To The Female Executives at Anheuser-Busch and Nike; and, well, Women Everywhere

Men cannot do everything better than women.

Just. Stop.

My great-grandmother could not vote.

When I was in junior high, female administrators could not wear pants. Title IX was enacted after I was born.

The Church, which I love in spite of itself, has not yet figured out how to wholly honor women and the Bible at the same time.

Women are still climbing and battling–living in a world that is overly influenced by looks and shape rather than brains and aptitude.

And yet we are allowing people to redefine what it is to be a woman without a fight. I simply do not understand.

I admit, I had never heard of Dylan Mulvaney before last week. I don’t do TiK Tok. I’m not likely to go down a rabbit-hole investing hours into watching Days of Girlhood documenting his transition to her. It’s not my thing. (Hours watching cooking shows? No problem.)

Last week, there was a huge kerfuffle about Budweiser sending her a beer can with her image on it. They were certainly producing it, and likely plopped it in the mail, during National Women’s Month. In 2015, Vanity Fair named Caitlin Jenner one of their WOMEN OF THE YEAR. In 2022, Lia Thomas won the NCAA Title 1 Women’s Championship in the 500-meter Freestyle, while competitors say her male genitalia was exposed in the ladies’ locker room.

I neeeeeeeeed to take a deep breath, stand tall, and say: People who are born male, then become transgender, are not women.

They can be brilliant and funny; charismatic and talented; they can make you laugh, and you can love their hearts; they can be your favorite people on the face of the planet, but a person born with an XY chromosome and a penis cannot become a woman because they want to.

It has no bearing on their value as human beings, but it has an enormous bearing on the value of being a woman.

I get it. So many out there want to feel like they are being nice. More than anything, they don’t want to be mean.

They want to be compassionate. Empathetic. Honoring. Sincere.

These are all noble and worthy desires, but can those intentions (in these circumstances) withstand the scrutiny of reality?

In a recent Facebook post, Influencer and author Jen Hatmaker said: “Trans kids are not identifying as such to win high school track meets.”

Okay. I’m willing to give you that.

But what she (and those who are on the soap box with her) need[s] to understand is that whether or not that is the reason they chose to be trans, competing in girls’ sports (while having been born male) gives them an undeniable advantage. Girls who have worked for years and years to succeed ARE MISSING OUT on opportunities and victories when they are given to transgender athletes.

That’s all there is to it.

Is that nice to the girls? Kind? Empathetic? Honoring?

At those moments, there is an undeniable choice:

There is EITHER fairness for girls OR opportunities for transgenders. There cannot be both, as it is now.

I realize the suicide rate in the transgender community is high. We should all want to eliminate the suicide risk for the trans community, but we need to find a way to do so that is not at the expense of our daughters.

For almost all of human history, societies have existed, treating men as superior, with women having no voice and no choice on many topics. After decades of battling for change and getting some, we are now willingly handing priority over to transgenders as though it was the only morally acceptable option.

The ones who rail loudest against the patriarchy are often also the ones rallying for transgender rights. Those two positions are sometimes directly in conflict.

Think about it: WHY IS THERE NEVER A TRANSGENDER MALE WINNING ATHLETIC EVENTS, BEATING BIOLOGICAL MALES? Why?

Why are there no transgender males heading up advertising campaigns for men’s products?

Why was the transgender male who killed 6 people at a Nashville Christian School openly and consistently referred to by her birth name and counted among the 2% of mass killers who are women in the media, rather than among his chosen gender?

I’ll give you a minute to just sit with those questions…

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A biologically male athlete knows he never needs to be concerned about losing to a transgender male in any athletic endeavor. There’s no malice. There is no hatred or attempt to limit opportunities. There’s only facts: A from-birth male athlete will beat a transgender male athlete with statistical certainty.

Similarly, advertising executives know that men approach personal commerce with practicality: They will not choose a jock strap because someone who was born a woman, but now identifies as a man, wears one.

Men are not handing over sporting honors or influencer opportunities, but women are surrendering them to the movement of “inclusivity”.

As has been the case many times throughout history, men have nothing to lose in this game.

I burst out laughing when the NIKE Ad of Dylan Mulvaney wearing a sports bra came across social media.

I am a top-heavy, middle-aged mother who nursed three children. Gravity is not my friend.

I am entering a stage of life where I might be able to develop a realistic exercise routine. Having watched my parents age, I understand that mobility must be fought for in the later years. I really should go to the gym.

