Gavin Newsom breaks with “progressive” Democrats, proclaims that trans-identified men competing in women’s sports is “unfair”

It’s not only unconscionable for “progressive” Democrats to cheer on trans-identified males (“transwomen”) who compete in women’s sports, but that behavior certainly hurt the Democrats, especially because most Americans, including Democrats, think that this kind of participation should be forbidden:

A recent New York Times/Ipsos survey found the vast majority of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, don’t think transgender athletes should be permitted to compete in women’s sports.

“Thinking about transgender female athletes — meaning athletes who were male at birth but who currently identify as female — do you think they should or should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports?” the survey asked.

Of the 2,128 people who participated, 79% said biological males who identify as women should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports.

Of the 1,025 people who identified as Democrats or leaning Democrat, 67% said transgender athletes should not be allowed to compete with women.

Among 1,022 Republicans, that number was 94%.

You can find the poll results here.

While at first it seems empathic to allow trans-identified males to compete against women, it’s really unfair to women, and to most of us the total fairness is increased by forbidding that competition. (I still think trans-identified males who want to do sports should compete somewhere, either in an “other” league, or perhaps in men’s sports.)  People recognize this, and Democrats who favor this cross-sex competition simply look clueless. (I am exempting any sports in which men and women perform about equally, though I’m not sure which ones.)

As the reader who sent me this new article from the NYT said, “Perhaps the fever has finally broken.” I think it has, for California governor Gavin Newsom, a diehard and largely “progressive” Democrat, is now going along with most Americans. Click below to read the article, or find it archived here.

An excerpt:

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, embarking on a personal post-mortem of the failures of his Democratic Party, suggested this week that the participation of transgender athletes in women’s sports was “deeply unfair.”

The comments by Mr. Newsom, who has backed L.G.B.T.Q. causes for decades and was one of the first American elected officials to officiate same-sex weddings, represented a remarkable break from other top Democrats on the issue, and signaled a newly defensive position on transgender rights among many in his party.

Just as surprising as Mr. Newsom’s remarks was the person to whom he made them: Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old right-wing influencer best known for starting Turning Point USA, the pro-Trump organization that is active on college campuses.

Mr. Newsom invited Mr. Kirk, who has a long history of inflammatory and conspiratorial remarks, onto the debut episode of his new podcast, “This Is Gavin Newsom,” for an 81-minute discussion because, the governor said, “people need to understand your success, your influence, what you’ve been up to.” Mr. Newsom spent much of the conversation reflecting on the myriad ways that former Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign failed to reach key voters during the 2024 election, losing ground with young people, men and Hispanic voters.

Mr. Newsom is widely seen as having presidential ambitions in 2028 — something he joked about on the podcast — and until recent months, he had often sought to project an image as one of the leaders of the Democratic Party’s opposition to President Trump. In December, he cursed Mr. Trump’s name in an interview with The New York Times, but shortly after the president’s inauguration, Mr. Newsom traveled to Washington for a meeting with Mr. Trump to discuss funding for wildfire relief.

I hope, but not sure I exspect, other Democrats to follow his lead. Certainly lost causes like AOC will now follow.

And yes, this is not a huge issue compared to, say, Ukraine, but one’s stand on it is indicative of both one’s moral compass and of one’s sympathy to real feminism.  I’ll surely be called a transphobe for applauding Newsom, but so be it. I don’t of course think that most legal and moral rights of trans people should be abrogated, but there are a few cases where they do conflict with rights of other groups (jails, changing rooms, etc.), and one should adjudicate these things sensibly.  What one shouldn’t do is hurl slurs at people like Newsom who have a rational approach to the issue.