Agree with what you say about the NYT/WaPo coverage of trans identified males in women’s sports (of course these news outlets refer to these men as “trans women”). But whenever either of these papers publishes another story trying to drum up sympathy or support for men in women’s sports, they get consistently bashed in the reader comments section (when they allow comments). Even the mostly left leaning NYT/WaPo readers aren’t buying this nonsense; those who care enough to comment (or “like” comments) on these trans propaganda puff pieces are calling bullshit on this nonsense. And that’s only the “gender critical” comments that actually make it past the NYT censors. What’s discouraging is the NYT/WaPo and every other left leaning MSM outlet continues to try to push this bullshit down everyone’s throats, even though their readership/viewers aren’t having it. As this house of cards continues to fall, the damage to the credibility of the MSM (and the major medical associations and academia and the Democratic Party) will be long lasting, if not permanent.
In Michigan we have a senate candidate, Mallory McMorrow, who is basically a carpetbagger who is trying to erase her posts about her dislike of Michigan when she moved here with her husband. She was elected to the state senate a few years ago and then got her claim to fame by fighting against the effort by a republican state Senator to bar males from female sports. Lana Theis, the Republican made the mistake of saying publicly that McMorrow was "grooming" young people and so McMorrow got all weepy on TV and was lauded nationally by left wing media for being "attacked" for supporting those poor boys who claimed to be girls while ignoring the harm to girls. So now we are stuck with her as a candidate for U.S. Senate, with few credentials, except her hypocritical, unearned fame on trans "rights" and Michigan has laws for example, banning parents from getting psychological help for their troubled children if it smacks of "conversion therapy". There is so much going on in all of this but the bottom line is that politicians need to wise up and read the polls such as this one and stop being afraid to tackle the transgender issue. So far McMorrow is getting a free pass from her opponents on her betrayal of females in this state and that is cowardly to the core.
Thanks for sharing this. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that the US is a democracy, and elected officials are supposed to represent the will of their constituents. In the case of trans ideology, something has gone very wrong with this process
Sarah wrote: "Why are people really opposed to men in women’s sports, and not as much men in women’s restrooms (Ipsos reported average okay-ness with that of 47%)?"
Regarding men in women's restrooms:
IPSOS did not ask the question correctly. When you tell people that many transwomen are men that have not had their penis surgically removed or are not on cross-sex hormones, then support for transwomen in female restrooms goes down. The British survey research organization YouGov has asked the question of support for transwomen in women's restrooms both ways. See here (pages 13 and 17):
Where does the British public stand on transgender rights in 2022? July 20, 2022
I've gone on and sat up an organization Sex Matters [an NGO, in Oct 2020] and we've done [that is, commissioned] polling [by the professional pollster YouGov]. It's quite difficult, when you do polling, to ask people the question, because if you say "a transwoman" quite a lot of people think that's a woman who identifies as a man, and a transman is a man who identifies as a woman. And then quite a lot of people think it's somebody who's had surgery or somebody who perhaps really is a woman trapped in a man's body or whatever. That means, in their mind, transwoman means basically a woman who had the unfortunate accident of being born male. I mean that sounds crazy, but [the English tv series] Coronation Street had a transwoman character for a very long time, Haley Cropper, played by a female actress. So people are thinking a transwoman is [like this fictional character] Haley Cropper.
So when you ask the question in polling, you really have to ask it carefully, to make sure that people understand what you're asking. But when you ask it carefully saying "[A transwomen, that is,] a man who identifies as a woman, who may or may not have had surgery, should they be allowed into women's changing rooms, showers, sports?," then less than 30% [of UK adults] say Yes [around 30%, except for sports where it's around 24%, in May 2023] ... To ask people a question, they have to understand the question. But to explain the question, you have to say things that are defined [by radical trans activists and their allies] as transphobic. So if the person has been in any way trained or primed to think that it is transphobic [to say that a transwoman is a male who identifies as a woman], then they give the answer that they think is the respectable one [imparting social desirability bias to the data].
You correctly highlight the fact that transgenderism is a language game. Redefining words and ideas. That words create reality instead of words describing reality. As you point out, the wording of the question could very well account for the apparently higher acceptance of "T rights" with regard to restroom use. I think it was Sex Matters who pointed out that fully 2/3 of UK people did not know the sex of a "trans woman." Media use of ideological language has absolutely contributed to "acceptance" of trans issues, as well as subsequent backlash when people realize what the language actually means
Somemthing else Sarah: People like you and me, and the other commenters here, we have spend significant amount of time trying to understand the issues involved in the pursuit of the radical transagenda (by that I mean, the consequences of replacing sex by gender identity, or introducing self-ID).
Many other people have spend their time on other things, and don't know anything or very little abou these debates involving trans issues.
The British pollster YouGov asked in December 2024:
"In recent years there has been debate in the media and politics about rights for transgender people. How much attention, if any, have you personally paid to this?"
The results: A lot of attention 8%, A fair amount of attention 27%, Not much attention 42%, No attention at all 24%.
But the clear tendency is that the more people learn about the radical trans agenda, the more they are against it. This is 100% clear from the surveys YouGov has done in Britain since 2019.
Because there are so many people who are fairly ignorant of what is involved when the talk is about trans rights, that is why formulating the questions very clearly is so important. People who are ignorant about the issues, they glean information from how the questions are asked and use that information when deciding how to answer. For you and me, the precise formulation of the question doesn't matter because we are steeped in the debates and hence cannot be easily manipulated through certain language choices. Obviously, to us, a transwoman is not any kind of woman - it's a bloke who either wants to be a woman, or identifies as a woman, or claims to identify as a woman, or is some tyope of cross-dresser, etc.
Absolutely true. The entire trans agenda is a language game. Even now, fully2/3 of people do not know the sex of a "trans woman." And while most of the public has slept, trans ideology has captured every major institution, in our society, so in order for people to understand that a "trans woman" is male they must first understand and accept that major institutions like the IOC, the UN, and the NYTimes have been captured and are misrepresenting the truth. They must understand that every institution they have trusted for their entire lives are no longer trustworthy. And the junk science that the NYT is reporting is also corrupted. It really is too much for most people to accept. So when they hear lawmakers talking about "trans rights," they do not understand that everything trans is the opposite of what it sounds like—a trans woman is a man, gender affirming care is harm, trans rights are not rights. It's almost incomprehensible, even to me, how very thoroughly and insidiously our society has been corrupted by language
Regarding why people don't want trans-identifying men (transwomen) in female sport:
Many have encountered the claim that anybody who objects to the radical transagenda is ignorant, hateful or transphobic. For example, senior sports journalist Nancy Armour wrote in a USA Today column (May 28, 2023) about opposition to inclusion of transwomen in female sports "This is, and always was, about hate, fear and ignorance."
