Want to stop the transgender madness? First you must cease using the phrase "biological man."
It's a redundancy that accomplishes nothing and surrenders everything
Of all the strange and inexplicable impulses among otherwise-stalwart critics of transgender ideology, the adoption of the “biological” qualifier is perhaps the strangest of them. In doing this people set out to criticize transgenderism but end up ceding a critical portion of the battle to transgender activists right out of the gate.
This is done by utilizing the strange and heretofore-unheard-of designation of, say, “biological man” to refer to, you know, a man. Here, for example, is a recent television spot in which NCAA All-American swimmer Riley Gaines slams Kansas Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly for supporting male athletes who invade women’s athletic competitions:
“As a child, I woke up at 4 a.m. to swim. Every. Day. And my work got me to nationals.
“But then, I was forced to share a locker room with a biological man. It was uncomfortable and it was wrong.
“In the pool, he claimed a trophy that a woman had earned. This has to stop.
“Laura Kelly vetoed laws to protect women and girls in sports, not once, but twice.
“If Laura Kelly can’t protect women, she shouldn’t be governor of Kansas.”
You see? Gaines wants to rebuke the governor for allowing men into women’s sports, but she can’t even bring herself to refer to the male competitor in question as a “man;” rather she has to call him a “biological man.” Nobody, I think, ever used the phrase “biological man” prior to the transgender debate, and moreover nobody uses it now except when discussing the transgender debate.
Why would Gaines style her criticism so weirdly? The only reason she and many other commentators do this is to try and strike a tenuous middle ground, one in which they can, say, criticize authorities for permitting men to steal women’s athletic accomplishments while still advancing a sort of political sensitivity toward transgender-identifying athletes themselves. By styling a man in a woman’s sporting competition as a “biological man,” critics can frame their argument as one rooted strictly in biological terms: They’re not disputing that the athlete in question is in fact a woman, as transgender advocates claim; rather they’re arguing that he is also a “biological man.”
The primary problem with this framing is that it is factually, scientifically redundant. A “biological man” is actually just a man, inasmuch as the term “man” is itself a biological qualifier. You wouldn’t say “human man,” after all, given that the former is quite obviously indicated by the latter. Nor similarly is there any need to say “biological man.”
And yet many people do, even as they remain stalwart critics of transgender ideology. Here’s Ben Shapiro a while ago, for instance:
Ben Shapiro is an incisive and relentless critic of much of progressive ideology but here he just crashes and burns. Imagine how much forceful this critique would be if the word “biological” were removed from it entirely. Why would anyone who wants to attack transgender ideology weaken their own argument in this way?
So far as I can tell, it’s meant as a sort of timid sop to transgender activists: Critics quite plainly see this charade for the falsehood that it is, but they’re also afraid of truly offending the transgender coalition they’re directly criticizing. So they attempt to structure their argument in conciliatory, vaguely scientific terms: “Hey, man, I’m just talking about biology here, I’m not talking about ‘gender identity’ or whatever! We can still get along!”
But of course this is a useless exercise. As we noted, the convention itself is redundant and meaningless; if you say “man,” you mean “biological man,” so there’s no need to elucidate further. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a self-defeating approach that will serve only to embolden and strengthen transgender activists. Transgenderism, like much of modern progressive orthodoxy, is relentlessly intolerant of even the faintest modicum of dissent; its adherents tend to be enraged at even the pretense of disagreement. Saying “biological man” will not placate or soothe them in any way at all. They know what you’re trying to do, they hate it, and moreover they’ll correctly recognize you as weak and ineffectual and they’ll attack you with extra vigor and aggressiveness as a result—and they’ll probably win too, given what they’re up against.
If you want to stop men from stealing women’s sports, and if you want to stop men from invading little girls’ locker rooms, you have to just start calling them “men.” That’s what they are. No need to abide by an insane set of rules that hurts vulnerable people and empowers unwell people to do unfair and predatory things. Speak plainly and truthfully and everything will be better, I promise.