TikTok superstar and Bud Light pitchman Dylan Mulvaney has a problem. Having completed his transition from a man to a woman, he’s not getting respect—at least not in America.

This past October, Mulvaney traveled to London to accept the honor of Woman of the Year at the Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards, a celebration of his transgender journey. During his acceptance speech, he complained, “Some people don’t see me as a woman at all.”

Maybe that’s because he isn’t a woman at all. But don’t tell him that. He’d accuse you of adopting, in his words, “hateful people’s standards.”

Welcome to Trans World, where changing from the “wrong” to the “right” sex is a moral right and a cause for applause. Transgendering qualifies as a “black swan” event, so sudden has been its rise to respectability. Governments, corporations, philanthropies, doctors, therapists, lawyers, judges, journalists, and social media mobs practically fawn over those who renounce their natural sexual identity.

Less observable but even more crucial to the emergence of the transgender phenomenon has been the role of female social dominance, which has grown in strength in the West over the course of decades.

Let’s digress a bit. Back in 1952, anthropologist Ashley Montagu published a prophetic book, The Natural Superiority of Women. Defining superiority as “being of higher nature or character … in any trait, whether biological or social, that confers survival benefits upon the person and the group,” the author argued that women are better equipped than men to run things.

Feminism would not become a mass movement until nearly two decades later. The idea of female superiority would remain on the margins well after that. In the 21st century it’s taking center stage, with the help of compliant men.

A 2022 article, “Female-Led Relationships Give Women Control,” at The Body, a popular LGBT website, explains: 

Female-led relationships (FLR) are quite on the rise these days. Haven’t heard of it? Well, an FLR is one in which the female or femme partner calls all the shots. And we do mean all the shots. This isn’t just a sexy thing, it’s an all-the-time thing. The female partner is in charge of everything in the relationship, from where a couple eats dinner to whether their partner can have access to their finances. It may sound pretty intense, but the people involved really enjoy it.

There are now lifestyle websites devoted to “femocracy” and “designing an FLR.” As those Virginia Slims commercials used to say, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Why are so many women, the ostensibly “weaker” sex, in the driver’s seat? The research of Edward Dutton, Richard Lynn, and E.O. Wilson suggests that much, if not most, of the answer lies in evolutionary traits of personality, belief, and behavior. Women have a greater tendency than men to “rescue” others, whether biologically close or distant. They have a mothering instinct to ensure everyone in a group setting feels equally valued rather than “left out.” And they are more prone than men to express anger in sudden, extreme, and schizophrenic ways.

Feminism can be seen as the missing link in America’s decades-long leftward swing. It is manifest in our “invade the world, invite the world” sense of national mission; the continuous expansion of the welfare state; the proliferation of coercive, female-dominated “human resources” agencies in the private and public sectors; the radicalization of the judiciary; the indoctrination of school pupils; and the transformation of public discourse into controlled, nonjudgmental conversations where all opinions must be valued and respected, as opposed to debates, where opinions are scrutinized and thus can be rejected.

Managed inclusivity and nurturing can be a laudable model for running a family or a classroom. But it is a disastrous model for running a country.

For the transgendered, it’s been a boon. Numbers don’t lie.

In 2014, the Williams Institute, a think tank affiliated with the UCLA School of Law, estimated the transgendered adult population in America at 700,000, a sum that included not just the tiny portion having undergone genital or breast removal, but the much larger portion identifying as the opposite of their birth (or “assigned”) sex. Institute researchers refined this effort two years later with a state-by-state census, concluding that the true figure was 1.4 million. In a subsequent study released in June 2022, the institute slightly lowered that estimate to 1.3 million. 

Especially distressing are the numbers for youth. In a 2017 report, the institute estimated there were 150,000 transgendered persons in the U.S. ages 13 to 17. The 2022 report concluded the total had jumped to around 300,000. 

Underscoring the growing appeal of transgendering among youth was the cover story of the July/August 2018 issue of The Atlantic, “When Children Say They’re Trans.” The article noted that many parents are torn between indulging their children’s trans desires and cautioning them about medical consequences. The author, Jesse Singal, though sympathetic to transgendering, admitted that gender dysphoria can be temporary and that the medical downside of transitioning, even after a reversal (“de-transitioning”), is real.

A new five-year study by Danish researchers, published in the European Journal of Endocrinology, justifies such concerns. Analyzing data from a sample of 2,671 young trans adults on hormone drugs and from a non-trans control group sample 10 times larger, the authors found that transgendered persons who were “assigned male at birth” and used estrogen-boosting drugs had a 93 percent higher risk of heart disease than control group males and a 73 percent higher risk than control group females. Persons who were “assigned female at birth” and who used testosterone-boosting drugs bore a higher risk for cardiovascular illnesses than did the male and female control groups by a respective 63 percent and about 100 percent. 