I'm aware of two US opinion polls that give us a data-based handle on why people are opposed to the inclusion of transwomen in female sports. Both essentially asked respondents, paraphrasing the question, whether they consider transwomen to be women.
One is a September 2023 survey of US registered voters, in which 79% of the respondents answered that women are adult humans who are female (where female refers to a person's biological sex) and 16% answered women are adult humans who consider themselves women. 3% answered not sure, 2% answered other.
The other is a May 2025 survey of US adults, in which 68% of respondents answered whether someone is a man or woman is determined by "biological characteristics at birth", and 13% answered "Gender identity, even if different from biology at birth." (The remaining respondents answered Don't know or did not answer the question.)
That is, of those who answered the question: 84% agree that women = adult human female (biological definition)
So there is a 11% difference here which could largely be due to one poll surveying US registered voters and the other surveying US adults. (The timing of the survey probably matters too. The two surveys were separated by 19 months.)
1. a national poll of 1,262 registered US voters conducted in September 2023 by the pollster SurveyUSA on behalf of WDI USA, the U.S. chapter of Women’s Declaration International [the largest global organization advocating for the rights of women and girls as a sex class].
The report illustrates why it has become increasingly problematic to treat "LGBT" as a single analytical category. Ipsos clearly recognizes that attitudes toward transgender issues differ from attitudes toward sexual orientation, devoting a substantial portion of the survey to questions that refer specifically to transgender people. It separately asks about discrimination against transgender people, gender-affirming care, participation in sports, and other transgender-specific issues.
Yet many of the earlier questions continue to use the umbrella term "LGBT," even where the underlying issues are not the same. Respondents are asked about LGBT people being open about their sexual orientation or gender identity, displaying affection in public, increasing LGBT representation in media, companies promoting LGBT equality, and laws protecting LGBT people from discrimination. These questions conflate sexual orientation and gender identity, making it impossible to know whether respondents are reacting to lesbian, gay and bisexual people, to transgender people, or to both.
The survey itself demonstrates that this distinction matters. Ipsos asks separately whether lesbian, gay and bisexual people should be protected from discrimination and whether transgender people should be protected from discrimination. It also asks specifically about openly lesbian, gay and bisexual athletes, while treating transgender participation in sports as an entirely separate issue. That is methodologically sound because these are different questions.
The same logic should have been applied more broadly. Questions about public openness, public displays of affection, media representation, corporate advocacy, and even general anti-discrimination laws would have been considerably more informative if respondents had been asked parallel questions about LGB people and transgender people rather than a single "LGBT" question. Many people may support equal treatment and social acceptance of lesbian, gay and bisexual people while holding different views about transgender-related issues, or vice versa. The current wording prevents the survey from distinguishing between those positions.
If the objective is to measure attitudes toward an advocacy coalition, an umbrella "LGBT" question is understandable. But if the objective is to understand public opinion accurately, combining distinct issues under a single label sacrifices valuable information. Once Ipsos decided that transgender issues warranted separate treatment—and the survey clearly reflects that decision—it would have been more methodologically consistent to separate LGB and transgender respondents' attitudes throughout much of the questionnaire.
Ipsos clearly does know that the public feels differently about LGB issues than it does on Trans issues. My take on Ipsos' bizarre and unsupported conclusion that attitudes were "stabilizing" is that, like every other organization, their bread is buttered by the T mafia and they are therefore motivated to spin their inconvenient data
"You can’t sell the idea of a part-time Trans Woman. It’s a full-time fantasy." Then there're the Megan Rapinoe types, nasty turds in the septic tank. Her response to 15-yr-old male soccer players leaving tread marks on her back is to shove younger female athletes into the mud. This indicates that she's a complete moron who really believed she had a chance to beat these young males.
Rapinoe can't believe that (using your words) "she had a chance to beat these young males". The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team famously lost 5-2 in a 2017 training scrimmage to the FC Dallas Under-15 Boys Academy team. (This was not a one-time loss: The same thing has happened to the German and Australian Women's National Soccer Teams - losing against a local boys team.) Anybody who has watched soccer, especially elite-level soccer, knows that women are not competitive playing against men.
What Serena Williams said about women's vs men's tennis is also true about soccer (namely, that women's and men's soccer are two different sports):
Serena Williams (winner of 23 Grand Slam singles titles in tennis; the 4 annual Grand Slam tournaments are the most important titles to win in tennis: the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open), likely the greatest female tennis player ever, asked about whether she wants to compete against elite male tennis players, had this to say:
“Men’s tennis and women’s tennis are completely almost two separate sports. If I were to play Andy Murray [who over his career won 3 Grand Slam titles], I would lose, 6-0, 6-0, in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes. No, it's true, it's true. It's a completely different sport. The men are a lot faster, they serve harder, they hit harder. It's just a different game. I love to play women’s tennis, and I only want to play girls because I don't want to be embarrassed.” (@ 5:27 minutes)
Serena Williams on David Letterman's Late Night Talk Show in 2013
So what does Rapinoe really believe? I bet she's woke. That means, she believes that minority groups who were discriminated against in the past, well, today we should not just stop the discrimination (which has mostly been done), no, today we should organize our society around the goal of achieving maximal comfort for them. If there are conflicts of interest, they should always be solved such that these minorities get everything they want. In other words, these minority groups are sacred groups. What they demand, they must be granted. They can't be wrong on anything, etc.
The retort:
Other people have rights too! (Helen Joyce)
One must have the nerve to assert that, while people are entitled to their illusions, they are not entitled to a limitless enjoyment of them and they are not entitled to impose them upon others.
Christopher Hitchens: Letters to a Young Contrarian. Basic Books, 2001, ch.12, p.82
Rapinoe is like Emma Vigeland:
From: Reality vs. Trans Ideology | Peter Boghossian interviews Helen Joyce, July 3, 2023, 70 mins
Journalist Emma Vigeland on The Majority Report, a left-wing, progressive internet talk radio program and podcast:
"I'm actually not bad about this. I'm 100% right on this. I don't give a shit about the scientific explanations. People, if they identify as a woman, get to compete in sports. If that's not fair in the short term for a variety of little competitions, I don't give a shit. I don't give a shit because the societal interest of including trans people in society trumps stupid competition, full stop. So I'm right about this. You're wrong about this."
