War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, and men are women, and if you don’t affirm the latter, Twitter will ban you. But it is propaganda nonetheless, not fact, and as Josef Goebbels once explained, propaganda only succeeds by constant repetition. The truth keeps breaking through, and the only way it can be prevented from carrying the day is by repeating the lie over and over, until people grow accustomed to the falsehood and begin to mistake it for fact. Cheryl Cooky, a professor of American studies and women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Purdue, did her bit for the Big Lie on Monday, writing an op-ed for NBC saying that Lia Thomas, the guy who keeps setting new women’s collegiate swimming records, should be celebrated as Jackie Robinson is celebrated.
Leftists today have embraced insanity on a large scale, and insanity cannot be reasoned with, but since this fantasy and falsehood is being pushed on Americans so relentlessly, it has to be answered point-by-point, or it will gain traction. Cooky declares that Lia Thomas “should be embraced in the history of progress that sports represent and recognized as the trailblazer that she is.”
Jackie Robinson was certainly a trailblazer and should be embraced in the history of progress that sports represent. But what is the difference between Jackie Robinson and Lia Thomas? Jackie Robinson was a member of a group that had been unjustly barred from playing Major League Baseball because of immutable racial characteristics. Lia Thomas has not been barred from anything and never was; nor is he a member of any group that has ever been barred. He is a man who pretends to be a woman, and because he has the physical characteristics of a male, he is able to outperform his female competition in women’s swimming events.
Related: Trans Swimmer Lia Thomas Is a Cheat — Period
In a sane society, Lia Thomas would not be celebrated. Lia Thomas would be banned from women’s sports, or never would have been allowed to enter. But Cheryl Cooky argues that this would be tantamount to separating men and women in schools, bathrooms(!), and restaurants: “Women’s sports are situated at a paradoxical intersection wherein sex segregation is upheld through claims of biological difference, yet equality is prefaced on being treated the same and given the same opportunities as men. If we are to change this, we need to ask some important questions. How does one advocate for equitable treatment while also adhering to the notion of biological difference? If separate is not equal in the case of schools, bathrooms, restaurants or other social institutions, can separate ever truly be equal in the case of sports? Would gender-based discrimination in sports be eradicated if sports were gender-integrated?”
Cooky would likely find that many, if not most, women believe that separate bathrooms for women are not discriminatory, and indeed are necessary. Cases of sexual assault by men claiming to be women and entering women’s bathrooms only reinforce that. Her other question is surprisingly easy to answer: How does one advocate for equitable treatment while also adhering to the notion of biological difference? How about by having sports for men and sports for women and recognizing the difference, so that a dude such as Lia Thomas couldn’t compete in women’s sports? How could that conceivably not be equitable treatment for women?
Cooky dismisses the blazingly obvious fact that “trans women have an unfair competitive advantage and that as a result they will take away opportunities from cisgender athletes,” and likewise ignores the real lesson of Lia Thomas’ career in women’s swimming: the inclusion of men pretending to be women in women’s sports takes opportunities away from real women, makes it virtually impossible for real women to win, and essentially makes women’s sports a male-dominated mockery.
Lia Thomas hasn’t broken down any barriers at all and is no trailblazer. The only thing he has in common with Jackie Robinson is that they’re both carbon-based life forms. Thomas has actually initiated the imposition of a barrier in women’s sports, a barrier between the actual women who are competing and the top prizes in their field of competition, for men pretending to be women can easily capitalize upon their physical advantages in order to claim the top spots in virtually any competition. Lia Thomas has made women’s sports infinitely more difficult for women and vitiated its very meaning. If he is remembered for anything, it will be as the man who destroyed collegiate sports for women. Not exactly the legacy that Cheryl Cooky and her addled ilk have in mind.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member