I have written several articles on postings related to Reform in America. A list of links have been provided at bottom of this article for your convenience. This article will, however address additional areas rife for reform.

Equal rights for men and women has been an issue for decades. And in many places it is appropriate. However, in one area men and women are not equal and that is the area of sports. It has nothing to do with skill and dedication, it has to do with genetics. Men are built differently than women, thank God. So instead of fighting the differences we should embrace the differences. Women can compete on an equal basis in woman’s sports. They are celebrated in these sports for their outstanding skill and accomplishments. As they should be. While they haven’t quite achieved equity in some the sports in regards to salaries, that mainly has to do with economics. Many woman team sports have not achieved the popularity of their male counterparts yet, so their is not as much money available for larger salaries and paydays. But their day will come. Women sports are newer and are still going through some growing pains. Now having said all this, woman’s sports are being attacked by a new and disturbing trend. Transgender equality and rights. I have discussed gender types in a recent article entitled “The Skinny on Gender in America”. There are many types of gender now, and frankly the choices are very confusing.

I frankly believe if you have woman’s reproductive organs you are a woman, and should be treated like a woman. The same goes for men. If you have been surgically altered, you still have either two X chromosomes or and X and Y chromosome, there is no changing that. So you will always have certain advantages depending on your birth sex. So to truly be fair, you would need a third category for sports. However, we are not there yet. So lets discuss this subject more. Because like it or not it is a subject that is receiving a lot of attention and is affecting a lot of lives.

Thanks to Biden, transgender has become an issue in our country. I frankly believe the whole issue is a ploy to distract our country from more important issues like maintaining the sanctity of our constitution and the protection of our borders.

In his inaugural address, Joe Biden stressed he wants to be the president of all Americans—left and right—and bring healing and unity to the nation. Actions speak louder than words. And on his very first day in office, Biden signed a radically divisive executive order mandating the transgender agenda.

Here’s what it says:

“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.”

“People should be able to access health care and secure a roof over their heads without being subjected to sex discrimination.”

And here’s what it means:

Boys who identify as girls must be allowed to compete in the girls’ athletic competitions, men who identify as women must be allowed in women-only spaces, healthcare plans must pay for gender-transition procedures, and doctors and hospitals must perform them.

Sounds unifying, right?

In reality, it spells the end of girls’ and women’s sports as we know them. And, of course, no child should be told the lie that they’re “trapped in the wrong body,” and adults should not pump them full of puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones.

With this executive order, the so-called “transgender moment” has arrived at the White House. If you want to prepare yourself to effectively respond, you’ll want to read my book, “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.”

The Biden executive order cites Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County as justification for this radically divisive transgender policy. But although the simplistic logic of the Gorsuch opinion in Bostock suggests some pretty bad outcomes, we can—and should—resist Gorsuch’s simplistic logic.

Here’s how Gorsuch summarizes his own test:

“If the employer intentionally relies in part on an individual employee’s sex when deciding to discharge the employee—put differently, if changing the employee’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the employer—a statutory violation has occurred.”

Now change the word “employer” to teacher, principal, coach, doctor, health care plan, or homeless shelter, and change the word “employee” to student, athlete, patient, or housing guest.

“If the coach relies on the athlete’s sex—if changing the athlete’s sex would yield a different choice…” “If the homeless shelter relies on the guest’s sex—if changing the guest’s sex would yield a different choice…”

The outcomes don’t look very good. Privacy and safety at a shelter, equality on an athletic field, and good medicine are at stake for everyone.

We can—and should—defend commonsense policies that take seriously the bodily differences that provide valid bases in some areas of life (locker and shower rooms, athletics, women’s shelters, health care) for treating males and females differently (yet still equally).

An unstated, frequently unexplored aspect of any “discrimination” claim is that two instances be “comparable,” that the two employees, or athletes, or patients, or shelter guests be “similarly situated.” Perhaps in the employment context Gorsuch couldn’t see this, but health, education, and housing provide starker instances.

