Earlier this week, the hashtag #BidenErasedWomen was trending on Twitter for a while. Given all of the endless media buzz about President Biden’s “historic” cabinet and VP picks advancing the careers of a number of women, that might have caught quite a few people by surprise. But the flurry of online activity was being caused by one of the mountains of executive orders that Uncle Joe has been signing. The order in question rolled back yet another of Donald Trump’s mandates in the field of education, reinstating a disastrous policy put in place by Barack Obama back when Biden was playing second fiddle for him. Signed only hours after Biden was sworn in, the order mandates that all schools receiving federal funding (which is nearly all of them) must allow boys who “identify” as girls to compete in girls’ sports and use all of their facilities, including locker rooms and showers. As we’ve seen in previous instances, this is going to wind up “erasing” (or canceling) the college aspirations of some actual female high school athletes. (Washington Times)

President Biden opened a Pandora’s box with his executive order on gender identity and sexual orientation, pushing the hotly contested issue of transgender participation in women’s athletics from the sidelines to the spotlight.

The hashtag #BidenErasedWomen trended Thursday as advocates on both sides of the issue wrestled with the social, political and religious implications of the order signed Wednesday by Mr. Biden “preventing and combating discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.”

“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports,” the order said.

As the linked article notes, one LGBT advocate is quoted responding to the criticism by saying, “there was ‘zero evidence — not a shred — that protecting trans women against discrimination harms cis women.” All of the woke terminology crammed into a couple of sentences may be confusing, but the reality is that the advocate in question is either lying or ignorant because that statement is patently false.

As we’ve discussed here previously, there have been plenty of studies, not to mention real-world examples, proving that the opposite is true. A study published in the Journal of Sports Medicine last year showed that even when male athletes are subjected to hormone therapy for up to three years to help them “transition” into being females, they still retained a distinct physical advantage in athletic competitions of nearly all sorts. And it wasn’t a small advantage, either. Across the board, the biological males performed well enough to make the difference, particularly when performing at the Olympic level.

A previous study by physiologists produced similar results.. The study concluded that “male athletes who identify as transgender women have an intolerable advantage over their female competitors.” These advantages were observed in both muscle mass and physical power even after prolonged treatments intended to reduce their testosterone levels.

Stepping away from academic studies and into the real world of sports, we’ve already seen how this story ends. In Connecticut, there are still lawsuits ongoing over two boys who weren’t terribly successful in track and field events until they went on to win state championships in the girls’ division after declaring that they “identified” as female. Several actual girls were bumped out of their chance to compete at the state level and lost opportunities for sports scholarships.

A man identifying as a woman has taken gold medals in women’s weightlifting competitions. At the 2019 NCAA Division II women’s track national championship, a man identifying as a woman blew away the rest of the field in the 400-meter hurdles by a significant margin, despite never having achieved anywhere near that level of success in the men’s division when “he was still male.” We saw the same thing happen at the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles in 2018.

How many examples and scientific studies do you need before you’re willing to admit the truth? I thought the Democrats were supposed to be the “party of science,” including Joe Biden. Men have distinct physical advantages in most sports and changing the sex category on somebody’s driver’s license doesn’t alter that reality. Joe Biden may not be “erasing women” entirely, but he’s definitely heading down the trail toward the erasure of women’s sports. It’s good to see women calling him out on this, but I doubt it’s going to change his mind.