Peter Boghossian: What do you think of that?
Helen Joyce:
I think it's very easy to give away things that aren't yours to give away. I doubt she's actually an athlete, that woman.
The other thing: Oh my God, she's got a delightful little threesome of self-righteousness there, hasn't she [this is from a conversation among 3 persons]? Oh my God, she's just like "I am so good."
As you say, she's making a moral statement. And I think it's a highly immoral statement.
She feels that the rights of a person who is so unhappy, this is I think the way she puts it, was so unhappy with their sex assigned at birth, I know [a] totally ridiculous [expression], but including them in society as members of the sex that they wish to be that that is a higher value.
"including them in society as members of the sex that they wish to be that that is a higher value."
Ra[pinoe is of course talking about men. Giving men what they want. It is completely easy for society to allow women who identify as men what they want bc it does not infringe on men's rights. On the other hand, granting men who identify as women what they want very much infringes on women's rights in particular
It's discouraging that support for male privilege movement of transgenderism is still so high, given that it's based on spurious identity claims and the impossibility of repudiating immutable and binary sex.
"Transgender athletes competing based on the gender they identify with rather than the sex they were assigned at birth." The wording obscures the real question: whether they agree with trans identified male athletes competing in the female category, since virtually no trans identified female athletes are competitive with males. Issue has always been framed dishonestly, with emotive appeals to inclusion for a mythical vulnerable, marginalised minority and shoving the TWAW party line. Sex remains most salient fact in sporting performance.
Instructive contrast of Lia Thomas (retained male advantage after taking cross sex hormones, comparatively performance impairing drugs) and Iszak Henig (after taking testosterone, a PED):
“Instead, I’m trying to connect with my teammates in new ways, to cheer loudly, to focus more on the excitement of the sport,” Henig wrote. “Competing and being challenged is the best part. It’s a different kind of fulfillment. And it’s pretty great to feel comfortable in the locker room every day.
“I believe that when trans athletes win, we deserve to be celebrated just as cis athletes are. We are not cheating by pursuing our true selves — we have not forsaken our legitimacy. Elite sports are always a combination of natural advantage or talent and commitment to hard work. There is so much more to a great athlete than hormones or height. I swim faster than some cis men ever will.”
"It's discouraging that support for male privilege movement of transgenderism is still so high, given that it's based on spurious identity claims and the impossibility of repudiating immutable and binary sex."
Agreed. I was especially perplexed by the very high support for the idea that people with trans identities encounter a lot of discrimination. I wonder what people who responded this way think the discrimination entails. They clearly didn't think single-sex sports was discriminatory to trans people.
The matter of discrimination against trans people gained national visibility in 2020 with the US Supreme Court's unfortunate Bostock decision.
One of the cases decided in Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020) involved a trans-identified male employee who was fired after informing his employer that when he returned to work from a scheduled vacation, he would present as a woman.
The Court held 6-3 that Title VII's prohibition on discrimination "because of sex" includes discrimination against gay and transgender employees. The Court ruled that this constituted discrimination because of sex under federal employment law.
The decision has been widely criticized as a misinterpretation of the law, but there you have it.
It isn't outlandish to suppose that if that Bostock plaintiff was fired for coming out as trans, other trans people have had the same experience.
> A 15-year-old girl in Washington who was not informed she would be wrestling a male, and was subsequently sexually assaulted on the mat. Her lawsuit was dismissed because apparently when you sign up to wrestle, you consent to being digitally raped.
Here is a message from a hardworking legal immigrant:
"Not long after I came to America, I was exposed to the narrative that the Democrat Party was the party of the little guy and the only party with genuine care and compassion for the average American. Fortunately, because I grew up under a dictatorship, I could not be easily fooled by socioeconomic shackles masquerading as compassionate public policy. The truth is there is no compassion like Democrat compassion. It is the kind of compassion that lets people shoot illicit drugs into their body with the government's assistance. It is the kind of compassion that sees assisted suicide as a moral virtue.
Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that lets you rob the innocent in hardworking businesses in your neighborhood and walk out with impunity with no fear of prosecution.
Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that tells vulnerable women it is their right to abort and sacrifice their unborn children on the perverted altar of female empowerment and convenience. Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that tells children they were born in the wrong body and encourages and subsidizes their mutilation. Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that lets boys unfairly compete against girls and take their records, their opportunities, and their scholarships, and invade their private spaces turning back decades of hard-fought gains.
Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that allows homeless people to defecate on sidewalks and sleep in tents in public parks while watching them as they abuse drugs and suffer through mental illness.
Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that tells independent contractors that they don't have the right to choose how and when they work, in the name of protecting them from big bad corporations.
It is the kind of compassion that raises the minimum wage by government fiat and takes the earnings of fast food workers from $15 an hour to zero in a single day.
Democrat compassion is a kind of compassion that restricts the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, leaving them vulnerable to the criminals their compassion let out of prison with their no-bail policies.
Democrat compassion is the kind that secures the borders of Ukraine and leaves the American border wide open, allowing un-vetted illegal immigrants to wreak havoc on small towns and big cities alike and allowing drug cartels to kill 100,000 Americans each year with the poison of fentanyl.
This compassion is the kind of compassion that forces millions of Americans to close their businesses and to take experimental vaccines under the threat of losing their jobs and their livelihood.
It is the kind of compassion that praises Antifa as freedom fighters and raids the homes of pastors and churchgoers at dawn because they protested at the doors of abortion clinics.
Democrat compassion is the kind that weaponizes the justice system against political opponents while claiming to be defenders of democracy.
Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that colludes with social media companies to censor Americans and limit their constitutional freedoms.
Democrat compassion is the kind that tells minorities they cannot succeed without government handouts and without having the standards lowered for them.
It is the kind of compassion that tells black people they're too dumb to obtain IDs to vote but if they manage to do that they're not black if they don't vote Democrat.
I think America has had it with Democrat compassion. It has destroyed one's beautiful cities, left poverty and economic devastation in its wake everywhere it's been applied, and created a generation of voters so bereft of critical thinking skills that they so easily fall prey to a profound level of cunning and cynicism that enables them to vote 'blue no matter who' against their own interests.