Sports bras are a real-life need for me.

Dylan Mulvaney can offer not one single applicable thing to validate my genuine consumer priorities. When choosing how to advertise, men cannot do everything better than women.

We need to find a way to have rational conversations about this. Cognitive dissonance is tough. People cannot rationally hold two conflicting thoughts as truth at the same time. Whether we acknowledge it or not, one thought will win.

In 2018-2019, William Thomas ranked 514th in 500-yard freestyle. In 2020-2021, Lia Thomas ranked 5th.

As a man, competing in the men’s division, he never stood on the winner’s podium. As a woman, she did. Lia Thomas knows that truth. No matter how many people affirm her journey, she knows the results were significantly different before and after the transition.

From a trophy standpoint, William Thomas was never as effective as Lia. From a reproductive standpoint, Lia Thomas will never be as effective as William.

Lia Thomas, who used to be William, had a physical advantage over women in the pool with her. Lia Thomas, who used to be William, has an irrevocable disadvantage when it comes to giving birth like women her age. She cannot do it.

No matter how badly a transgender person wants change; no matter how uncomfortable they are in their own skin; no matter how many people in the world say differently, they know their newly chosen gender identity comes with enormous areas of shortcomings. Transgender women cannot give birth. Transgender men cannot have spontaneous erections and impregnate a woman with their sperm.

Again, they can be scientists or artists; social workers or attorneys; doctors or actors; they can donate thousands of hours to non profits or build spectacular buildings; they can gather communities together for causes they believe in and change the world for the better; but men cannot give birth. Males transitioning to female cannot get pregnant; a pregnant female claiming to transition to male is a pregnant woman.

On social media, the conversations go south quickly. “I just can’t with all the hate!” One person responded to questioning of drag queen story hours. I am speaking only for myself here, but suspect there are others who agree with me:

I do not hate transgender people. In fact, there are several I love and would (literally) give a kidney to. They are brilliant and tender and talented. They have a complication in life that I do not share, nor do I pretend to genuinely understand. (Spoiler alert: I also have complications in life they do not share, nor could they understand.)

But I do hate the idea of giving kids hormone blockers. I don’t want to give my kids chicken nuggets with hormones in them, much less gender altering hormones.

I hate pretending that chopping off body parts is a solution. Do you know how a penis is created for a transgender male? According to the UVA Medical website:

We can give you male genitalia in two different ways:

1. Phalloplasty creates a penis and urethra (to stand while urinating). We use tissue from your forearm or thigh. … 
2. Metoidioplasty takes your existing genital tissue and makes it longer, turning it into a defined phallus. This needs only one surgery.

They carve tissue out of one part of the body to create another.

For transgender women, the Johns Hopkins website mentions this:

Vaginoplasty: This surgical procedure is a multistage process during which surgeons may remove the penis (penectomy) and the testes (orchiectomy), if still present, and use tissues from the penis to construct the vagina, the clitoris (clitoroplasty) and the labia (labiaplasty)

There are often radical mastectomies and facial surgeries involved. It is a brutal road.

And what about the implications for a meaningful sex life? “We are going to take a scalpel to your reproductive organs and radically change your hormone levels” is never going to be on a pamphlet for thriving sexuality.

Again, I have never experienced this but intuition tells me it probably has a negative impact. Are people currently telling the truth about post-transition sexual fullfilment?

And MOST IMPORTANTLY is there any reason on earth we believe a 7 year old could be able to make an informed decision about such radically permanent outcomes?

Is it cruel to not allow a child to identify as their “preferred gender”, knowing that they do not have a brain developed enough to actually understand all the implications? Or is it cruel to start giving kids hormones to transition, knowing it means they will have a medical condition that requires ongoing treatment for the rest of their lives?

As far as I am concerned, we are all just a little bit nuts. Every human has some form of some kind of mental illness and should probably get some help. (In my experience, the ones who fight the hardest against this idea are the ones that need counseling 911 the most.) There is no judgment of value or worth to say trans kids need help, not hormones.

God so loved the world…all the world, not just the cookie-cutter, clean edged world…He sent His Son for all the world to have the opportunity to love Him. I absolutely believe that to be true.

However, I also believe the most loving thing we can do is to live in truth–even uncomfortable truth. And in order to get there, we need to have honest, rational conversations. So let me start: To the female executives at Budweiser and Nike, and all the progressive women out there, PLEASE STOP giving away the honor of womanhood and opportunities for women to people who aren’t.

Thank you.