Start with health. Consider a case where a patient accuses a doctor or hospital or health care plan of “discrimination” because they won’t perform or offer or pay for breast removal as part of a “gender transition” procedure.

The first thing to note is that Gorsuch’s test—“if changing the patient’s sex would have yielded a different choice by the doctor”—doesn’t apply. Change the patient’s sex and there are no breasts to remove.

Indeed, as I point out in “When Harry Became Sally,” recognizing differences between the sexes is increasingly regarded as vitally important for good medical practice, because scientists have found that male and female bodies tend to be susceptible to certain diseases in different ways, to differing degrees, and that they respond to treatments differently.

These differences do not have to do with how people choose to “identify.” They have to do with what men and women are: males or females of the human species.

The Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences published a report in 2001 titled “Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?” The executive summary answered the question in the affirmative, saying that the explosive growth of biological information “has made it increasingly apparent that many normal physiological functions—and, in many cases, pathological functions—are influenced either directly or indirectly by sex-based differences in biology.”

Because genetics and physiology are among the influences on an individual’s health, the “incidence and severity of diseases vary between the sexes.”

Far from its being discrimination to “rely on a patient’s sex,” it is a requirement of good medicine, which is sex-specific to the male or female body of the patient.

But that’s not all. Suppose the argument is that the doctor/hospital/insurer covers double mastectomies in the case of cancer, but not in the case of gender dysphoria. For a discrimination claim to be successful, you’d have to argue that a patient with cancerous breast tissue is comparable, similarly situated to a patient with healthy breast tissue.

Perhaps some physicians will argue that the non-cancerous breasts are in fact unhealthy because they are the cause of the gender dysphoria. That will only further highlight that what we really have here is a disagreement about the diagnosis and treatment of gender dysphoria. And policies—like the Trump administration’s regulation on Section 1557 of the ACA—are entirely defensible for refusing to treat a disagreement on medical care as if it were discrimination based on identity.

Something similar is true for the Trump policies on Title IX and school sports. For an argument about discrimination to succeed, you’d have to say that an athlete with male muscle mass, bone structure, and lung capacity (to take just a few specifics) is comparable, similarly situated to an athlete with female muscle mass, bone structure, and lung capacity.

If you can recognize that these are not in fact comparable, similarly situated individuals, then it’s hard to make a claim that “discrimination” in the pejorative sense has occurred.

Yes, we’ve treated males and females differently—we have an NBA and a WNBA—but that is precisely in order to treat them equally. Equality—fairness—in athletic competition frequently requires taking the bodily differences between males and females seriously.

By comparison, it never requires taking skin color into account. Thankfully, the days of racially segregated sports are over. Our skin color makes no difference to what we do on the athletic field. Nor does it make a difference in the bathroom, locker room, or shelter. That’s why bans on racial discrimination did away with separate facilities for black and white.

But bans on sex discrimination did not do away with separate facilities for male and female—a reality that Gorsuch’s simplistic test for discrimination fails to account for. The reason? A person with male genitalia is not comparable, not similarly situated to a person with female genitalia when it comes to an emergency shelter or locker room. As a result, this aspect of the Trump administration’s Housing and Urban Development rule on sex-based housing is eminently defensible.

Biden is now in the process of undoing these Trump-era administrative actions. Thus, we’ll need litigation and legislation not solely on religious liberty, but on the substantive issues at stake: privacy and safety in single-sex facilities, equality and fairness in single-sex sports, and good medicine based on the realities of our biological make up as male or female human beings.

Through litigation and legislation, we need to make it clear that it’s lawful to act on the convictions that we are created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other, that no institution has to let males compete against females in sports, that no institution has to allow males into women-only locker-rooms and shelters, that no physician has to engage in so-called “gender-affirming” care.

