A friend invites me out to coffee to ask about male athletes in women’s sports. As we sip our drinks, he leans across the table, listening. He wants to understand my advocacy for female athletes and my hard line: No males no matter how they identify, no matter what they want, no matter what they do to their bodies.
If trans were truly natural, wouldn’t men be donning burqas in Afghanistan?
After a while, the conversation drifts toward the broader trans phenomenon that now dominates lesbian culture so thoroughly that young women report feeling pressured to acquiesce to sex with male “lesbians.” Otherwise, they’re “discriminating based on genitals.”
It may sound crazy and is, but it’s a new twist on an old theme: Men pressuring women for sex. My friend shakes his head sympathetically.
Male demands to be accepted as lesbians are not as odd as they may seem, I explain. They’re consistent within the world of “men can be women if they say so.” If men can be women, then men can be lesbians.
And when “male lesbians” encounter female refusal, they resort to toxic male behavior — because they’re still male. If they were the other sort of males, the non-toxic kind, they would have respectfully refrained from entering all-female spaces in the first place.
Pride marches, I remind him, now welcome those male “lesbians” — yet ban actual lesbians who assert female rights to all-female sports and spaces. No one else is banned. Not even pedophiles.
My friend keeps listening. Lesbians are amputating healthy breasts in the name of “trans masculinity,” I remind him. Effeminate boys are adopting female personas in an attempt to not be gay. Trans is a social contagion, I explain – like anorexia and cutting.
If trans were truly innate, I ask, wouldn’t men in Afghanistan be donning burqas?
Yet my friend knows a three-year-old boy, he tells me, who is already showing signs that he’s trans. This feeling must be innate, my friend figures. The kid has not yet been exposed to the trans concept, yet he’s announcing, “I’m a girl.”
“But his parents have been exposed to the concept, right?” I respond. “They’re the ones interpreting his statement as, ‘We have a trans kid.’ The kid is only saying ‘I’m a girl’ because he’s figuring out how to classify the world. It’s normal child development. It’s an implicit question: Can I wear pigtails like my big sister? Or do only girls get to do that?”
This kid needs information, not affirmation that he’s “really a girl inside.” He needs to learn that there are two sexes, male and female, and he will always be male. That pigtails are not female, just human.
The conversation drifts to rapists announcing “I’m trans” to judges — who, in certain states, assign these violent criminals to women’s prisons. Assaults ensue. Of course.
I go on, perhaps a bit too long, but he stays with me. Vulnerable female patients must know whether caregivers are male or female. Because many women do not want men touching our bodies, for very good reasons. We have a right to say no.
That’s when my acquaintance says, “You’re not buying any of it, are you?”
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Extreme Overvalued Beliefs
In a brilliant Genspect lecture last fall, Mia Hughes diagnosed the trans phenomenon as an extreme, overvalued belief: an idea that catches on and results in collective cultural craziness. In the case of transgender ideology, the extreme, overvalued belief is that people can and should “transition” to the other sex.
As if one’s sex could be escaped. As if uncomfortable feelings constitute an emergency. As if removing healthy body parts and destroying fertility and sexuality were justifiable, rational sacrifices in pursuit of the greater good of trans.
Feeling uncomfortable is not even necessary anymore. The overvalued belief in all things trans has gotten so extreme that you can call yourself trans just to meet your “body modification goals” now, as gender surgeons describe it. No dysphoria required. Just a desire to start over with a new name, new wardrobe, new persona.
Entire state and national governments, universities, workplaces, medical systems, and media outlets have come to the weird conclusion that some boys are “really girls.” Or that we must pretend they are. That such boys (it’s almost always the boys who receive the attention) constitute a special, fragile, must-be-protected class. That to say aloud that certain males are male amounts to cruelty. That adolescent angst should be treated with cross-sex hormones and surgeries. And that males in this special, trans class of people should be allowed to steal prizes from female athletes. And waltz around women’s locker rooms naked.
Meanwhile, trans ideology holds that girls who feel upset about the twin facts of male predation and female vulnerability can solve this problem by removing their breasts.
No, my friend, I’m not buying any of this. I no longer define the problem in terms of trans-identified males playing sports in the female category, though I’m still working to prevent that. The underlying problem is the extreme, overvalued belief that people can and should “transition” to the other sex.
And, my friend, your phrasing — “not buying any of this” — tells me that you’re aware we’re all being gaslit, too.
What Is a Woman?
A recent poll by Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) “found that large majorities of likely 2026 voters know what a woman is.”
But wait: Why is anyone confused about that?
WoLF asked, What is the definition of a woman? (Yet nothing about men. Apparently we remember who men are.) The options and responses:
Biologically born female: 68.5%
Females + males who have undergone hormones/surgery: 14.1%
Anyone who feels or says they are a woman: 17.4%
Five minutes ago, we would have laughed at the cumbersome phrase, “biologically born female.” Five minutes ago, no one would have asserted that any men “are women.” Yet now, more than thirty percent of the respondents asserted that “women” includes certain men. How does that make sense? Does the category of children include immature adults? Does the category of French people include Americans who enjoy wine and scarves?
Perhaps I should add that I have no animosity for trans-identified people who respect women’s boundaries. I can even relate: Some women, including friends, seem to use the term “nonbinary” to express an androgynous personal style or a rejection of sexist social expectations. While the trans trend is having a devastating effect on women’s legal rights to privacy, safety, and fairness, I do respect individuals’ rights to their own self-expression and beliefs.
So I say all of this without personal rancor. Anger, yes, but not at individuals. I’m just offering a candid analysis of the social and political problem as I see it.
After our coffee date, my friend thanked me for the good conversation.
What do you think?
Are you buying any of it?
Mariah Burton Nelson is a former professional basketball player and author of seven nonfiction books, including The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football.
As always, I welcome your thoughts. You might also like:
It’s all bullshit. All of it.
Lovely! I like the statement that kids need information-not affirmation. As a school nurse, I have had a 5th grade gal tell me she was trans. Her parents have gone through a divorce and she feels abandoned, unloved, and hurt. She also has a co-morbid diagnosis. I affirmed the fact that she is a wonderful young lady, with lots of talents and potential. She will grow up to be a beautiful woman. She said, yes, and thank you. What if I had taken the affirmation- only approach to counsel this hurting pre-teen?