As an immigrant and a new American voter I promise you this: I would much rather endure the uncertainty and the often difficult realities of life under the pragmatic principles of conservatism than bend one inch to the depravity of morally bankrupt policies cloaked in the robes of compassion but designed to keep Americans mentally subjugated, economically shackled, and emotionally weak.
This November, we have to defeat Democrat compassion at the polls because our beloved country cannot endure four more years of this nightmare."
Comments like this may resonate with people who already agree, but they are unlikely to persuade anyone else. Sweeping condemnations of "Democrat compassion" treat tens of millions of Americans as though they all hold the same views and bear equal responsibility for every policy with which the author disagrees. The Republican Party, of course, also has its critics, and few Republicans would welcome having every controversial policy or statement by members of their party attributed to them personally.
That matters because there are many moderate Democrats who do not embrace gender ideology and who have serious concerns about policies involving women's sports, single-sex spaces, youth gender medicine, or the tendency to conflate sexual orientation with gender identity. Many have arrived at those views reluctantly and independently, often after concluding that the evidence or the public debate does not support the more activist positions.
Unfortunately, rhetoric that portrays Democrats as morally bankrupt, cynical, or devoid of compassion makes it much harder for those people to engage. Instead of inviting them into a conversation, it tells them they are part of the problem simply because of the party with which they identify. People who might otherwise be open to reconsidering gender-identity policies are more likely to tune out a message that begins by condemning them wholesale.
If the goal is to persuade rather than simply to rally those who already agree, it is more effective to distinguish between the Democratic Party as a broad political coalition and the particular ideas being criticized. Gender ideology has critics across the political spectrum, including many Democrats, liberals, feminists, and gay and lesbian advocates. Broad partisan denunciations risk alienating precisely the people whose support could make the greatest difference.
Okay. Leaving aside what polls show Democratic voters think about transgenderism, how many Democratic politicians, in either Congress or the statehouses, have stated publicly their opposition to transgenderism, and actually voted against it? It really is remarkable the iron grip this ideology has on the Democratic party. I don't know why that is, but my guess would be that they are responding, not to the electorate, but to their campaign donors.
P.S. It is interesting that a sizable number of Democratic voters have turned against Israel, but AFAIK no similar critical mass has emerged to support candidates who oppose transgenderism.
Good point, you idenrify the root cause of the problem–identifying with a political party in the first place which has this debillitating effect:
The media - both news and entertainment - have now politicized nearly everything in our society as an extremely powerful mechanism of control.
Politicization is so effective at manipulating the populace because most people emotionally connect their personal belief system to the belief system of their political party, and so then any attack on their party - legitimate or otherwise - is interpreted by their brain as an attack on themselves. Reason and logic then jump out the nearest window as raw emotion takes the helm, thus making them even more susceptible to the predatory controlling influences.
The human mind is typically binary. Our thought process can often be boiled down into terms (often ultimatums) of – this or that – and our adversaries understand - very well - the art of this war.
These are extremely damaging and misfortunate exploit of human nature. Worse, these exploits are as easy to execute as flipping a light switch for the majority of the population - and they are currently being employed to their maximum effect.
I swear there is some NGO advisory publication that I can't remember the name of that advised going directly for putting "trans women" in women's sports because if they could get people to accept that, anything more minor than that would be easy. However, it seems that the publication/guide didn't account for what happens when the "big things" like men in women's sports and prisons are rejected—the smaller things are rejected too.
Yeah, I thought the red line issue was men in women's prisons, and once that was crossed, everything else was cake. Prison systems fell for it but mdn in women's prisons has never really been put to the public acceptance test because of media suppression. I don't think any major media has ever acknowledged that men-in-women's-prisons is even happening. In general, trans activists try to keep men's incursions in women's spaces out of the media: They have been much more successful with suppressing menin women's prisons than men in women's sports
Yes, NGOs and the media are very cagey about the reality of men being in women's prisons. I think if anything they have been letting people run with the assumption that we're talking about effeminate gay men who have had surgery and are on hormones, and therefore it "makes sense" for them to be in women's prisons; also, it's put about that they don't receive "gender affirming care" in men's prisons. (I'm now remembering a jawdropping sympathetic story in Newsweek about a male murderer: https://www.newsweek.com/steven-hayes-connecticut-linda-mai-lee-2021341).
I think though that the decision was made to downplay violent (straight) men going to women's prisons on their own say-so (as you say the red line was easily crossed, in part because it's never been honestly reported on outside of outlets like Reduxx) but that in contrast there was a conscious attempt to present young male athletes like BPJ and AB Hernandez, etc. as just wanting to pway and have fun with their fwends :(((( I don't think they were trying to suppress it but to play it up, even though it is another red line issue. This narrative also needed prepubescent or young-looking males and/or those who were gay/effeminate and wore makeup like AB or CeCe, with the assumption that they too must be on puberty blockers with eventual plans for surgery like Jazz Jennings. William Thomas presented a bump in that narrative, if you'll excuse the phrasing. That was their attempt to push the envelope and it finally showed where the wall was, I think. But tellingly, even though the "they/them" ad which featured him was very effective, you'll notice nobody blames William.
Agree with what you say about the NYT/WaPo coverage of trans identified males in women’s sports (of course these news outlets refer to these men as “trans women”). But whenever either of these papers publishes another story trying to drum up sympathy or support for men in women’s sports, they get consistently bashed in the reader comments section (when they allow comments). Even the mostly left leaning NYT/WaPo readers aren’t buying this nonsense; those who care enough to comment (or “like” comments) on these trans propaganda puff pieces are calling bullshit on this nonsense. And that’s only the “gender critical” comments that actually make it past the NYT censors. What’s discouraging is the NYT/WaPo and every other left leaning MSM outlet continues to try to push this bullshit down everyone’s throats, even though their readership/viewers aren’t having it. As this house of cards continues to fall, the damage to the credibility of the MSM (and the major medical associations and academia and the Democratic Party) will be long lasting, if not permanent.
100%
That’s encouraging, I guess, though it means that 22% of people are abject morons.
It’s also true that 78% of us still don’t have power, since the “trans” cult has upended society in countries all over the world.