In Tuberville’s four decades of coaching young athletes, there has been no greater equalizer for women’s and girls’ sports than Title IX. Unfortunately, President Biden’s recent executive order will set back women’s sports by half a century. He started his coaching career at Hermitage High School in southern Arkansas, where he coached the boys’ football team and the girls’ basketball team. The work was tough but extremely rewarding. He wanted to make sure the young athletes he coached learned the same lessons that he had learned as a high school athlete: for example, the value of discipline and hard work, how to deal with success and failure, how to motivate and be a leader, and the importance of putting the interests of the team ahead of the individual.

He’s had a front-row seat to how beneficial Title IX has been for women’s sports. Its enactment a few years before he entered coaching ensured that young female athletes had the same access to funding, facilities, and athletic scholarships as young men received. It is the absolute best thing to happen to women’s athletics.

The opportunities secured by Title IX ensured that young girls growing up had the benefits of team sports at their fingertips, and because of this law, we have seen women’s sports soar in popularity over the last 50 years. Today, America’s female athletes are routinely the best-performing on the world stage, both in team and individual competitions.Recommended For YouFree speech is a cultural, not political phenomenon Any deal with Iran that excludes Congress is doomed to fail ‘Unity’ never looked so divisive

Biden’s order puts this hard-won progress at serious risk.

He’s coached and officiated young athletes from all over the country and with every kind of background, and He’s witnessed the positive outlet and escape that sports provide. The locker rooms were often spaces of safety and security. But now, he, along with so many parents, educators, and athletes, fear Biden’s order and the policies that it allows will only add uncertainty and confusion in a pivotal time for grade school athletes.

With this order, big government is forcing our schools to make difficult choices: Either let biological males compete in women’s events or potentially face repercussions from the U.S. Department of Education. The order affects nearly every public elementary, middle, and high school in the country. The threat of pulling all federal funds will disgracefully compel districts to submit to the Biden administration’s liberal agenda.

This order is wrong for so many reasons but especially because it rejects the obvious: There are inherent biological differences between men and women. It’s a scientific fact that biological males, on aggregate, are stronger, can run faster, and can jump higher than their female counterparts. To allow biological males to compete against female athletes will sideline many girls and discourage many more from participating in the first place.

We’ve already seen this take place. Transgender athletes in Connecticut have dominated girls’ high school track events at the state level, denying biological girls a fair shot at competition. The affected athletes and parents are outraged — and rightfully so. Wasn’t a fair shot for girls what Title IX was all about?

The Trump administration’s Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education was correct when it ruled that Connecticut’s policies violated the rights of girls in the state guaranteed under Title IX. He has serious concerns that the Biden administration will wrongfully undo this order.

Biden is basing his directive on the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which extended Title VII employment protections to sexual orientation and gender identity. While he has separate disagreements with that decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch explicitly wrote that the ruling does not “address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.” Further, the court expressly declined to extend its holding to other federal laws, such as Title IX, which prohibit sex discrimination. For Biden to move forward would not only ignore the will of the court, but scientific fact as well.

Title IX gave women and girls the long-denied platform that had always been afforded to men and boys. Biden’s executive order will start to erode that platform.

Sports teach our youth so many valuable life lessons. Let’s not sacrifice the opportunity for our children to learn those lessons on the false altar of political correctness.

As I stated earlier women should not have to compete against men in order to play sports. Yet that’s exactly what is happening increasingly across the country and around the world, as a growing number of male athletes who self-identify as women are being allowed to enter women’s competitions.

The so-called Equality Act would only worsen this trend. This piece of federal legislation, being pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., would create a civil right for male athletes to self-identify as females at any time, without any evidence of physical changes to their bodies.

It would spell “the end of women’s sports,” in the words of Duke University Law School professor Doriane Lambelet Coleman, who testified against the bill at a recent House Judiciary Committee hearing.

But at that hearing, Sunu Chandy of the National Women’s Law Center trivialized these concerns. She stated, “We do not create policy about myths and stereotypes … There’s no research to support the claim that allowing trans athletes to play on teams that fit their gender identity will create a competitive imbalance.”

Yet such evidence does exist. There is plenty of empirical evidence showing that replacing “sex” with “gender identity” as a criterion for entry into athletic competition would eliminate opportunities for the athletic abilities of large numbers of women to be properly recognized.

