OPINION:
One of the first questions pondered in Philosophy 101 is this: “If a tree falls in the woods, and there’s no one there to hear it, did it make a noise?”
Accordingly, if a transgender “woman” were to win the title of Miss USA on Monday night, would anyone know it? Not immediately, at least, because the live telecast of the annual pageant has been relegated to a virtually unknown cable channel, FYI.
How far the mighty have fallen. Not so long ago, there was a time when annual beauty pageants — Miss USA and its older rival, Miss America—aired on broadcast television on one of the big three networks: ABC, CBS, or NBC.
Of course, if “Miss” Nevada, Kataluna Enriquez, the first U.S. transgender “woman” to compete, were to win the national title and tiara (or even make the Top 10 finalists), it would only be because the pageant judges wanted to make a woke, politically correct statement. Still, it would also be one the liberal media would giddily trumpet as another triumph for the minuscule but disproportionately influential LGBTQ lobby.
But it also would be an insult to the other 49 states’ contestants — all of whom are real, biological women. Can you imagine how mortifying it would be for them to lose out to a faux “female”? The real women in Nevada — the ones with XX (not XY) chromosomes — beaten out by “Miss” Enriquez are no doubt still steaming.
“Enriquez, who was also Miss Nevada USA’s first trans contestant,” NPR gleefully proclaimed following the state’s June 27 pageant, “beat out 21 other women for the top spot.” We would delete the word “other” there because amputation, estrogen supplements and testosterone blockers, and silicone injections do not make a real woman.
Yet many of the same left-wing ideologues who brand those who don’t buy into their fearmongering on climate change as “science deniers” are themselves in denial about genetics and chromosome science, which — unlike the extent and causes of climate change — are genuine “settled science.”
“My win is not just a win for the trans community,” said “Miss” Nevada. “It’s a win for all women to be represented.” Quite the contrary: It’s taking a win away from a real woman, in this case, Nevada’s first runner-up Brittany Butler.
It’s unlikely that “Miss” Enriquez’s participation would have been permitted on Donald Trump’s watch. Before running for president in 2016, Mr. Trump owned the Miss USA pageant for two decades, and it aired on NBC, coincident with his stint as host of the network’s long-running reality show “The Apprentice.” The president-to-be sold the Miss Universe Organization, which also produces the Miss Teen USA pageant, to an entertainment conglomerate, now known as Endeavor, in September 2015.
If “she” were to win Monday night and advance to the Miss Universe pageant, “Miss” Enriquez would be the second transgender contestant in a Miss Universe pageant, after Angela Ponce. The latter represented Spain in 2018 but finished out of the money.
Allowing transgender “women” (aka biological men) to compete in the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants is as insulting to real women as Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue featuring transgender models, as it has done each of the past two years.
We will say, however, that it’s less unfair than allowing transgender “women” to compete against biological girls and women in high school and collegiate track and field athletic events, where the physiology of the former almost always gives them a nearly insurmountable competitive advantage.
Monday night’s pageant was the 70th edition of the Miss USA competition, which began in 1952, and if Endeavor feels the need for the pageant to allow biological men to participate to remain socially “relevant,” it should follow the lead of most other 70-year-olds and have the good sense to gracefully retire.
As an aside, FYI’s telecast of the Miss USA Pageant was set to air opposite WWE’s “Monday Night Raw” on the USA Network. Say what you will about pro wrestling, but at least the WWE has the common sense to have separate men’s and women’s divisions.
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