In Michigan we have a senate candidate, Mallory McMorrow, who is basically a carpetbagger who is trying to erase her posts about her dislike of Michigan when she moved here with her husband. She was elected to the state senate a few years ago and then got her claim to fame by fighting against the effort by a republican state Senator to bar males from female sports. Lana Theis, the Republican made the mistake of saying publicly that McMorrow was "grooming" young people and so McMorrow got all weepy on TV and was lauded nationally by left wing media for being "attacked" for supporting those poor boys who claimed to be girls while ignoring the harm to girls. So now we are stuck with her as a candidate for U.S. Senate, with few credentials, except her hypocritical, unearned fame on trans "rights" and Michigan has laws for example, banning parents from getting psychological help for their troubled children if it smacks of "conversion therapy". There is so much going on in all of this but the bottom line is that politicians need to wise up and read the polls such as this one and stop being afraid to tackle the transgender issue. So far McMorrow is getting a free pass from her opponents on her betrayal of females in this state and that is cowardly to the core.
Thanks for sharing this. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that the US is a democracy, and elected officials are supposed to represent the will of their constituents. In the case of trans ideology, something has gone very wrong with this process
It's (largely) the NGOs.
Sarah wrote: "Why are people really opposed to men in women’s sports, and not as much men in women’s restrooms (Ipsos reported average okay-ness with that of 47%)?"
Regarding men in women's restrooms:
IPSOS did not ask the question correctly. When you tell people that many transwomen are men that have not had their penis surgically removed or are not on cross-sex hormones, then support for transwomen in female restrooms goes down. The British survey research organization YouGov has asked the question of support for transwomen in women's restrooms both ways. See here (pages 13 and 17):
Where does the British public stand on transgender rights in 2022? July 20, 2022
https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/43194-where-does-british-public-stand-transgender-rights-1
Full results: https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Internal_TransgenderIssues_220720_final_extraXbreak_FINAL.pdf
Maya Forstater on how to do proper polling on this:
I Said No To Gender Insanity (And Was Taken to Court!) - Maya Forstater interviewed by Andrew Gold | Jan 2024, 55 mins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5DBgD4ycF8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Forstater
@11:13 Poll results
I've gone on and sat up an organization Sex Matters [an NGO, in Oct 2020] and we've done [that is, commissioned] polling [by the professional pollster YouGov]. It's quite difficult, when you do polling, to ask people the question, because if you say "a transwoman" quite a lot of people think that's a woman who identifies as a man, and a transman is a man who identifies as a woman. And then quite a lot of people think it's somebody who's had surgery or somebody who perhaps really is a woman trapped in a man's body or whatever. That means, in their mind, transwoman means basically a woman who had the unfortunate accident of being born male. I mean that sounds crazy, but [the English tv series] Coronation Street had a transwoman character for a very long time, Haley Cropper, played by a female actress. So people are thinking a transwoman is [like this fictional character] Haley Cropper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayley_Cropper
So when you ask the question in polling, you really have to ask it carefully, to make sure that people understand what you're asking. But when you ask it carefully saying "[A transwomen, that is,] a man who identifies as a woman, who may or may not have had surgery, should they be allowed into women's changing rooms, showers, sports?," then less than 30% [of UK adults] say Yes [around 30%, except for sports where it's around 24%, in May 2023] ... To ask people a question, they have to understand the question. But to explain the question, you have to say things that are defined [by radical trans activists and their allies] as transphobic. So if the person has been in any way trained or primed to think that it is transphobic [to say that a transwoman is a male who identifies as a woman], then they give the answer that they think is the respectable one [imparting social desirability bias to the data].
For the YouGov results, for the UK, see:
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/topic/Transgender
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/topic/Transgender?content=surveys
You correctly highlight the fact that transgenderism is a language game. Redefining words and ideas. That words create reality instead of words describing reality. As you point out, the wording of the question could very well account for the apparently higher acceptance of "T rights" with regard to restroom use. I think it was Sex Matters who pointed out that fully 2/3 of UK people did not know the sex of a "trans woman." Media use of ideological language has absolutely contributed to "acceptance" of trans issues, as well as subsequent backlash when people realize what the language actually means
Somemthing else Sarah: People like you and me, and the other commenters here, we have spend significant amount of time trying to understand the issues involved in the pursuit of the radical transagenda (by that I mean, the consequences of replacing sex by gender identity, or introducing self-ID).
Many other people have spend their time on other things, and don't know anything or very little abou these debates involving trans issues.
The British pollster YouGov asked in December 2024:
"In recent years there has been debate in the media and politics about rights for transgender people. How much attention, if any, have you personally paid to this?"
The results: A lot of attention 8%, A fair amount of attention 27%, Not much attention 42%, No attention at all 24%.
Source: page 5 of
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/YouGov_-_Transgender_study_2024.pdf
But the clear tendency is that the more people learn about the radical trans agenda, the more they are against it. This is 100% clear from the surveys YouGov has done in Britain since 2019.
Because there are so many people who are fairly ignorant of what is involved when the talk is about trans rights, that is why formulating the questions very clearly is so important. People who are ignorant about the issues, they glean information from how the questions are asked and use that information when deciding how to answer. For you and me, the precise formulation of the question doesn't matter because we are steeped in the debates and hence cannot be easily manipulated through certain language choices. Obviously, to us, a transwoman is not any kind of woman - it's a bloke who either wants to be a woman, or identifies as a woman, or claims to identify as a woman, or is some tyope of cross-dresser, etc.
Absolutely true. The entire trans agenda is a language game. Even now, fully2/3 of people do not know the sex of a "trans woman." And while most of the public has slept, trans ideology has captured every major institution, in our society, so in order for people to understand that a "trans woman" is male they must first understand and accept that major institutions like the IOC, the UN, and the NYTimes have been captured and are misrepresenting the truth. They must understand that every institution they have trusted for their entire lives are no longer trustworthy. And the junk science that the NYT is reporting is also corrupted. It really is too much for most people to accept. So when they hear lawmakers talking about "trans rights," they do not understand that everything trans is the opposite of what it sounds like—a trans woman is a man, gender affirming care is harm, trans rights are not rights. It's almost incomprehensible, even to me, how very thoroughly and insidiously our society has been corrupted by language
The brainless pursuit of the radical trans agenda is due to the spread of woke ideology.
The best book for understanding this fairly new ideology is, in my opinion:
Musa al-Gharbi: We have never been woke: The cultural contradictions of a new elite. Princeton University Press, 2024 (2025 as a paperback)
The survey questions themselves absolutely skew the results.