In the case of Mack Beggs, a female wrestler who identifies as male, she was allowed to take testosterone. That led three of her female competitors to forfeit the competition out of fear of being injured.

As Coleman testified in the hearing, “So overwhelming is the advantage of testosterone that thousands of men and boys could defeat the female Olympic gold medalists in the 400 meters.”

She also wrote in The New York Times, “It doesn’t matter that there are 100 females and three males in a girls’ race if the three males win spots in the final or on the podium because they are males.”

Everyone has the right to compete in sports, but creating a right to compete on the basis of gender identity won’t simply add a right. It will eliminate the right of women and girls to compete against members of their own sex.

In 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the 1972 Educational Amendments to the Civil Rights Act, which ordered schools to create separate athletic teams for women. Congress didn’t simply tell schools to let women compete for spots on men’s teams. That would have been self-defeating, as only a few exceptional female athletes would win spots due to men’s greater physical power, strength, and speed.

Yet despite ample scientific evidence of males’ physical advantages over females, supporters of the Equality Act like Yale University School of Law professor Kenji Yoshino insist that “trans women have not broadly displaced or disadvantaged non-trans women or girls when allowed to compete in accordance with their gender.”

But even without the Equality Act, women and girls are losing titles, medals, and scholarship opportunities in states where gender identity has already replaced sex. H.R. 5 would dramatically accelerate and expand these adverse impacts on females by requiring athletic programs to recognize gender identity as a protected class in order to receive federal funding.

Here are 10 examples of male athletes identifying as women in female sports. Under the Equality Act, we could only expect more of this.

In track, male runner Nattaphon Wanyat edged out high school female athletes at the Alaska state track championships.
In softball, male player Pat (Patrick) Cordova-Goff took one of 15 spots on his California high school women’s varsity softball team.
In basketball, a 50-year-old, 6-foot-8-inch, 230-pound man, Robert (Gabrielle) Ludwig, led the Mission College women’s basketball team to a national championship with the most rebounds.
In track and field, male high school runner CeCe Telfer won three titles in the Northeast-10 Championships for women’s track, and received the Most Outstanding Track Athlete award.
In mixed martial arts, male fighter Fallon Fox shattered female fighter Tamikka Brents’ eye socket and gave her a concussion. Brents said she “never felt so overpowered in her life.”
In football, male player Christina Ginther sued the Minnesota Independent Women’s Football League when they determined it was unsafe to let him play women. The league had changed its eligibility policy in 2012, requiring players to certify that they are and always have been female—but a jury awarded Ginther $20,000 for being “discriminated” against under state law, and he was placed on multiple women’s teams.
In marathon running, male runner Aron Taylor won first place in his very first attempt in the Jacksonville Women’s Marathon.
In cycling, male cyclist Jillian (Jonathan) Bearden took first place in the women’s division of the U.S. Peleton at El Tour de Tucson in 2016. Bearden plans to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Olympic cycling team for 2020.
In roller derby, a 6-foot-7-inch, 270-pound man, June Gloom, was featured on The Rollergirl Project—a blog showing different body types of roller derby skaters.
In Connecticut’s state track and field championships, two male high school runners, Andraya Yearwood and Terry Miller, took first and second place in multiple events, beating out top high school girls from across the state. Connecticut subsequently named Yearwood Athlete of the Year.

In the last example, 16-year-old Selina Soule described the race as “demoralizing” because, when male athletes enter women and girls races, everyone knows who will win before the race begins. Even worse, her chances of being seen by college scouts disappeared when Yearwood and Miller took top spots at the state championships.

Soule said she chose to speak out so that no other girl athlete would face the same disappointment. Hopefully, Congress will listen to voices like hers before it’s too late.

