I swiped the idea for this post’s title from Steven Hayward, who reads tweets by people who don’t know X from Y and are proud of it, so that the rest of us don’t have to. Quite remarkably, the transtweeters whom Mr. Hayward cites are mad at the Biden Administration for “legitimizing transphobia”.
What the Administration did was publish a proposed regulation declaring that schools presumptively violate Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 and thereby lose their eligibility for federal funds unless they allow males and females to play on the same sports teams. The obvious intent is to counter state laws protecting the right of girls and women to play on a level field with competitors of the same sex. Since the whole point of Title IX is to give women greater opportunity in sports, it might seem like like a self-evident violation of the statute to set up a nominal women’s event, then let men enter and dominate it. But we live in strange times. The high priests of wokery believe, with all the fervor of priests of Moloch, that the right worship of the great idol Bostock demands that males who can’t win against other males be granted the right to enter the lists against women.
The document containing the proposed regulation devotes 99.14 percent of its wordage to bowing before Bostock. In the course of their homily, the priests insist that they are taking a reasonable middle ground. The accompanying press release states emolliently:
The proposed rule would establish that policies violate Title IX when they categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are. The proposed rule also recognizes that in some instances, particularly in competitive high school and college athletic environments, some schools may adopt policies that limit transgender students’ participation. The proposed rule would provide schools with a framework for developing eligibility criteria that protects students from being denied equal athletic opportunity, while giving schools the flexibility to develop their own participation policies.
The proposed rule consists of a single paragraph, from which schools are to divine “a framework for developing eligibility criteria”:
If a recipient [of federal educational funding] adopts or applies sex-related criteria that would limit or deny a student’s eligibility to participate on a male or female team consistent with their gender identity, such criteria must, for each sport, level of competition, and grade or education level: (i) be substantially related to the achievement of an important educational objective, and (ii) minimize harms to students whose opportunity to participate on a male or female team consistent with their gender identity would be limited or denied.
Is there any way to satisfy those standards? The preamble to the proposal says this about the meaning of “important educational objective”:
The Department recognizes that prevention of sports-related injury is an important educational objective in recipients’ athletic programs and that – as courts have long recognized in cases involving sex-separate athletic teams – fairness in competition may be particularly important for recipients in some sports, grade and education levels, and levels of competition. The Department anticipates that some uses of sex-related eligibility criteria would satisfy the standard in the proposed regulation in some sports, grade and education levels, and levels of competition. [emphasis added]
Whoever wrote that paragraph should be dragooned into a one-on-one basketball game with Stephen Curry. Fairness in competition is the essence of sports. Unfair competition is bullying or war. Deliberately entering a contest against outmatched opponents is the essence of bad sportsmanship, and a man who, unsatisfied with his mediocre skill at swimming or track or tennis, declares himself a woman so that he can collect goat feathers for undeserved triumphs is a cad and a bounder, qualities that educational institutions ought not to be encouraging.
The regulation writers obviously disagree with the idea that sportsmanship is an “important educational objective” of all school sports, for every “sport, level of competition, and grade or education level”. Note, too, the word “recipients”. The standard of an “important education objective” is apparently whether it has value to the entity that is receiving federal largess. The interests of the students have nothing to do with it. I don’t think that it’s too cynical to foresee that the educrats will approve sex-distinct women’s teams that bring in money, as in college women’s basketball, and demand adherence to gender identity ideology for women’s events that are less remunerative, like swimming and track and practically all the rest.
In brief, the proposed regulation is perfectly attuned to the Biden Administration’s trans-extremism. Yet it isn’t enough for at least some of the President’s allies. Once reason is abandoned, impulse and emotion are never content. Bostock is jealous and implacable.
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