Here’s an interesting—and encouraging—trend in public opinion: In 2017, according to the Pew Center, 53 percent of Americans said that a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth—that is, women start out as girls, and men start out as boys. By 2021, the percentage of sex realists had risen slightly to 56 percent. The following year, it rose four points more. Today, the percentage stands at 65 percent.  

The share of Americans who hold the classic conservative view of human nature has risen from barely more than half seven years ago to nearly two-thirds today. Progress!

In fact, Breitbart News has been covering the decline of public support for transgenderism for some time now–the decline is so stark that even the establishment is now conceding the obvious. 

To put this another way, all the transgender activism of the last decade or so has caused a backlash.  The watershed moment came in 2019, when Lia Thomas, born male, started competing in women’s swimming events, defeating real females. One of those females (a real woman) is Riley Gaines, who was deprived of a trophy by Thomas, a result accepted by weirdly woke sports officials.  

As every Breitbart News reader knows, Gaines has since led a crusade for the legitimate rights of girls and women. The honor roll of heroines also includes investigative authors Abigail Shrier and Jennifer Bilek and, perhaps most remarkably of all, author J.K. Rowling, who has turned from Harry Potter to the defense of women, regularly tweeting to her worldwide X audience of 14.1 million.

Thanks to their good work—and to the common sense of a growing majority of Americans—the faux political correctness can be shucked off and the truth can now be proclaimed: Lia Thomas is not a real woman, nor is Rachel Levine, nor is Dylan Mulvaney. They can cross-dress like Corporal Klinger if they wish, but they shouldn’t be legally classified as women. 

Yet the Biden administration has chosen to be on the other side. In April, the Bidenized U.S. Department of Education issued new Title IX rules on transgenderism, seeking to dictate policy for all 50 states on “sex stereotypes, sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.” It doesn’t take much imagination to see how these rules, elaborated over thousands of pages of bureaucratese, will affect the rights of girls in the most intimate of places, such as bathrooms, dorm rooms, and locker rooms.

It is, in fact, amazing how much has changed since the original Title IX legislation was enacted. Back on June 23, 1972, the key language was just 37 words, aimed at protecting the civil rights of girls and women.  Yet over the last half-century, educrats and activists have been piling on the folderol, thereby inverting Title IX, such that a law meant to protect females is now being used to attack them.  (And it’s not just DOEd and Title IX; on May 29, the Biden Department of Labor  tweeted about “menstruators,” without ever using the word women.)  

#Menstruation affects half the U.S. workforce but talking about it at work can be taboo. For #MenstrualHygieneDay, here are 5 easy actions employers can take to help menstruators thrive at work. https://t.co/IwXzPD9huY #PeriodFriendlyWorld #MHD2024

— U.S. Department of Labor (@USDOL) May 29, 2024

We can’t say that we weren’t warned.  The 2020 Democratic Party Platform uses the word “transgender” 11 times, all praising, of course, and promising new powers and benefits.  So this administration is simply following through on the commitments it made to its own activist-transgenderist base. 

In fact, in some places, deep blue states, the transgender agenda is quite popular. Just this month, a transgender woman (that is, a man) won the Miss Maryland beauty pageant, and so will go on to compete in the Miss USA contest in August. In fact, as Breitbart News reported on June 17, just over the previous week, girl athletes in five states–Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire,Oregon, and Washington–were deprived of victory trophies by boys pretending to be girls.   

Meanwhile, in New York, a recent Siena poll found that 59 percent support putting transgender rights into the state constitution, compared to just 26 percent who oppose.

Yet if the nationwide polls are to be believed, Washington, Maryland, New York, and like-minded states are in the minority. And yet a report just on June 25 indicate that the Biden administration is doubling down on transgenderism, seeking to lower minimum ages for transgender “treatment.” That could help explain why Joe Biden is doing so poorly at the polls. 

The November election is still a ways away, and yet even now, there’s a healthy counter-action to Biden’s trans-action. Exactly half of the 50 states have laws against transgender athletes.  In addition, a full 26 states have risen up in opposition to Biden’s Title IX transgender rule; Republican attorneys general and their allies have filed lawsuits across the red states.

Thanks to our constitutional system that distributes power, the woken in Washington don’t get the last word. Indeed, recent precedent bodes well concerted anti-Biden action.  Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has squared off with the Biden administration on border security.  In January, the matter came to a head at Eagle Pass, where Texans had put up a barbed-wire barrier to stop illegal immigration. When Biden “Homeland Security” Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas threatened to cut the wire, Abbott sent troopers to defend the barrier.  Crucially, 24 Republican governors backed Abbott. Whereupon Mayorkas blinked. Now Texas is continuing to build its wall. 

This is good news, indeed: Irrespective of a national election, the red states have demonstrated that when they stick together, they can win. Indeed, just on June 13, Republicans scored a major court victory in Louisiana against Title IX nuttiness. 

If Donald Trump wins the presidency again, he will scrap these transgender rules at the federal level.  Yet it’s quite possible that many blue states will keep them at the state level. 

Will the Trump administration seek to mandate sex-realism in blue states?  

If so, that will likely spawn the same sort of state-based backlash, in the opposite direction, that the Biden administration is now receiving.  

All of which proves we really are, now, two nations: one red, one blue.  A treasured national motto is e pluribus unum (out of one, many). But maybe now it should be e pluribus duo.   

That “duo” will likely be the new reality on sex and gender: Red states will be for women, and blue states will be for, well, who can say exactly what they’re for.  This dichotomy will be disturbing to some, but it’s the reality of diversity.  Or, to simplify the point for these polarized times, the reality of duality: red vs. blue. 

And that could actually be a good thing—a very good thing—for personal and economic freedom.  Noting that the country’s population has nearly tripled since World War II, this author has argued that the U.S. is simply too big for any central authority to micromanage the states.  This is not an argument for secession, let alone civil war.  It’s just an acknowledgement that differences are deep, and so it’s best to let those divergences work themselves out according to local and regional preferences.  This is the cheerful vision of the states as “laboratories of democracy.” 

Moreover, the overall well-being of the country would improve if the states better asserted themselves as laboratories of prosperity. States might draw inspiration from Nevada, which made itself into a gambling haven back in 1931, welcoming in whales.  

To be sure, Las Vegas casinos aren’t so unique anymore, and so Nevada has diversified into light manufacturing and telework. Yet there’s plenty of opportunity for other states to establish themselves as other kinds of enterprise zones, for financial privacy, cryptocurrency, maybe even medical innovation.

Needless to say, state-based experimentation is controversial, especially in Washington, D.C. Political monopolists in Powertown will always seek to squelch autonomy and innovation for sake of their own inside-the-beltway power and ideology.  

That’s e pluribus duo: a vision of live and let live, respecting the ultimate diversity of free thought.  American as apple pie. Of course, we first we have to be done with trans-Bidenism.   

To be sure, Trans-Bidenism may fall away in the wake of Biden’s disastrous debate performance. Yet there’s no reason to believe that Biden’s likely successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, will be any different. So we will have to fight trans-Harrisism.