The single most remarkable thing about Sonia O’Sullivan’s article in the Irish Times yesterday, in which she argued that biological men should not be able to participate in women’s sports, was how much praise it received. Here are some examples:
Agree or disagree all you want, but fair play to @soniaagrith for expressing a view that she surely knows will attract some abuse https://t.co/xGcaJz3vsR
— Kieran Cuddihy (@kierancuddihy) March 24, 2022
Credit to Sonia O'Sullivan for writing this piece. https://t.co/dVIw1QQGlJ
— Paul Griffin (@PGriffinFC) March 24, 2022
Great to see Irish athlete Sonia O'Sullivan @soniaagrith
speak up here. Sensible approach from her. https://t.co/FEksBB96pL— Leonard Taylor (@leonsaviour) March 24, 2022
All of the praise is certainly worthy and warranted, but why is it necessary? After all, O’Sullivan is not saying anything that the vast majority of people do not agree with: Women’s sports are for women, not for men. “Trans participation” is in fact code for allowing people who were born as men – and remain biologically male, since that cannot be changed – to participate in female sports. Which turns female sports into a joke.
And not just a figurative joke – a literal joke. As in, people are laughing at it. The sight of somebody who is clearly biologically make standing on the top step of a podium, towering over physically more slight women, arms aloft in a gesture of victory, instinctively makes people laugh. That’s as bad for trans people as it is for women’s sports.
What’s more, opinion on this is not really divided, as we’ll find out if any Irish pollster is ever brave enough to actually ask people. An American pollster was, just this week, and the results were not close:
Amongst those willing to air an opinion, it’s more than two to one against allowing trans athletes participate in female sports. The only group with whom this is a popular idea in the United States are supporters of Joe Biden’s Democratic Party – and even then, it’s the barest of majorities. This is a view held, in general, by the progressive left, and almost nobody else.
But the problem of course is that the progressive left is massively over-represented in the bodies that decide what is, and is not, controversial: Media newsrooms, social media companies, state funded NGOs, and so on. They might be a minority, but they’re a very loud, and well-funded minority, and they have the power to punish those who publicly dissent, as people from JK Rowling to Maya Forstater have discovered.
The dynamic here has vastly more than a touch of the Orwellian about it: The public is being set a test by trans activists. You will look at somebody who is clearly male standing on a podium as a woman’s champion, and the test is that you must publicly avow that you are looking at a woman. If you are silly or “bigoted” enough to say “that is a man”, then you will have committed the modern equivalent of thought crime, and be punished for it.
What these activists seek is not your agreement, but your submission. After all, their eyes work just as well as yours do: They know, just as you do, that they are looking at a man. The point of all of this is not that anybody actually believes in their heart or soul that a man can become a woman, but that they can use the force of cultural power to get people to deny what is in front of their own eyes. After all, if you can do that, then you can repeat the trick on almost any subject.
There is also great irony in a media and progressive political class which constantly lectures us about fake news, and yet insists that we must define people who are clearly and obviously not female as “women” and ignore biological sex altogether.
Politeness, of course, cows us most of the time: No decent person is going to walk up to a male person who has chosen to live as a female person and say “you are a man”. That would be needlessly cruel to somebody who is, likely, struggling with their identity. Most people are instinctively tolerant and decent and would shy away from that kind of thing.
But this instinct is also the one which trans activists are taking advantage of: Your own decency is being weaponised against you to try to force you to believe things which are not true. This combination of very loud trans activists and most people’s desire not to cause offence has led to a situation where we are now expected to proclaim that a man is the American National Woman’s Swimming champion.
It’s all nonsense. And the only way for it to be stopped is for people who recognise that it is nonsense – which is almost all of us – to loudly and repeatedly say that it is nonsense, and refuse to recognise it.