Regarding why people don't want trans-identifying men (transwomen) in female sport:
Many have encountered the claim that anybody who objects to the radical transagenda is ignorant, hateful or transphobic. For example, senior sports journalist Nancy Armour wrote in a USA Today column (May 28, 2023) about opposition to inclusion of transwomen in female sports "This is, and always was, about hate, fear and ignorance."
See here for her column: https://archive.ph/vuqMp
I'm aware of two US opinion polls that give us a data-based handle on why people are opposed to the inclusion of transwomen in female sports. Both essentially asked respondents, paraphrasing the question, whether they consider transwomen to be women.
One is a September 2023 survey of US registered voters, in which 79% of the respondents answered that women are adult humans who are female (where female refers to a person's biological sex) and 16% answered women are adult humans who consider themselves women. 3% answered not sure, 2% answered other.
The other is a May 2025 survey of US adults, in which 68% of respondents answered whether someone is a man or woman is determined by "biological characteristics at birth", and 13% answered "Gender identity, even if different from biology at birth." (The remaining respondents answered Don't know or did not answer the question.)
That is, of those who answered the question: 84% agree that women = adult human female (biological definition)
So there is a 11% difference here which could largely be due to one poll surveying US registered voters and the other surveying US adults. (The timing of the survey probably matters too. The two surveys were separated by 19 months.)
1. a national poll of 1,262 registered US voters conducted in September 2023 by the pollster SurveyUSA on behalf of WDI USA, the U.S. chapter of Women’s Declaration International [the largest global organization advocating for the rights of women and girls as a sex class].
Question 14 on page 21
https://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollPrint.aspx?g=42574e21-871e-4023-9ef2-d9b5b39f47c8&pt=2&d=0
2. Transgender issues are a strength for Trump, AP-NORC poll finds. May 10, 2025
https://apnews.com/article/transgender-poll-care-bathrooms-military-trump-b5c9521d3d486e87c8631a99a455df2f
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research [NORC = National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago]
Survey of 1175 US adults, conducted May 1-5, 2025
The report illustrates why it has become increasingly problematic to treat "LGBT" as a single analytical category. Ipsos clearly recognizes that attitudes toward transgender issues differ from attitudes toward sexual orientation, devoting a substantial portion of the survey to questions that refer specifically to transgender people. It separately asks about discrimination against transgender people, gender-affirming care, participation in sports, and other transgender-specific issues.
Yet many of the earlier questions continue to use the umbrella term "LGBT," even where the underlying issues are not the same. Respondents are asked about LGBT people being open about their sexual orientation or gender identity, displaying affection in public, increasing LGBT representation in media, companies promoting LGBT equality, and laws protecting LGBT people from discrimination. These questions conflate sexual orientation and gender identity, making it impossible to know whether respondents are reacting to lesbian, gay and bisexual people, to transgender people, or to both.
The survey itself demonstrates that this distinction matters. Ipsos asks separately whether lesbian, gay and bisexual people should be protected from discrimination and whether transgender people should be protected from discrimination. It also asks specifically about openly lesbian, gay and bisexual athletes, while treating transgender participation in sports as an entirely separate issue. That is methodologically sound because these are different questions.
The same logic should have been applied more broadly. Questions about public openness, public displays of affection, media representation, corporate advocacy, and even general anti-discrimination laws would have been considerably more informative if respondents had been asked parallel questions about LGB people and transgender people rather than a single "LGBT" question. Many people may support equal treatment and social acceptance of lesbian, gay and bisexual people while holding different views about transgender-related issues, or vice versa. The current wording prevents the survey from distinguishing between those positions.
If the objective is to measure attitudes toward an advocacy coalition, an umbrella "LGBT" question is understandable. But if the objective is to understand public opinion accurately, combining distinct issues under a single label sacrifices valuable information. Once Ipsos decided that transgender issues warranted separate treatment—and the survey clearly reflects that decision—it would have been more methodologically consistent to separate LGB and transgender respondents' attitudes throughout much of the questionnaire.
Ipsos clearly does know that the public feels differently about LGB issues than it does on Trans issues. My take on Ipsos' bizarre and unsupported conclusion that attitudes were "stabilizing" is that, like every other organization, their bread is buttered by the T mafia and they are therefore motivated to spin their inconvenient data
"T mafia." Well said! We so badly need another whistleblower like Jamie Reed, this time from inside the trans influence machine.
"You can’t sell the idea of a part-time Trans Woman. It’s a full-time fantasy." Then there're the Megan Rapinoe types, nasty turds in the septic tank. Her response to 15-yr-old male soccer players leaving tread marks on her back is to shove younger female athletes into the mud. This indicates that she's a complete moron who really believed she had a chance to beat these young males.
Rapinoe can't believe that (using your words) "she had a chance to beat these young males". The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team famously lost 5-2 in a 2017 training scrimmage to the FC Dallas Under-15 Boys Academy team. (This was not a one-time loss: The same thing has happened to the German and Australian Women's National Soccer Teams - losing against a local boys team.) Anybody who has watched soccer, especially elite-level soccer, knows that women are not competitive playing against men.
What Serena Williams said about women's vs men's tennis is also true about soccer (namely, that women's and men's soccer are two different sports):
Serena Williams (winner of 23 Grand Slam singles titles in tennis; the 4 annual Grand Slam tournaments are the most important titles to win in tennis: the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open), likely the greatest female tennis player ever, asked about whether she wants to compete against elite male tennis players, had this to say:
“Men’s tennis and women’s tennis are completely almost two separate sports. If I were to play Andy Murray [who over his career won 3 Grand Slam titles], I would lose, 6-0, 6-0, in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes. No, it's true, it's true. It's a completely different sport. The men are a lot faster, they serve harder, they hit harder. It's just a different game. I love to play women’s tennis, and I only want to play girls because I don't want to be embarrassed.” (@ 5:27 minutes)
Serena Williams on David Letterman's Late Night Talk Show in 2013
https://youtu.be/6ALxFXyRno8?si=rXl_WLnJKzU5rmvO&t=327
So what does Rapinoe really believe? I bet she's woke. That means, she believes that minority groups who were discriminated against in the past, well, today we should not just stop the discrimination (which has mostly been done), no, today we should organize our society around the goal of achieving maximal comfort for them. If there are conflicts of interest, they should always be solved such that these minorities get everything they want. In other words, these minority groups are sacred groups. What they demand, they must be granted. They can't be wrong on anything, etc.
