themed books and lessons in K-12 schools, and prohibitions against misgendering.

Most Americans agree to basic antidiscrimination protections for transgender people in housing and employment, but they balk at the maximalist demands of the progressive elites, such as trans women in women’s locker rooms and prisons, and Pride celebrations that are treated like national holidays.

Despite the Trump Administration’s dramatic show of force against UPenn, it’s important not to lose perspective. Only five years have passed since the Supreme Court guaranteed basic protections to trans people in the Bostock decision of 2020. That timeline suggests trans activism is still in its infancy. It may take generations for society to fully grapple with the moral and legal implications of rejecting biological determinism in matters of sex and identity.

The legal foundation may be settled, but the cultural consensus is still a long way off. The real contest is only just beginning.