There are also nonmedical byproducts of a new sexual identity: most damagingly, a new political identity. Trans people tend to be highly emotional and quick to overreact to any criticism. Indeed, there is a subspecies of male-to-female transitioners who takes pride in physically assaulting TERFs, or Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, who are feminists who reject transgenderism.

They also target men.

In the city of Sunol in Alameda County, California, a local school board president, Ryan Jergensen, received numerous death threats from trans activists following the board’s decision in September 2023 to reject a proposal to fly a trans-rights flag over city buildings and to continue to display only the American and California flags. One of the messages he received was, “Enjoy your weekend. It could be your last.” Fearfully, Jergensen justified the board’s action in rainbow language, terming the U.S. flag as “the most inclusive flag on the planet.”

Gay conservative blogger and Washington Examiner reporter Brad Polumbo had a harrowing experience at a recent college debate in Pittsburgh, in which he took the libertarian freedom of choice position against the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles’ argument that transgender medical procedures should be banned by the government.

The presence of Knowles caused about 250 radicals to descend upon the event in hopes of shutting it down. The debate went forward, but only because plainclothes security guards stood in the way of the black-masked radicals, who screeched threats at the participants and set off fireworks and smoke bombs outside the event. “Activists had me scared for my life,” Polumbo recalled in Newsweek.

Tennis great Martina Navratilova has been targeted by social media mobsters for several years. She recently reinforced her pariah status by posting, “Nobody hates all men. But we do hate the ones doing the assaulting and raping. 99% of all sexual assaults are men. Being trans doesn’t change that statistic.” Elsewhere, she noted that male-to-female transitioners who participate in women’s sports are “cheats.” 

Being an avowed lesbian hasn’t earned Navratilova a reprieve. Radical activists responded to her comments with threats, insults, and self-righteous lectures. An LGBT advocacy group, Athlete Ally, snarled:

Martina Navratilova’s recent comments are transphobic, based on a false understanding of science and data, and perpetuate dangerous myths that lead to the ongoing targeting of trans people through discriminatory laws, hateful stereotypes and disproportionate violence.

Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling also has come in for rough treatment. In June 2020, the author of the wildly successful Harry Potter novels retweeted an op-ed about “people who menstruate” with this witty riposte: “People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?” Pro-trans radicals responded with a torrent of insults and death threats. Rowling, though conciliatory, stuck to her guns, tweeting, “I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isn’t hate to speak the truth.” 

Worse than such radicals are parents who force transformations on their minor children. For years, Dr. Anne Georgulas, a Dallas-area pediatrician, had been trying to turn her seven-year-old son, James Younger, into a girl, starting with dressing him as one. Unlike his twin brother, she rationalized, James was showing signs of gender dysphoria and needed hormone therapy. Three medical professionals backed her, supporting her decision to rename her son “Luna.” 

Dr. Georgulas’s ex-husband, Jeff Younger, was rightly furious with her transgender campaign, and sued for custody. He initially lost; a family court jury in October 2019 awarded sole custody to the mother, granting her total control over the boy’s medical care. Younger won on appeal, however, with Dallas County District Judge Kim Cooks ruling that the boy must remain under joint conservatorship. Solace would be short-lived because in August 2020, Dallas County District Judge Mary Brown awarded the “complete medical, psychological and psychiatric care” of James to his mother. A year later, Judge Brown gave Anne Georgulas sole authority over her son’s education, finding her ex-husband to be negligent in making child support and medical support payments.

The crusher came in 2022 when the Texas Supreme Court blocked the elder Younger’s attempt to prevent his ex-wife from taking the kids to California, where a new “trans refuge” law was set to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023. She is now free to surgically transition James … er, Luna, into a girl.

Activists also have made headway in the legislatures. More than 20 states and the District of Columbia now allow residents to select a gender-neutral “X” marker on driver’s licenses, birth certificates, and other forms of ID. Several states in addition to California have enacted trans refuge laws. And Michigan has added “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to its list of protected civil rights categories. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who signed the law, was ecstatic: “I am so proud to be here and I am excited to put our state on the right side of history.”

The most revealing display of pro-trans fanaticism in the legislative arena, ironically, was in a losing cause. In March 2023, Nebraska State Senator Machaela Cavanaugh, an Omaha-area Democrat and mother of three, highlighted her seven-week filibuster over a proposed transgender treatment ban with a three-minute floor speech that defies the imagination. With choreographed escalation, she recited the mantra (available online): “Trans people belong here. We need trans people. We love trans people.” Despite this fugue of fury, the bill passed and became law.  

In California, lawmakers are determined to punish parents who protect their children from the trans juggernaut. In September 2023, the State Assembly and Senate overwhelmingly passed the Transgender, Gender-Diverse, and Intersex Youth Empowerment Act, authorizing judges in custody cases to decide whether the parents affirmed their child’s gender identification. If the parents fail to affirm, they could be in violation of health, safety, and welfare provisions of the California Family Code, and face child abuse or neglect charges.