The retort:
Other people have rights too! (Helen Joyce)
One must have the nerve to assert that, while people are entitled to their illusions, they are not entitled to a limitless enjoyment of them and they are not entitled to impose them upon others.
Christopher Hitchens: Letters to a Young Contrarian. Basic Books, 2001, ch.12, p.82
Rapinoe is like Emma Vigeland:
From: Reality vs. Trans Ideology | Peter Boghossian interviews Helen Joyce, July 3, 2023, 70 mins
https://youtu.be/ZG9_lcln7FU?t=3425
Journalist Emma Vigeland on The Majority Report, a left-wing, progressive internet talk radio program and podcast:
"I'm actually not bad about this. I'm 100% right on this. I don't give a shit about the scientific explanations. People, if they identify as a woman, get to compete in sports. If that's not fair in the short term for a variety of little competitions, I don't give a shit. I don't give a shit because the societal interest of including trans people in society trumps stupid competition, full stop. So I'm right about this. You're wrong about this."
Peter Boghossian: What do you think of that?
Helen Joyce:
I think it's very easy to give away things that aren't yours to give away. I doubt she's actually an athlete, that woman.
The other thing: Oh my God, she's got a delightful little threesome of self-righteousness there, hasn't she [this is from a conversation among 3 persons]? Oh my God, she's just like "I am so good."
As you say, she's making a moral statement. And I think it's a highly immoral statement.
She feels that the rights of a person who is so unhappy, this is I think the way she puts it, was so unhappy with their sex assigned at birth, I know [a] totally ridiculous [expression], but including them in society as members of the sex that they wish to be that that is a higher value.
"including them in society as members of the sex that they wish to be that that is a higher value."
Ra[pinoe is of course talking about men. Giving men what they want. It is completely easy for society to allow women who identify as men what they want bc it does not infringe on men's rights. On the other hand, granting men who identify as women what they want very much infringes on women's rights in particular
It's discouraging that support for male privilege movement of transgenderism is still so high, given that it's based on spurious identity claims and the impossibility of repudiating immutable and binary sex.
"Transgender athletes competing based on the gender they identify with rather than the sex they were assigned at birth." The wording obscures the real question: whether they agree with trans identified male athletes competing in the female category, since virtually no trans identified female athletes are competitive with males. Issue has always been framed dishonestly, with emotive appeals to inclusion for a mythical vulnerable, marginalised minority and shoving the TWAW party line. Sex remains most salient fact in sporting performance.
Instructive contrast of Lia Thomas (retained male advantage after taking cross sex hormones, comparatively performance impairing drugs) and Iszak Henig (after taking testosterone, a PED):
“Instead, I’m trying to connect with my teammates in new ways, to cheer loudly, to focus more on the excitement of the sport,” Henig wrote. “Competing and being challenged is the best part. It’s a different kind of fulfillment. And it’s pretty great to feel comfortable in the locker room every day.
“I believe that when trans athletes win, we deserve to be celebrated just as cis athletes are. We are not cheating by pursuing our true selves — we have not forsaken our legitimacy. Elite sports are always a combination of natural advantage or talent and commitment to hard work. There is so much more to a great athlete than hormones or height. I swim faster than some cis men ever will.”
https://nypost.com/2023/01/07/transgender-swimmer-iszak-henig-struggling-against-new-competition/
Typo in bold print heading: "global public opposes men n women’s"
"It's discouraging that support for male privilege movement of transgenderism is still so high, given that it's based on spurious identity claims and the impossibility of repudiating immutable and binary sex."
Agreed. I was especially perplexed by the very high support for the idea that people with trans identities encounter a lot of discrimination. I wonder what people who responded this way think the discrimination entails. They clearly didn't think single-sex sports was discriminatory to trans people.
The matter of discrimination against trans people gained national visibility in 2020 with the US Supreme Court's unfortunate Bostock decision.
One of the cases decided in Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020) involved a trans-identified male employee who was fired after informing his employer that when he returned to work from a scheduled vacation, he would present as a woman.
The Court held 6-3 that Title VII's prohibition on discrimination "because of sex" includes discrimination against gay and transgender employees. The Court ruled that this constituted discrimination because of sex under federal employment law.
The decision has been widely criticized as a misinterpretation of the law, but there you have it.
It isn't outlandish to suppose that if that Bostock plaintiff was fired for coming out as trans, other trans people have had the same experience.
> A 15-year-old girl in Washington who was not informed she would be wrestling a male, and was subsequently sexually assaulted on the mat. Her lawsuit was dismissed because apparently when you sign up to wrestle, you consent to being digitally raped.
Well that's a new way to perform an oil check.
Here is a message from a hardworking legal immigrant:
"Not long after I came to America, I was exposed to the narrative that the Democrat Party was the party of the little guy and the only party with genuine care and compassion for the average American. Fortunately, because I grew up under a dictatorship, I could not be easily fooled by socioeconomic shackles masquerading as compassionate public policy. The truth is there is no compassion like Democrat compassion. It is the kind of compassion that lets people shoot illicit drugs into their body with the government's assistance. It is the kind of compassion that sees assisted suicide as a moral virtue.
Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that lets you rob the innocent in hardworking businesses in your neighborhood and walk out with impunity with no fear of prosecution.
Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that tells vulnerable women it is their right to abort and sacrifice their unborn children on the perverted altar of female empowerment and convenience. Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that tells children they were born in the wrong body and encourages and subsidizes their mutilation. Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that lets boys unfairly compete against girls and take their records, their opportunities, and their scholarships, and invade their private spaces turning back decades of hard-fought gains.
Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that allows homeless people to defecate on sidewalks and sleep in tents in public parks while watching them as they abuse drugs and suffer through mental illness.
Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that tells independent contractors that they don't have the right to choose how and when they work, in the name of protecting them from big bad corporations.
It is the kind of compassion that raises the minimum wage by government fiat and takes the earnings of fast food workers from $15 an hour to zero in a single day.
Democrat compassion is a kind of compassion that restricts the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, leaving them vulnerable to the criminals their compassion let out of prison with their no-bail policies.
Democrat compassion is the kind that secures the borders of Ukraine and leaves the American border wide open, allowing un-vetted illegal immigrants to wreak havoc on small towns and big cities alike and allowing drug cartels to kill 100,000 Americans each year with the poison of fentanyl.
