Trump scores feminist victory with trans sports Executive Order

File this under sentences that shouldn’t have to be written, but President Donald Trump just signed an executive order barring biological males from participating in women’s sports.

The Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports order, reports ESPN, “gives federal agencies, including the Justice and Education departments, wide latitude to ensure entities that receive federal funding abide by Title IX in alignment with the Trump administration’s view, which interprets ‘sex’ as the gender someone was assigned at birth.”

The move seems like a no-brainer, and most Americans will likely roll their eyes, turn on the Super Bowl this weekend to watch the most testosteroned of muscley, macho men bash each other to the ground and not give the chromosomes a second thought.

But for the thousands of female athletes who have been forced by the “woke mob” to endure physical abuse at the hands — and biceps and quads, et ceterea — of transgender athletes invading their turfs, mental anguish at the injustice of the mind-boggling spectacle of a giant dude in a ladies’ swimsuit and the gutting experience of working hard your whole life only to forego your crowning glory to a forfeit, there will be a lot more to celebrate this weekend than Saquon Barkley’s exhilarating dominance over the Chiefs (we all know it’s coming!).

I’ve played sports my entire life. In college, I competed in basketball and lacrosse — at the Division III, lowest of the low level. Even there, the competition was remarkably more intense than in high school. The other players were bigger, faster, stronger and more aggressive. Still, they were all, to my knowledge, biological females.

I also grew up with four brothers, including a male twin. We played backyard sports together (and occasionally, of course, fought one another), and by the time I was about six, way before anyone was remotely close to puberty, I realized both pursuits would always and forever be a losing battle. Sure, I could still beat the slow-to-develop guys in “suicide” sprints in sixth grade, but come seventh, that ship had pretty much sailed. I still get the shivers when I recall trying to act as tight-end for my middle-school-aged twin as he practiced quarterbacking from thirty yards out. He drilled the ball, and it was all I could do not to suffer internal bleeding or a broken nose in contending with the speed and force of the pigskin.

So, I can’t imagine what it must have been like for Riley Gaines and her fellow female, Division I athletes to be forced to compete against biological men at such a high level. Which is no knock, of course, to Gaines or any other supremely talented female athlete. It’s simply a matter of fact that men are generally bigger, faster, stronger and more aggressive than women (though their levels of emotional intelligence and communication skills remain up for debate…)

Women in Sport reports on scientific findings that show adult males, on average, compared to age-matched females at any given body weight, possess: “40-50 percent greater upper limb strength, 20-40 percent greater lower limb strength and 12kg more skeletal muscle mass.” After all, remember that, as tennisnow.com reported, “203rd-ranked German Karsten Braasch beat Serena Williams and Venus Williams back-to-back at the 1998 Australian Open.” To put this achievement in perspective, Serena Williams, per Britannica, “won more Grand Slam singles titles (twenty-three) than any other woman or man during the open era in tennis. In addition, Serena and her sister Venus won fourteen Grand Slam doubles titles and three doubles gold medals at the Olympics.”

All these facts prove that getting men out of women’s sports is not, as the Hill would have you believe, “the new administration taking aim at LGBTQ rights,” but in true feminist form, impowering and protecting females.

I’ve expressed empathy in the past for people like Dylan Mulvaney (whatever happened to that poor lad, by the way?) who undergo great physical suffering in a desperate attempt to placate their mental turmoil (“gender dysmorphia” is classified as a form of “mental distress,” and transgender individuals are at much greater risk of mental health problems). But dragging biological women into the mix, sometimes literally, as in the many cases of the trans athletes whose physical strength has injured competitors, does nothing but exacerbates these people’s struggles.

Spotlighting a biological male who identifies as female specifically for not being what he identifies as can hardly be in a trans athlete’s best interest (sorry, Riley, but no one would have watched your 500 freestyle race if it weren’t for the Lia Thomas controversy). Ridiculing an already mentally fragile human for ruining sporting events also seems like a bad idea, but what should we expect when such absurdity is allowed to run rampant?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: trans people deserve compassion, empathy and help. Trump’s executive order levels the playing field and restores sanity to sports. We as a nation ought to be offering the trans community the support they need to overcome the mental battles they are waging. And if they are not satisfied with that, then perhaps a Trans League could be an option. I won’t personally be watching — and neither will 80 percent of Americans — but at least they’d have their own team and perhaps feel a sense of belonging that doesn’t involve risking the safety of others.