Naturally, this abomination of law was sponsored by a female, Democratic Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, the mother of a transgendered child. “Parents affirm their children,” she declared. “Typically it happens when their gender identity matches their biological gender. But when it doesn’t, the affirmation starts to wane … Our duty as parents is to affirm our children.”

Mirabile dictu, two weeks later, California’s slick, rich, vapid, leftist  governor, Gavin Newsom, unexpectedly vetoed Wilson’s bill, arguing that it created a single category for punishment that could be used to “diminish the civil rights of vulnerable communities.” This was nonsense, but at least he angered the right people.

In San Francisco, where Newsom had been mayor, the city has begun subsidizing trans people just for being trans. Mayor London Breed, a married, childless black woman and career politician, in November 2022 launched Guaranteed Income for Trans People (GIFT) to provide payments of $1,200 per month for up to 18 months, plus medical, mental health, and financial counseling. “Our Guaranteed Income Programs allow us to help our residents when they need it most as part of our City’s economic recovery and our communities to creating a more just city for all,” she said. The government’s GIFT form asks applicants to select from more than 130 gender, sexuality, and pronoun options, including “Stud,” “Boi,” “Xenogender,” and “Gender Outlaw,” to name just a few.

Actually, there is a case for subsidizing mental health treatment for the kind of people who will fill out this form. It’s just not the kind that San Francisco officials would want.

Perhaps the most dangerous development comes from up north. In 2017, the Canadian government enacted Bill C-16, amending that country’s Human Rights Act and Criminal Code to ban discrimination based on gender identity and expression. “Misgendering”—or refusing to acknowledge another person’s preferred gender pronouns—is now an actionable offense. 

Well, in 2021 a terminated “non-binary” female restaurant employee in British Columbia, Jessie Nelson, took action against her former employer on grounds that supervisors repeatedly addressed her with feminine terms (“sweetheart,” “honey”) rather than her preferred third-person plural pronouns, they/them/their. The British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, which is overwhelmingly female, ruled in her favor. For misgendering “them,” the restaurant was ordered to pay Nelson $30,000 and “implement a pronoun policy and mandatory training for all staff and managers about diversity, equity and inclusion.” 

In bringing “their” case before the tribunal, Nelson testified in a burst of maudlin self-righteousness: 

I am here today in bringing this forward because it is important for me, as a trans person, to have my existence respected. I’m a human being, with a beating heart and a desire to be seen and valued and heard in the world.

No word yet on whether tribunal members were moved to tears and applause.

Transgendered activists in the United States are trying to import the Canadian experience. If opinion polls are any guide, they may succeed. In a recent U.S. survey conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies for Newsweek, 44 percent of all respondents aged 35 to 44 said that using the wrong pronoun “should be a criminal offense.” Just 31 percent opposed criminalization, while 25 percent were undecided. That’s some country we’ve got.

Resistance has begun to crack even at the federal level. In October 2021, the State Department began issuing U.S. passports with an “X” gender designation. And on Oct. 20, 2022, President Biden met with trans icon Dylan Mulvaney at the White House.

Defenders of this not-so-soft totalitarianism are undaunted. In their minds, if a man feels like a woman, then he is a woman; if a woman feels like a man, then she is a man; and if a person regularly crosses sexual boundaries, then he or she is “gender fluid.” Objective reality does not exist for them.

The real right must never give in to transgenderism. It simply must be opposed, and anyone who doesn’t oppose it is not on the right. Transgenderism denies reality, undermines reproduction, and shortens life expectancy. As women are the main drivers of the transgender ideology, men must lead the opposition. 

Men must refuse to be shamed for “opposing equality” or “lacking compassion.” As Sam Francis noted in his essay, “Equality as a Political Weapon,” found in Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism, the idea of social equality is an abstraction. Nobody really believes in it. The true purpose is short-term gain in search of collective dominance. Trans activism is no exception.

The real right must never give in to transgenderism. It simply must be opposed, and anyone who doesn’t oppose it is not on the right.

Men must also refuse to let chivalry override truth. Call out female teachers who use their classrooms for LGBT radicalism and don’t go light on women pushing trans issues during election debates or public hearings. Nice guys don’t win.

Men and women must continue to oppose transgenderism through the legislative branch. So far, 22 states have banned or restricted the use of hormones, surgery, and puberty blockers for trans minors, though some of these bans are being challenged in court. At the national level, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in July sponsored the Protect Children’s Innocence Act to ban “genital mutilation, chemical castration, and sterilization of innocent children.” If their bill is passed, any physician in America providing such services could be charged with a felony. 

Transgenderism occasionally clashes with feminism (e.g., the “TERFs”), but they are united in animosity toward traditional sexual identities. Their alliance makes for a potent political force. That’s why President Biden named the transgender woman Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine to head the Department of Health and Human Services. And that’s why the Senate approved Levine’s nomination by 52-48, with all Democrats and two female Republicans, Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), voting “aye.”

Transgendering is self-deception. Though one sympathizes with those unfortunates who have been misled, resistance is imperative. But it won’t succeed unless the feminist subtext is understood.