This compassion is the kind of compassion that forces millions of Americans to close their businesses and to take experimental vaccines under the threat of losing their jobs and their livelihood.
It is the kind of compassion that praises Antifa as freedom fighters and raids the homes of pastors and churchgoers at dawn because they protested at the doors of abortion clinics.
Democrat compassion is the kind that weaponizes the justice system against political opponents while claiming to be defenders of democracy.
Democrat compassion is the kind of compassion that colludes with social media companies to censor Americans and limit their constitutional freedoms.
Democrat compassion is the kind that tells minorities they cannot succeed without government handouts and without having the standards lowered for them.
It is the kind of compassion that tells black people they're too dumb to obtain IDs to vote but if they manage to do that they're not black if they don't vote Democrat.
I think America has had it with Democrat compassion. It has destroyed one's beautiful cities, left poverty and economic devastation in its wake everywhere it's been applied, and created a generation of voters so bereft of critical thinking skills that they so easily fall prey to a profound level of cunning and cynicism that enables them to vote 'blue no matter who' against their own interests.
As an immigrant and a new American voter I promise you this: I would much rather endure the uncertainty and the often difficult realities of life under the pragmatic principles of conservatism than bend one inch to the depravity of morally bankrupt policies cloaked in the robes of compassion but designed to keep Americans mentally subjugated, economically shackled, and emotionally weak.
This November, we have to defeat Democrat compassion at the polls because our beloved country cannot endure four more years of this nightmare."
Excerpt from: https://old.bitchute.com/video/km6W0evMlQQ5 [4.5mins]
"Those that can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" —Voltair
Comments like this may resonate with people who already agree, but they are unlikely to persuade anyone else. Sweeping condemnations of "Democrat compassion" treat tens of millions of Americans as though they all hold the same views and bear equal responsibility for every policy with which the author disagrees. The Republican Party, of course, also has its critics, and few Republicans would welcome having every controversial policy or statement by members of their party attributed to them personally.
That matters because there are many moderate Democrats who do not embrace gender ideology and who have serious concerns about policies involving women's sports, single-sex spaces, youth gender medicine, or the tendency to conflate sexual orientation with gender identity. Many have arrived at those views reluctantly and independently, often after concluding that the evidence or the public debate does not support the more activist positions.
Unfortunately, rhetoric that portrays Democrats as morally bankrupt, cynical, or devoid of compassion makes it much harder for those people to engage. Instead of inviting them into a conversation, it tells them they are part of the problem simply because of the party with which they identify. People who might otherwise be open to reconsidering gender-identity policies are more likely to tune out a message that begins by condemning them wholesale.
If the goal is to persuade rather than simply to rally those who already agree, it is more effective to distinguish between the Democratic Party as a broad political coalition and the particular ideas being criticized. Gender ideology has critics across the political spectrum, including many Democrats, liberals, feminists, and gay and lesbian advocates. Broad partisan denunciations risk alienating precisely the people whose support could make the greatest difference.
Okay. Leaving aside what polls show Democratic voters think about transgenderism, how many Democratic politicians, in either Congress or the statehouses, have stated publicly their opposition to transgenderism, and actually voted against it? It really is remarkable the iron grip this ideology has on the Democratic party. I don't know why that is, but my guess would be that they are responding, not to the electorate, but to their campaign donors.
P.S. It is interesting that a sizable number of Democratic voters have turned against Israel, but AFAIK no similar critical mass has emerged to support candidates who oppose transgenderism.
Good point, you idenrify the root cause of the problem–identifying with a political party in the first place which has this debillitating effect:
The media - both news and entertainment - have now politicized nearly everything in our society as an extremely powerful mechanism of control.
Politicization is so effective at manipulating the populace because most people emotionally connect their personal belief system to the belief system of their political party, and so then any attack on their party - legitimate or otherwise - is interpreted by their brain as an attack on themselves. Reason and logic then jump out the nearest window as raw emotion takes the helm, thus making them even more susceptible to the predatory controlling influences.
The human mind is typically binary. Our thought process can often be boiled down into terms (often ultimatums) of – this or that – and our adversaries understand - very well - the art of this war.
These are extremely damaging and misfortunate exploit of human nature. Worse, these exploits are as easy to execute as flipping a light switch for the majority of the population - and they are currently being employed to their maximum effect.
I swear there is some NGO advisory publication that I can't remember the name of that advised going directly for putting "trans women" in women's sports because if they could get people to accept that, anything more minor than that would be easy. However, it seems that the publication/guide didn't account for what happens when the "big things" like men in women's sports and prisons are rejected—the smaller things are rejected too.
Yeah, I thought the red line issue was men in women's prisons, and once that was crossed, everything else was cake. Prison systems fell for it but mdn in women's prisons has never really been put to the public acceptance test because of media suppression. I don't think any major media has ever acknowledged that men-in-women's-prisons is even happening. In general, trans activists try to keep men's incursions in women's spaces out of the media: They have been much more successful with suppressing menin women's prisons than men in women's sports
Yes, NGOs and the media are very cagey about the reality of men being in women's prisons. I think if anything they have been letting people run with the assumption that we're talking about effeminate gay men who have had surgery and are on hormones, and therefore it "makes sense" for them to be in women's prisons; also, it's put about that they don't receive "gender affirming care" in men's prisons. (I'm now remembering a jawdropping sympathetic story in Newsweek about a male murderer: https://www.newsweek.com/steven-hayes-connecticut-linda-mai-lee-2021341).
I think though that the decision was made to downplay violent (straight) men going to women's prisons on their own say-so (as you say the red line was easily crossed, in part because it's never been honestly reported on outside of outlets like Reduxx) but that in contrast there was a conscious attempt to present young male athletes like BPJ and AB Hernandez, etc. as just wanting to pway and have fun with their fwends :(((( I don't think they were trying to suppress it but to play it up, even though it is another red line issue. This narrative also needed prepubescent or young-looking males and/or those who were gay/effeminate and wore makeup like AB or CeCe, with the assumption that they too must be on puberty blockers with eventual plans for surgery like Jazz Jennings. William Thomas presented a bump in that narrative, if you'll excuse the phrasing. That was their attempt to push the envelope and it finally showed where the wall was, I think. But tellingly, even though the "they/them" ad which featured him was very effective, you'll notice nobody blames William.