I’m a little late to the June 30th Supreme Court party. I was face-down in the ocean all weekend. Exhilarating. Dolphins joined our human pods sometimes, and the sea was blessedly jellyfish-free.
Meanwhile, I came up with three predictions, two charts, and one original answer to the faux-pressing question of our time: What is a woman?
Hi Friends, and welcome new subscribers!
One lovely thing about getting older is that you live through whole decades of social change and notice patterns over time. One pattern I’m noticing is a parallel between the marriage equality movement and our current campaign for women’s sports rights.
First: The Supreme Court decision “reinforces what female athletes have argued all along: women and girls deserve equal opportunities, fair competition, and sex-based protections under the law,” according to the Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS).
The victory is partial. States are now allowed to limit female teams to females, but don’t have to. Twenty-three states, including California, Colorado, Massachusetts, and New York, currently allow any boy with long hair and gender beliefs to spike volleyballs at female opponents — over nets designed for the average female stature — to his heart’s content. These states do not seem inclined to change their laws unless forced to, despite countless protests by female athletes and their parents, and despite public opinion being squarely on the side of the girls.
I never thought I’d agree with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas about anything (right, Lisa Simeone?!?) but look at how reasonable he sounds in his concurring opinion:
“Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe that they are.”
Correct. Thoughts and beliefs cannot transform boys into girls. Nor can medicine or surgery. NCAA women’s swimming champion Lia Thomas recently gave a speech in which he claimed to have gone through female puberty. No, I promise you, he did not. He did not menstruate — the hallmark of female puberty — and he will never endure menstrual cramps, worry about getting pregnant, get pregnant, suffer miscarriages, give birth, nurse, go through menopause, get ovarian or uterine cancer, develop fibroids or endometriosis, etcetera. Thomas might have convinced himself he’s now a woman, or a type of woman, but that would not make it true. He’s a type of man.
A Lie to the Public
Justice Thomas and the five other conservative Justices can see the boys-can-be-girls ruse for what it is: "indifference regarding the truth" and a “lie to the public.”
There’s poetic justice to the ruling. If the thing that persuades these Justices to finally support women on this one measure is the absurd injustice of men being granted access to female sports and locker rooms, I’m all for it.
But — here’s the pattern — such patchwork rulings do not last. Discrimination against female athletes in favor of boys is unsustainable. Fortunately, like the gay rights movement before it, the movement for women’s sports rights is incrementally but inexorably progressing toward an overall law or landmark ruling in our favor.
Here’s one indication that we will eventually win a nationwide victory: Title IX lawsuits underway against the NCAA and other institutions were considerably strengthened now that all nine Justices agreed that Title IX allows federally funded schools and states to separate athletic teams based on biological sex, Attorney Bill Bock has said.
Here’s another: Attorney Nancy Hogshead, JD, Oly notes: “Sport cannot have a state-by-state web of laws. Even age group and Little League athletes travel across state lines. Further, how will sport governing bodies award national competitions to states like California, which do not protect females?”
“His Husband” and “Her Wife”
The little green and red runners in the first chart below illustrate turning points in the American march toward marriage equality: forward strides and setbacks at the state, Congressional, and judicial levels, all leading to a 2015 Supreme Court ruling topped by a 2022 federal law. Cultural change has accompanied (sometimes leading, sometimes following) these legal changes. Now everyone has become accustomed to the once-unthinkable phrases “his husband” and “her wife.”
Incremental Progress Toward Full Women’s Sports Rights
The second chart shows a similar progression. Our little runners are sprinting forward toward restoring female-only rights for female athletes nationwide. They get knocked down. They get back up. They have not yet achieved the goal. That’s why patience and persistence matter. This is the nature of progress: state experimentation, conflicting court decisions, state ballot initiatives, Congressional legislation, multiple reversals, and Supreme Court decisions.
The runners are not yet standing atop this chart because last week’s Supreme Court decision did not mandate female-only sports. But as with marriage equality, we will achieve our goal.
Prediction #1: Within the next few years, we will see sweeping, nationwide victories in favor of women’s sports rights. Momentum, public opinion, and the obvious differences between women and men are on our side.
Prediction #2: Sports victories will lead to other female-only victories (locker rooms, restrooms, prisons, rape-crisis shelters) because women have rights based on immutable male-female differences including strength differences, aggression differences, and inherent female vulnerability to male aggression.
Prediction #3: Sports victories will inspire the outlawing of mastectomies, puberty-blockers, and cross-sex hormones for children and teens since such procedures destroy body parts, fertility, and sexual function. Instead, kids will be encouraged to “be their authentic selves” by ignoring sex stereotypes altogether, an unfinished feminist goal.
As trans activist Julia Serano explained,
Characterizing trans girls as boys in a sports context would lead one to characterize them as such in other contexts, too… After all, if trans girls are really boys when they’re playing sports, then they would also be considered boys in the bathroom, boys in medical offices...
Exactly. Sports shine a bright light on the boy-ness of boys. It’s hard to unsee that.
Bonus: Now, we finally all know – as we have always known – what a woman is.
One New Answer to “What Is a Woman?”
“What is a woman?” is used to play “gotcha” with Democratic leaders and trans activists who spout nonsense. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson famously dodged, claiming she’s “not a biologist” during her confirmation hearing, as if mystified by a question any kid can answer: adult human female.
The Court’s decision left no doubt about what a woman is. In his majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a former girls’ coach, even refused to play the “trans girls” word game, instead repeatedly referring to the boys in question as biological boys. In other words, boys.
Here, finally, is the most obvious and glorious answer to “What is a woman?”
She’s an athlete.
Thoughts? I’m always curious. With love and courage, Mariah
These might also interest you:
A lifelong athlete and feminist, Mariah Burton Nelson is the author of hundreds of articles and seven nonfiction books, including The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football.
Prediction #4:
A significant rise in stochastic terror committed by “Allies” as they lose every legal means to effect their agenda.
Sadly, the hardcore will not go gently into the night.
But that activity, unsuppressed by MSM 🤞, ought to put the nail in the coffin for the vast majority of people.
Let the lawsuits begin!