People are saying Biden’s executive order on gender ideology is the end of women’s sports (some are saying erasure of women) as we know it. Whatever the potential merit of this criticism, it misses the bigger issue.
The problem, primarily, isn’t so much violation of privacy or fairness in competitive sports, but denial of objective truth. Men =/= women, and pretending otherwise isn’t caring or compassionate, but forcing a false ideology onto an entire population, which is especially pernicious when it leads to people (especially children!) to harmful, life-altering hormonal and surgical interventions under the erroneous assumption that it’s a form of treatment. It is certainly not a form of treatment. It is form of abuse, accepted only because of lobbying pressure and people willing to put political correctness before factual correctness. Biden’s move is unacceptable, immoral, and absurd. He is unfit to be President of the United States.
Here are some starting points, some philosophical, others scientific, for the interested and open-minded reader to consider:
Paper on the failures of dividing sex and gender: https://philpapers.org/archive/BOGEAF.pdf
Overview of the failure of “transition procedures” (hormonal and surgical) to positively affect mental health outcomes based on the largest available dataset: https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/transitioning-procedures-dont-help-mental-health-largest-dataset-shows
The book When Harry Became Sally.
Finally (and unsurprisingly), a recent study finds even after hormonal intervention, men still enjoy completive advantages over women in sports.
Bottom line: Gender ideology is a falsehood stemming from an untenable anti-essentialist metaphysics, and does NOT help those who experience gender confusion, who — as human beings — deserve better, more compassionate forms of treatment and research, even if that requires difficult conversation and fighting against the cultural current on controversial issues.