The Trans Fever Is Breaking
Bill Maher is hardly a Sean Hannity devotee.
The provocative leftist comedian is know for his antipathy to religion, his hatred of former President Trump, and his acerbic satire. But of late, he has been catching heat from his fellow travelers for his concerns over free speech. . .and the trans agenda. On the April 14, 2023 episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher”, Maher had as his panel guests U.S. Representative Katie Porter (D-CA47) and British columnist Piers Morgan, and the discussion turned to trans issues. Maher wanted to know what the big deal was about trans actor Dylan Mulvaney being on a Bud Light can, and Porter described the issue as one of fairness and equality for those who identify as trans. Morgan brought up the issue of swimmer Riley Gaines campaigning to keep female sports female, whereupon he was accused by Porter of questioning trans rights. Morgan didn’t back down:
Nobody’s questioning trans’ rights to fairness and equality. I would question–and, by the way, I’m not on the Right–but what I would question and I think legitimately is where trans rights to fairness and equality begin to erode or even destroy–as we’re seeing in women’s sport, for example–the rights of women to fairness and equality, too.
To your humble correspondent’s pleasant surprise, the crowd applauded. Morgan, again: “Where you allow limitless self-identity, you allow people to abuse the system.” Porter accused the swimmer in question of just campaigning for attention, but her battle was lost. Maher weighed in with the final blow:
There seems to be so many instances I think of where wokeness seems to be the opposite of what I grew up with as liberalism. Liberalism was, “Let’s give women an equal shot.” This is, “Let’s put a man in the swimming pool with the women.” I don’t get it.
Over the past few years, the trans movement has made astonishing progress. We’ve quickly gone from awareness of those with body dysmorphia/dysphoria to aggressively pushing transgenderism in schools. Corporate America has gotten in on the game, as with the Bud Light fiasco, and when a trans shooter recently murdered three adults and three children in a Nashville, TN private Christian school, the trans shooter was quickly made out to be a victim. The aforementioned Riley Gaines was physically attacked at San Fransisco State University while there to speak. Activists for the protection of women and children in the context of transgenderism are regularly assaulted. To question any aspect of the trans movement–even whether we should perform double mastectomies on minor girls–is labeled as trans genocide. And this is perhaps where the pushback is starting–the intolerance of it all, the inability to even suggest maybe we’ve gone too far or too fast or both, the immediate shouting down of even the mildest of curiosity on the topic.
But the tide is turning, and Maher is but the coal mine canary. Chloe Cole is a young woman who transitioned as a minor and is now suing the hospital system that did the hormones and surgery. The dependably leftist USA Today published a defense of Riley Gaines. Small but vocal gay groups are now pushing for the separation of trans issues from gay issues. Americans favor “gender affirming care” in polls–until they discover what that actually means, at which point the polling numbers drop. Multiple states are legislatively prohibiting cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, and trans surgery for minors. Opinion appears to be turning against the aggressive trans agenda as quickly as it was originally manufactured.
This sea change is not assured. There is a lot of money and a lot of political clout to be made from the trans movement, and those who profit off of these issues will fight to the death to protect their interests. But the moral case is against men in women’s spaces and against transitioning children. It’s a fight worth waging and it’s a fight worth winning.
No matter how hard the other side protests.