Transgender

If you care about logic, it makes no sense.

“‘Having a vagina doesn’t make a woman,’ she said in an interview. ‘Even if many people don’t want to see me as a woman . . .’ ” (“Aiming for Miss Universe, and Transgender Rights,” New York Times, July 14).

Conservative columnist defended casting Scarlett Johnansson as a trans man.

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face and suffer a concussion, a broken orbital bone, and injuries requiring seven staples in the head—before the end of the first round.

In Secretary Betsy DeVos’s latest deregulatory step, the Department of Education has said it will not investigate or take action on complaints from transgender students regarding the open use of restrooms in public schools.

Ryan T. Anderson is the Heritage Foundation’s William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow and one of my favorite writers in Washington. He’s got an uncanny ability to combine razor-sharp arguments with kindness and good faith. He’s the best kind of public intellectual: One who tries to clarify ideas…

For decades, the public schools of Edina, Minnesota, were the gold standard among the state’s school districts. Edina is an upscale suburb of Minneapolis, but virtually overnight, its reputation has changed. Academic rigor is unraveling, high school reading and math test scores are sliding, and…

Hollywood casting has been much in the news, what with the revelation that Harvey Weinstein has for decades been making the most of the old casting couch—and the fact that Weinstein is hardly the only predator demanding sexual favors for the chance at movie roles. Which made it a good time for the…

Meet Scott Yenor.

When we think of trendy endeavors, it’s the fashion and entertainment industries that come to mind, not anything so serious as science. But the new issue of Scientific American is out, and it’s proving yet again that the Bunsen-burner crowd is every bit as modish as the Kardashians.

As the federal investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller digs deeper into the business dealings of Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman for Donald Trump is changing his legal team.

The Scrapbook is far too jaded and worldly wise to be shocked by the article in the Washington Post headlined “Transgender man gives birth to baby boy.” But we were taken aback by one outrageous, insensitive, gender-autonomy-denying detail: The poor infant is called a “boy.” How could they possibly…

Minneapolis

Minneapolis

Camille Paglia is one America's smartest and most fearless writers. Like Elvis, she's the kind of superstar who really needs no introduction—though it is worth pointing out that Pantheon has just published a collection of her essays on sex, gender, and feminism, titled Free Women, Free Men. It's…

It's getting harder and harder to be politically correct, no matter how assiduously one may try. Consider the tale of the poor feminist philosopher who has gotten herself sideways with the prickly Jacobins of her profession.

A transgender advocacy group known as the “Movement Advancement Project"—a name redundant on so many levels it's distracting—is paying to run an ad on Fox News during the Republican national convention. The ad features a transgender narrator being denied the use of a ladies' room and explaining…

Over the last several years people have been led to believe a number of ineluctable demographic truths, most of which turn out to be almost exactly wrong. (I wrote a book about this a few years back, which can loosely be summarized as: "Everything you think you know about demographics is wrong.")

Defense secretary Ash Carter announced a new policy last week to lift the ban on transgender people openly serving in the military. The chairman of the House Armed Services committee blasted the decision Thursday, calling it the "latest example of the Pentagon and the President prioritizing…

"That’s the good thing: As a president I can do whatever I want." Those are President Obama's words. He may have meant it as a joke, but it's true enough: He, or any president, can do whatever he wants, even unwise things—provided they are legal.

The debate over transgender individuals and public facilities yields more heat than light. The Washington Post Outlook section thought it was providing perspective with a recent lighthearted spread on the long history of battles over public bathrooms. Not a word was said about the more problematic…

In its latest assault on traditional Americans mores, federalism, the separation of powers, and common sense, the Obama administration is now claiming that a federal law passed more than 40 years ago (Title IX) somehow requires all public schools across America to provide access to bathrooms and…

Justice and Education department officials Friday sent a “significant guidance letter" to educators throughout the country advising that public schools should allow transgender students to use the bathroom and locker facilities of their choosing—the one for boys (and men) or the one for girls (and…

The Departments of Education and Justice issued guidelines Friday to public schools on how they should accommodate transgender students to ensure their compliance with the administration's interpretation of Title IX, a law passed in 1972.