However, as Congress becomes distracted by impeachment and other issues the headlines of transgender athletes keeps on piling up. Story after story, we read about how transgender male to female athletes are dominating a particular female sport, whether it be wrestling, running, or even weightlifting. While there are many mixed emotions and opinions surrounding this volatile issue, we must ask ourselves a variety of questions;

Are women’s achievements in sports being devalued by former male athletes who have chosen to become a legal female via surgery and hormones?
Should political correctness surrounding transgenderism be a sufficient reason to dilute the achievements of natural-born women who have trained and sacrificed to reach a certain level of competition?
And, should the technicalities of sports regulations be amended to correct this perceived injustice?

Why does it matter?

The consensus within the international sports community is that a need to perform routine testing to verify an individual’s sex is a practice that is not technically required. This is because for generations males competed against males and females against females, to say it bluntly. The age of the androgyny in fringe culture and sexual preference giving way to surgical alterations that legally allow for gender reassignment are fairly new to the society.

Transgender competition in sporting events against the opposite sex of which an athlete is born into is an even newer and more delicate occurrence to navigate. While this gaping space between reasoning and fact remains unaddressed, we are forced to re-examine our definition and understanding of what it means to be a female. The dueling schools of thought on this topic are best illustrated by an excerpt from The British Journal of Sports Medicine:

“Consider, for example, the following scenario: a transgender male dominates a volleyball match to such an extent that other competitors believe it to be unfair that she has been permitted to compete. The athlete subsequently produces the appropriate documents indicating that she is indeed, legally, a female (and not simply a cross dresser or transvestite). The question therefore arises, is it advisable or fair to permit transsexual athletes to compete in sport? Furthermore, should a sports governing body, in the name of fair play, restrict the right of transsexual athletes to participate in the gender category by which society and the law accepts them as human beings?”

This is a debate being faced by all parties involved. Fairness is at the epicenter of the debate for everyone involved. Fairness to the biological female athletes and fairness to the new legally transitioned athlete. However, logic, in this scenario, should be the prevailing force. A natural-born male is born of a body that is physiologically superior to that of a natural-born female’s body in certain aspects, in most cases. Notwithstanding the admitted political incorrectness of that statement, science supports this assertion. A male body growing through puberty with a steady secretion of testosterone is vastly different from a female body, in most cases. Plainly put, this is fact — so much so that the two genders are segregated when taking part in competitive sports across the globe to compete against their own biological gender. We also witness the vast physical differences between the sexes in the workplace. Certain industrial jobs are dominated by men due to weight lifting requirements. Although there are certainly exceptions to the rule, common logic tells us that it would be unfair to make a female compete against a physiologically built and conditioned male, notwithstanding genitalia, in events like weight lifting or wrestling, for the most part.

A transgender, whether be newly male or female, should not be allowed to compete against the sex opposite of the one they were naturally assigned at birth, as it provides an unfair physical advantage or disadvantage to the newly gendered athlete in comparison to the athletes of a naturally born gender and vicaversa. Doing so, using the male to female transgender as an example, creates an unfair competitive environment and advantage over naturally born female competitors which challenges everything that feminism was originally founded upon.

It is no secret that this matter has become a political one. Advocating of transgender inclusion in competitive sporting events against a gender opposite their own naturally born one has been adopted nearly entirely by the political left. However, the left also adopts bold narratives that are antithetical to this cause, which include personal female empowerment, collective feminism and fighting against toxic masculinity. These agendas are so prevalent and ingrained in far-left politics and the Democratic party at large that higher education institutions have even begun offering credited courses on these subjects — such is the case with Brown University’s course titled, ‘Unlearning Toxic Masculinity’.

However, advocating of this kind of Transgender Toxic Masculinity strikes a blow against the very ideologies the left campaign against. Advocating transexual participation in competitive sports against the opposite sex that one is naturally born into tells women everywhere that they are not entitled to their own class. It tells us that female empowerment and personal achievement in sports must be achieved under the disadvantage of competing against a male’s athletically built body, so long as that male is legally considered a female on paper or via surgery.

