OPINION:
International Women’s Day, replete with ceremonies and demonstrations, has come and gone.
In the United States, demonstrators could have celebrated the unprecedented freedom, prosperity and achievements attained by the fair sex here.
Instead, they mostly whined that because of the Dobbs ruling, it’s getting less convenient to kill unborn babies. They also made shrill demands for all things LGBTQ and especially the transgender movement — the folks working to obliterate womanhood itself.
More meaningful demonstrations were held in non-Western countries such as Pakistan, where women have few civil rights and where “honor killings” of girls happen. Those protests took courage.
Here in the United States, much of the feminist movement has taken a bizarre turn toward outright gender denial — with support at the highest levels.
First lady Jill Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave out “International Women of Courage” awards, one of which went to Alba Rueda, an LGBTQ activist from Argentina who is a biological man.
The reaction was swift. “Nothing screams ‘International Women of Courage Award’ like a dude,” wrote RedState writer Buzz Patterson.
“It’s International Women’s Day — a good time to remember that Democrats can’t even tell you what a woman is,” Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
The Babylon Bee satirized it by running a fake story about President Biden bestowing the “Black American of Courage” award to White actor Robert Downey Jr. for playing a Black man in the 2008 movie “Tropic Thunder.”
“‘If you’re not as black as Robert Downey, Jr., then you ain’t black,’ said the president while standing next to Mr. Jr., who had insisted the award go to someone else while glancing nervously at all of the black people in the room,” the Bee wrote.
All jokes aside, it’s becoming harder to satirize the madness. This is an administration that gave accused luggage thief and nonbinary, dress-wearing activist Sam Brinton a high-powered job in federal nuclear waste management.
The Biden administration also elevated Rachel (nee Richard) Levine, a lad/lass with flowing golden tresses, to four-star admiral in the Public Health Service and assistant secretary of health and human services.
Most disturbingly, they have encouraged schools to steer young children into homosexuality and transgenderism and ordered the Pentagon to promote sexual dysfunction regardless of what it does to our military’s morale, readiness and cohesion.
Communist China, which is gearing up for war with the United States in the near future, can’t help but take heart from America’s ruling elites’ perverse priorities. Xi Jinping may be thinking, “We’d better do something soon before they recover their sanity.”
In late February, Minnesota state Judge Patrick C. Diamond ruled that a man who identifies as a woman can compete in women’s powerlifting. Never mind that men, on average, have at least 20% more upper body strength.
Judge Diamond, who was appointed to the bench by Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton in 2012, oxymoronically ordered USA Powerlifting to “cease and desist from all unfair discriminatory practices,” such as requiring men to compete with men and women to compete with women.
Gender madness is rife in the entertainment world, where the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is being pressured to abolish best actor and best actress Oscars and just honor “performers.”
This is the “nonbinary” road that the Grammys and the MTV Movie & TV Awards have already taken.
Sexual revolutionaries don’t just have a problem with gender. Their problem is with God, who created heaven and earth, male and female, natural marriage and families. The war on distinct sexes is a war on God-given truth itself. It can be sustained only by mandatory lying. This is the soft path to totalitarian conformity, and it’s hurting countless people who need psychiatric help, not confusion.
On the bright side, Sweden and the United Kingdom are waking up from wokeness and shutting down misnamed “gender-affirming” clinics that are doing irreparable harm.
In the United States, more lawmakers — not just Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — are starting to address the issue. Last September, Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin ordered all school districts to require children to use facilities matching their biological sex and prohibit teachers from referring to a student by a different name or pronoun unless parents request it in writing.
In Tennessee, Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed two bills. One of them prohibits giving minors gender-denying drugs and surgeries. The other bill, aimed at drag queen story hours, bans “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors” in public venues or spaces that aren’t age-restricted.
In Arkansas, Mrs. Sanders signed a bill banning “adult-oriented performances” on public property or being funded “in whole or in part” with public money. The bill also bars minors from participating in or attending the shows.
And now, the far-left groups pushing this stuff on children pretend to be for parents’ rights. Seriously. Protesters in Tennessee, some in drag, carried signs saying, in effect, “Trust Parents, Not Politicians.”
Yes, even parents are OK, but only if they sacrifice their children to the gender-denying mob.
In the future, unless wokeness is halted, will there even be an International Women’s Day or a best actress award?
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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