American culture being what it is, the implications of the executive order on sport have received more media coverage than the plight of women in refuges, prisons and those needing medical attention. The Guardian’s headline read: ‘Joe Biden’s gender discrimination order offers hope for young trans athletes’, cheering on the right of second-rate male athletes to obliterate the achievements of first-rate women.

With more males identifying as the opposite sex, actual women and girls are being pushed off podia and are losing out. To combat this, last year 17 different US statehouses passed bills to ensure that athletes’ participation in sport was in accordance with their sex recorded at birth. Montana was the most recent state to consider doing so. In opposition, state representative Robert Farris-Olsen said that passing the bill would violate the right to privacy enshrined in the state constitution and could mean Montana would lose federal education funding, which amounted to $484million in the last fiscal year. It seems that, thanks to President Biden, few states will be able to afford women’s sport let alone any other women-only services.

Trump was an odious character and was clearly no friend to women. But at least his sexist ‘locker-room talk’ was firmly in the men’s. Self-righteous orthodox left-wingers in the UK have been gushing in their praise of Biden, not because of who he is but rather because of who he isn’t. It seems that to them, women’s rights are a fair trade for a new, less obviously obnoxious president. One wonders if the women in mixed-sex hospital wards, prisons and refuges agree.