Four bits of news from the front lines of World War T in the last week or so.

Anticipating edicts from trans-friendly bureaucrats, some states are trying to deal preemptively with the understandable discomfort felt by young women when their public school rest-rooms are opened to young men who “identify" as women. Tennessee legislators are working up a law that would require…

On Capitol Hill, it's appropriations season, and members are sending "Dear Colleague" letters left and right, seeking their colleagues' support for programmatic funding requests.

On Tuesday, the City of Los Angeles announced the formation of a "Transgender Advisory Council," a board selected to "advise City leaders on issues facing the trans community."

Recently, the Atlantic magazine held a summit in Washington on gay rights. Describing what took place as a "summit," however, might be generous. As far as civil discourse goes, what took place was more of a nadir. And it is a worrying sign that the antidemocratic mania we've seen on college…

Coming soon to a girls' locker room in a high school near you: the Obama administration's transgender gendarmes.

Last week was one of those quiet Election Days where, on the surface, nothing much happened. But the “nothing much” might actually be something. We may have seen voters begin to pump the brakes on runaway liberalism.

Hillary Clinton said the lack of medical insurance coverage for gender-reassignment surgery is an issue that's "going to have to be dealt with." At a townhall campaign event in Nevada Tuesday, a woman who said she was the mother of a transgendered person asked the Democratic candidate about…

The New York Times has an alarming article today about the movement to push sex change operations at earlier and earlier ages. It contains this detail:

Jon Stewart’s shrewdness as a crowd pleaser has never been more evident than in his treatment of Caitlyn Jenner. Earlier this week, when Bruce Jenner’s sexual transformation made the cover of Vanity Fair, Stewart strung together a series of television commentaries about Jenner’s appearance. Most,…

The speed with which the transgender agenda is moving may end up making the same-sex marriage debate look slow and deliberative by comparison. And now Scholastic, the children's publisher that specializes in distributing and selling books through schools, is poised to bring the issue to a middle…

For the better part of a year, Smith College has been telegraphing that it would soon accept transgender student applications. On Monday, the women’s college flung open the curtain on its new admissions policy. And whether it realizes it or not, Smith has inadvertently done a great deal of damage…

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) isn't just about hard hats and safer machinery anymore. The federal government agency charged with regulating workplace conditions has formed an "alliance" with a "national social justice advocacy organization for transgender people"…

We're living in a transgender moment in America -- which is a little odd, when you think about it. For transgender people are not exactly new to the news: The British travel writer James Morris became Jan Morris as long ago as 1972, and the ophthalmologist Richard Raskind became tennis pro Renee…

The chapter of the Young America’s Foundation at George Washington University is currently threatened with a loss of funding for refusing to attend mandatory LGBT sensitivity training. The student government at GWU recently made this a requirement for all student leaders, and YAF is being called…

Less than four months ago, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice had concluded that the transgendered are among the classes of persons protected, unbeknownst to the framers of the legislation at the time, by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Tuesday's press…

Chicago -- It was the skin​—​smooth and hairless as a newborn’s forearm​—​that I fastened on when I saw Sara Andrews, the first “transwoman” I had ever met, at the Kit Kat Lounge & Supper Club in Boystown, on Chicago’s North Side. The ambiance at the club was glitter balls, silver-leather…

While answering questions from service members in Kandahar, Afghanistan, newly sworn-in Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter revealed that he is "open-minded" about transgendered individuals serving in the military, adding, "I don't think anything but their suitability for service should preclude…

It was a big week in Washington for what blogger Steve Sailer puckishly refers to as World War T: Now that gay rights are utterly in the ascendant, the next Most Important Civil Rights Issue in History is transgender “rights.”

Labor Department Secretary Tom Perez has taken the occasion of the final day of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, as proclaimed by President Obama, to clarify that his department provides the "full protection of the federal non-discrimination laws that we enforce to transgender…