When a natural-born man uses his body’s athletic ability against a female’s for the sake of competition, merit, and accolades, it tells us that toxic masculinity is acceptable so long as it is called by a different, more politically correct name — transgenderism — or, so long as it is being committed by a socially protected group, transgenders.

This is the textbook definition of what has become known as ‘Toxic Masculinity’. When a natural man is granted preferential treatment over natural a woman, this is a direct form of toxic masculinity regardless of the newly appointed gender via a medical procedure, hormone injections or social acceptance.

In the current politically correct environment, speaking out against or sharing conflicting opinions that differ from those held by the umbrella of socially protected classes, like those found in the LGBTQ community, is an offense deemed so egregious by the far-left, that those who speak against it are branded terms like “bigot”, “Nazi”, “Transphobic”, “Homophobic”, “Racist” etc. In certain scenarios, even violence is permitted against a person who has been adjudicated one of these titles by these social justice extremists, as we have seen countless times on college campus rallies across the US.

Notwithstanding the odious titles and acts of violence committed towards those who speak out against these narratives, the mainstream media, and liberally owned corporations have long been engaged in a form of collusion by practicing McCarthyism against Conservative ideologies in the sense that one may even become fired from their job for speaking out against it, as was the case with a Virginia high school teacher who was fired for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronoun.

Any public outcry against this sort of toxic masculinity coming from the transgender community in woman’s sports is all-to-often titled ‘hate speech’, which comes with a battery of consequences for those who are accused of it, no matter what the content or potential validity of their assertions are. Those who dare to challenge this mainstream status quo all-to-often become censored, fired, banned on social media, lose sponsors, etc. We’ve seen countless widespread occurrences of conservative social media influencers being banned from sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the arbitrary and subjective offense of spreading what admins deem ‘hate speech’.

Until we have powerful leaders and individuals who will speak out against and expose this kind of injustice, the status quo will never change and the conversation will never evolve past the one-sided narrative being pushed by those in control.

Without voicing opinions that strike against these agendas, women will forever be subjected to this kind of unfair treatment and social justice warriors will perpetually use virtue signaling tactics like those previously mentioned to dominate this and other controversial conversations.

Conclusion

So as long as we resort to violence and intolerance to dissuade freedom of speech, we will not be able to solve our gender issues. In the title I posed the question are we intentionally trying to destroy woman’s sports. I was unable to find any sources to show that we are doing so. It just seems to be that woman’s sports are simply collateral damage in the war being fought for transgender rights. As of 2016 it is estimated that 1.6 million individuals are identifying themselves as transgender. This number translates to less than 1/2 of one percent of the population. So why are we allowing such a small percentage of the population to hijack our country and destroy the lives of countless female athletes? I frankly don’t know the answer to this. But if I had to make a guess I would say it is a case of the elite trying to overwhelm the system with the constant assault of attacks by fringe groups. We are spending more time trying to put out little brush fires while our cities are burning to the ground. Our country is being destroyed from within by illegal aliens and is being destroyed by the Chinese Communist Party from the outside. All this is happening while the left does its best to add fuel to the fire.

Resources

heritage.org, ” How Pelosi’s ‘Equality Act’ Would Ruin Women’s Sports,” By Emilie Kao; heritage.org, ” After Inaugural Rhetoric on Unity, Biden Signs Divisive Transgender Executive order,” By Ryan T. Anderson, PhD; heritage.org, ” Think Twice Before Changing the Military’s Transgender Policy, ” By Thomas Spochr; washingtonexaminer.com, “Biden executive order will ruin women’s sports and erode Title IX, By Sen. Tommy Tuberville; medium.com, “Transgenderism Is Destroying Women’s Sports. The New Toxic Masculinity,” By Ricky Diaz; pinknews.co.uk, “What percentage of the US population is transgender?” By Tijen Butler; dailywire.com, “WATCH: Here’s What It Looked Like When U Penn Trans Swimmer Destroyed Female Competition.” By Hank Berrien;

Addendum

In the title of this article I stated that I would be discussing woman’s sports and gender issues, however, I also feel that this article is a good place to discuss the issue of transgender in the military as well. So as not to over burden the reader solely interested in the sports issue I will discuss it in the addendum section.

