The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has announced that trans women no longer need to modify their testosterone levels, or indeed anything, to compete in women’s sports. It will however be up to each individual sport to set the qualifying rules but if that sport’s governing body agreed with the IOC then that’s likely a death sentence for that sport. Sport has always been the canary in the mine and this is not where sport should go. When global organisations make such announcements they have tremendous cultural force and you could be tempted to think the culture is only going one way on this issue. Not so fast.

Back in 2012 (before the Same Sex Marriage Act was passed in the UK) I said that the progressive agenda wouldn’t rest there and that transgender would be the next area of confrontation. And so it proved. I thought 2015 marked a cultural inflection point for the increasingly vocal trans agenda. I also saw very few reasons to think that this agenda could be stopped and that’s because there were a few things I hadn’t reckoned with.

Firstly, I hadn’t reckoned with the trans-rights campaign massively overreaching. And doing so in increasingly aggressive and violent ways. Instead of contenting themselves with broad rights to change genders and state support and recognition in transition they wanted more. Much more. They began to insist not simply that transwomen should have recognition in their new genders but that ‘transwomen are women’ and that this should be recognized even when they continued to have male genitalia.

Which is why articles such as ‘We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women’ have appeared on the BBC, which up until now has been firmly in the pro-trans camp. There has been coercion & compulsion and often highly abusive responses to two groups: lesbians in particular and women in general, two groups that hadn’t especially been opponents to trans-rights. It was after all LGBTQ+ and feminists conscious of their own struggle for greater rights had generally been sympathetic. To a point.

Secondly, something else happened as those two groups began to stiffen their resolve and objected to women being redefined out of language, having their rights to safe spaces eroded, or to their choices of sexual partners being scrutinized & criticized (not from religious bigots but progressive ones). The resistance became newsworthy and noteworthy and there began to be a measure of scrutiny back on the transgender activists that I don’t think they expected and that they certainly don’t like.

Alongside stories of transition, stories of detransition started to appear. People began to question the use of puberty blockers and why the path to medical intervention seemed to be one with no exits. National newspapers can wonder out loud ‘why can activist groups promote breast binding at events for young people?’ Powerful and liberal women like JK Rowling have stepped in and spoken up and proved to be frustratingly difficult to cower into silence. Celebrities like Dave Chappelle included criticisms in their routines, and scientists are being more categorical in their objections to the idea of changing sex. Mainstream books were written and people agreed with them. There are now LGB groups that have deliberately dropped the T as well as a bunch of other acronyms.

I wonder if the overwhelming victories of gays and lesbians hadn’t made them confident of a similar march to victory. I think that’s what campaigning groups like Stonewall believed. But now they’re under the spotlight in ways they haven’t been for decades. Cozy relationships with power in government and media are being questioned, reviewed and in some cases ended.

There are a few things to consider.

Schools are a key battleground

The place where most people are likely to encounter this is, sadly, in schools. It’s clear that activists have targeted educational establishments and there are an increasing amount of resources and inclusion training are thrown at schools who are all institutionally terrified of being labelled ‘phobic’ anything, except of course Christophobic. But Christians are increasingly up to the task and resources are being developed to help.

There’s an ideology behind the ideology

It’s not science it’s metaphysics. It’s about rights. There are other things going on and this issue is a symptom not a cause. Carl Trueman is your guide here on how that came about.

We need to fight for our daughters

I wonder if the right approach to win public support is not to endlessly argue with ideologues that essentially dominate institutional life but to take another approach: protecting young girls from practices that damage their physical integrity that will (one day) be seen as just as wrong as footbinding or FGM

Time to follow in the footsteps of the anti-footbinders

All of this to say that the path to cultural hegemony for trans activists is no longer as simple or as straight (pardon the pun) as they thought it would be. Resistance has come from surprising quarters and is growing and victory is no longer guaranteed.