If Men Keep Taking Women's Opportunities and No Media Cover It, Did It Happen?

I’m guessing 98 percent of Americans do not know that a trans-identified MALE won the GIRLS’ 200-Meter State Track Championship in Oregon. This is one of many displays, just in sports, of what happens when gender identity is prioritized over sex. It was blatant, obvious, wrong. But if it’s not covered in the media, even local media, like a tree falling in the forest, did it even happen?

The fact that a male who identifies as female won a girls state championship—a first in Oregon—and was subsequently booed in the hallowed track halls of Hayward Field—another dubious first—IS NEWS. The Portland Tribune ran a story on Aster Jones winning the 100-meter title, but not on the obvious bombshell that she lost to a boy in the 200-meter race. The Oregonian rans several stories from the high school track and field championships—again, a story on Aster Jones winning the 100-meter, a story about a female shot putter, and a mention that Aayden Gallagher got second in the 400-meter championship in a time that is second all-time in Oregon for girls, but not that Gallagher is male. Bill Oram was confused about Gallagher’s sex for several hundred words in an opinion piece, but obviously that doesn’t count as journalism. Those reporters had to work to avoid that story: It was the male elephant in the girls’ room.

This points to a comprehensive fail by media. Journalism is the fourth estate, friends. You cannot have an informed electorate, a democracy, without journalism.

Do average citizens know the difference between sex and gender identity? This would have been an opportunity for the media to explain that. When average people who are not terribly knowledgeable about sex and gender hear that Title IX now protects against discrimination on the basis of sex and gender identity, and that’s “trans rights,” it sounds good. Reasonable. No one wants trans people to be discriminated against in housing, employment, and opportunities. But has mainstream media explained that protection on the basis of sex and gender identity are incompatible? That you can’t have both? And that when lawmakers choose to protect gender identity, as in the proposed ERA, they’re choosing the rights of men to self-identify into women’s spaces and sports? If journalists do not do journalism, and find sources who can explain the ramifications of gender identity, people don’t know what they’re voting for. There are no longer women’s spaces and sports, and women no longer have any right to say no to men. Have journalists at the New York Times explained how adding gender identity into the ERA would play out in practicality? That, in fact, men who identify as women would have more rights than women? Inclusion sounds lovely, but has it been explained by journalists that in some areas that have been single-sex spaces, inclusion of trans-identified males comes at the expense of safety and privacy for women? If a boy self-identifies into the girls’ track team, it necessarily discriminates against girls’ right to fairness, safety, and privacy in sports and locker rooms.

Mainstream media have abdicated their responsibility to inform the public. Instead, they simply don’t cover stories that don’t support the narrative that allowing men (let’s be real—there are no trans-identified women demanding to access men’s spaces and sports) to self-identify into women’s sports is a good and progressive thing. And for sure, a trans-identified boy winning a girls’ state championship definitely falls into the DO NOT COVER file.

Fox News covered the Oregon track championship, as did the New York Post and NBC News. CNN? Nope. New York Times? Nada. Los Angeles Times? Not an inch. Seattle Times? No. Washington Post? Again, nuthin.

It’s so outrageous that a boy could simply say he identifies as a girl and, bingo, he’s on the girls’ team, and two months later is a state champion, that most people would not believe that happened. Many do not. You hear scoffing, That never happens. Alison Wade, women’s sports journalist, spoke of the Oregon incident as if girls losing opportunities to boys had not just happened. As if it was some hypothetical event in the future. Well it did happen but it was not widely reported.

A women’s powerlifting world record is held by trans-identifed male Anne Andres. That’s outrageous, that never happens! Oh but it did. There’s just no media coverage.

On and on—nearly every weekend a trans-identified male cyclist is on the women’s podium somewhere in the U.S. Just this spring, trans-identified boys competed on high school girls’ track teams in Washington, Oregon, Connecticut, Maine, California. A trans-identified male set women’s NCAA DIII school records in track. A surf league was forced by the state of California to allow a trans-identified male to compete in the women’s category. These events barely register a blip on local media, if at all, and certainly nothing on national media. While individually these are small events, the increasingly frequent drumbeat, across all sports, at every level IS NEWS. Trans-identified males taking opportunities in women’s sports is happening. THAT’S NEWS.

I don’t want to joke about this, but the situation presents itself. I would be remiss if I did not point to the Seinfeld episode in which Elaine goes out on a date and her date “takes it out.” Jerry, incredulously, asks, “How can this be?” and Elaine replies, “Oh it be.”

Men who believe they are women swanning around in lycra while women realize, dazed, that this is 2024 and they have no rights, this circus enabled by media who very pointedly look the other way—oh it be.