Many predict that shortly after assuming office, former Vice President Joe Biden will move to rescind the Trump administration’s 2019 policy on military service by transgender individuals.

That would be within his authority. Unless Congress intervenes, presidents set and revise entrance criteria for military service. Before he takes such action, however, he should consider the impact on military readiness. Unfortunately, there has been a near-complete lack of discussion and candor on that aspect.

Indeed, a recent report, led by three former military surgeons general, suggested the current transgender policy hurt military readiness by shrinking the pool of available recruits. What the report and surgeons general did not mention was the risk involved by allowing individuals suffering from a bonafide medical condition from entering military service.

The current policy prohibits transgender individuals who are suffering from gender dysphoria from entering service. In that respect, it is similar to many other medical conditions that prevent a volunteer from serving in the armed forces.

Gender dysphoria is a recognized medical condition characterized by a marked incongruence between one’s self-identified gender and one’s biological sex. For a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, that incongruence must be so great that it causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, and other important areas of functioning.

Medical criteria for military service exists for a purpose: to ensure volunteers are free of conditions that would require lost time from duty or hospitalization, and to ensure individuals are capable of performing duties without aggravating existing conditions. These criteria protect both the volunteer from unnecessary harm and protect the military from accepting an individual who may not be able to complete military service.

There are hundreds of medical conditions that disqualify applicants from service, including asthma, plantar warts, or a history of anxiety disorders. Gender dysphoria, under current policy, is also a disqualifying disorder.

Why? It is not—as some have suggested—due to a bias on the part of the military, any more than the armed forces are biased against those who suffering from asthma. Instead, it is because both military and civilian medical data unequivocally reflects that transgender individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria experience “high rates of mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression and substance abuse disorders.”

For example, individuals with gender dysphoria attempt suicide at about nine times the rate of the general population. Service members diagnosed with gender dysphoria are also nine times more likely to have mental health encounters with a professional.

There is more stress involved in military service than in most other professions. Deployments take service members far from home in austere conditions away from support networks. Suicide rates among the military have climbed lately, to the point where they exceed the rate of the general population. To allow an individual with gender dysphoria, already medically pre-disposed to anxiety, to enter a stressful profession such as the military, would frankly be immoral.

This does not even get into the discussions of the additional costs and time lost by service members needing treatment for gender dysphoria. Those costs are real and the time spent away from military units are significant.

Why then do critics of the current policy seek to define this discussion as mere societal bias against transgender individuals? Because, seemingly, they can. The media has categorically ignored the reams of medical data on the effects of gender dysphoria in favor of the more socially agreeable arguments that ascribe the current military policy to discrimination and prejudice.

It is an emerging pattern where a teacher can be fired for using the wrong pronoun, or a school can hide information from parents on their child’s gender identity.

America’s armed forces exist to defend the country and its national interests. Actions that reduce the readiness of these forces, such as modifying military entrance criteria to admit individuals with pre-existing medical conditions, create layers of risks that are born by our great service members, not those comfortably ensconced in Washington, D.C.

Congress and the president should carefully consider the merits before changing the current policy on transgender service in the military.

What percentage of the US population is transgender?

There have been various studies and surveys throughout the years regarding transgender statistics in the United States. However, we are yet to get an accurate reading of the transgender population.

Many LGBT+ activists believe that surveys are unreliable and there actually many more trans people than recorded due to the fear of discrimination and transphobia.

But studies and surveys serve a purpose as we can cross-examine them and get a rough idea of the number of trans people in the US.

Transgender population in the United States

According to the Williams Institute, in 2016, approximately 0.6 percent of adults in the United States identified as transgender. This translates to just over 1.3 million adults.

This number shows a huge increase from the institute’s study five years before. In fact, the percentage had doubled.

Researchers had a theory on why this may be. They said the “increase in visibility and social acceptance of transgender people may increase the number of individuals willing to identify as transgender on a government-administered survey.”

