I hate to have to say this. I put it off a long time because of that. A blogger I respect put up a post a while ago called You’re hurting me. And among the things that are hurting her are:

Every time you point at a transwoman and say “That’s a man!”, you do it to me.

A decade ago, I would have read this, and nodded, “of course.” Palette is by all accounts a great person, and I would have ignored reality in order to not make her feel bad.

I still believe that there’s nothing wrong with ignoring a little reality in order to spare someone’s feelings. People in marriages do this all the time. In low doses, it’s healthy. But the problem with ignoring reality is that at some point, you’re not just hurting the person you’re ignoring reality for. You’re hurting other people, and lots of them.

The question today is no longer about letting some men live their life pretending to be women. I and most people who oppose ignoring reality are perfectly happy to continue doing that. Today’s issue is about whether men will compete with women in school sports. It is about whether men who are obviously men should raise suspicion when they follow a girl into a bathroom. It is about whether children should be mutilated when their parents—or even non-related adults—ignore the biological reality of who that child is.

We created Title IX to provide girls with equal opportunities as boys in school sports. The issue now is whether we should gut Title IX and let boys take over women’s sports as well.

Palette added that:

We can have all sorts of productive and necessary discussions on such subjects as How young is too young to start hormone replacement therapy? or How do we solve the dilemma of biological males dominating girls’ sports?, and I welcome those discussions.

But how can we have those discussions without the foundational element that biological males are males? You cannot ask those questions without saying this child is a man or that person in the ring is a man. Because it’s not just about “therapy” or “dominating”. It’s about actual injuries and physical hurts. It’s about allowing abusive men to pretend to be their victim by shaming service representatives from saying “that’s a man” when an abusive ex calls with all the correct personal information to unlock an account.

The problem with ignoring reality is that eventually reality catches up with you. By ignoring the foundational, biological reality of men and women, today we have young women engaging men in dangerous physical sports, from running to wrestling, because no one at the school is willing to say, “no, that’s a man”. Because we ignored reality in the past, today they’re unwilling to recognize the reality that the physical differences between men and women put young women in physical danger when that happens.

Palette’s issues are the easy issues of the past. She’s fighting the battle of 1990, of Austin Powers yelling “that’s a man, baby,” and ripping some villain’s mask off Scooby-Doo style. But we are well past 1990 and the villain is no longer a make-believe terrorist. The villain now is literally in the ring punching women while the mob cheers.

Reality has surpassed our ability to ignore it. Every time someone else’s daughter is bruised or bloodied because they had to compete physically in football, or in wrestling, or in basketball, with a male claiming to be a female, your fantasy is hurting them.

Every time someone else’s daughter is psychologically and physically bruised and bloodied because they were required to share a bathroom, or a shower, or a locker room with a male claiming to be a female, your fantasy is hurting them.

Every time someone else’s daughter loses opportunities in sports and in scholarships to a male claiming to be a female, your fantasy is hurting them.

Every time a woman is victimized because a service representative was too afraid to say, “but you’re a man!” to their abuser, your fantasy is hurting them.

Every time someone else’s child is physically mutilated or chemically injured because no one in power was willing to say, this is wrong, this is a child, your fantasy is hurting them.

Every time someone else’s loved one is injured, damaged, or assaulted because we refused to make the distinction between who is male and who is female—because we refused to point and say, “that’s a man”, that they should not be competing in women’s sports or using women’s facilities, or are not who they say they are—your fantasy is hurting them.

If you are a mother, or a father, and a man steps into the high school wrestling ring with your daughter, are you to say that you would not point and say, “that’s a man, and he does not belong there!” How will you say he does not belong there if you refuse to say he’s a man?

We are beating and mutilating children in the name of tolerance. We are empowering abusers and victimizing victims. There will come a time when our denial of scientific reality is recognized as the mob madness it is. There will come a time when child mutilation is recognized as the barbarity and evil it is. For all who that barbarism is hurting, it cannot come soon enough.