Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

by Helen Joyce

On this occasion, the Departments of Education and Justice informed all schools, universities and colleges that the word ‘sex’ in Title IX – the law that bars educational institutions from committing sex discrimination – should be understood to refer to self-identification. A ‘transgender male is someone who identifies as male but was assigned the sex of female at birth’, the departments declared, and vice versa for a transgender female. When a person transitions, they ‘begin asserting the sex that corresponds to their gender identity instead of the sex they were assigned at birth’. This is so confusing that I will spell it out. The words ‘sex’, ‘male’ and ‘female’ are being used to mean two entirely different things: the immutable biology observed at birth and the identity later declared. The claim is that people born male who identify as girls or women thereby change sex itself (and vice versa for people born female who identify as boys or men). Transgirls are therefore literally female, and have the right under Title IX to use female single-sex spaces.