Meanwhile, in 2017, LGBT statistics by GLAAD reported that an estimated 3 percent of the US population identified as transgender across various age groups.

Transgender statistics according to states

The university study also broke down its stats per state.

States with the highest transgender population:

California: 0.76 percent
Massachusetts: 0.57 percent
New York: 0.51 percent
New Jersey: 0.44 percent
Pennsylvania: 0.44 percent

States with the lowest transgender population:

Nebraska: 0.39 percent
Montana: 0.34 percent
South Dakota: 0.34 percent
Iowa: 0.31 percent
North Dakota: 0.30 percent

Overall, it was found that more young people are transgender. This is likely due to LGBT+ education becoming more available and known, thus giving youth a chance to understand themselves better and to come out as trans.

Indeed, these statistics are just estimates and do not reflect the true percentage of those who are transgender. While stigma remains, it may be a while before a census shows us reliable data about the trans community.

WATCH: Here’s What It Looked Like When U Penn Trans Swimmer Destroyed Female Competition

(Update 12/15/2021)

In early December, Lia Thomas, the biological man swimming on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team, utterly crushed the women competing with Thomas at the University of Akron’s Zippy Invitational, winning the 1650 free by a gargantuan 38 seconds ahead of the young woman finishing second, winning the 500 free by a whopping twelve seconds ahead of the woman finishing second, and winning the 200 free by a still-huge seven seconds, setting new Penn records along with meet and pool records.

Now video has surfaced of Thomas winning the 1650 free, showing how lopsided the race was with Thomas, who swam competitively for the men’s team for three years before switching to the women’s team, leaving female swimmers looking as if they were not even in the same race.

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Thomas admitted in an interview with Swim Swam that before the process started of “transitioning” Thomas “had a lot of uncertainty about my future in swimming and whether or not I’d be able to keep swimming at all.” Asked about the feeling after breaking the Penn women’s swimming records, Thomas did not mention the women who wound up lagging far behind, only saying, “I’m very proud of my times and my ability to keep swimming and continue competing and they’re suited-up times and I’m happy with them and my coaches are happy with them. That’s what matters to me.”

“In terms of goals, it sort of just —pre-coming out and pre-transition I had a lot of uncertainty about my future in swimming and whether or not I’d be able to keep swimming at all,” Thomas asserted. “And so I’m just thrilled to be able to continue to swim; I love to compete and I just love to see how fast I can go.”

A member of the University of Pennsylvania’s swim team told Outkick that Thomas bragged after winning the 200 freestyle at the University of Akron Zippy Invitational, “That was so easy, I was cruising,” and after winning the 500 freestyle but disappointed with the time, boasted, “At least I’m still No. 1 in the country” in front of teammates.

“Well, obviously she’s No. 1 in the country because she’s at a clear physical advantage after having gone through male puberty and getting to train with testosterone for years. Of course you’re No. 1 in the country when you’re beating a bunch of females. That’s not something to brag about,” the teammate commented.

The teammate said her fellow women teammates were crying on the Akron pool deck because they knew they had no chance of winning with Thomas competing. She said, “They feel so discouraged because no matter how much work they put in it, they’re going to lose. Usually, they can get behind the blocks and know they out-trained all their competitors and they’re going to win and give it all they’ve got. Now they’re having to go behind the blocks knowing no matter what, they do not have the chance to win. I think that it’s really getting to everyone.

The teammate noted that after Thomas won, “Usually everyone claps, everyone is yelling and cheering when someone wins a race. Lia touched the wall and it was just silent in there. … When [Penn swimmer] Anna [Kalandadze] finished second, the crowd erupted in applause.”

“This is such a cloud over everything. A cloud in the locker room, especially the last few days because we all know of how things have changed in the last week,” she said.

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Why does it matter?

Transgender population in the United States

Transgender statistics according to states

WATCH: Here’s What It Looked Like When U Penn Trans Swimmer Destroyed Female Competition

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