Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg took aim at conservatives for trying to protect women’s sports from biological men, claiming that their focus is “getting in the way” his transportation agenda.
In an interview on “The Daily Show,” Buttigieg was asked why if Republicans were “stalling” because they were too “focused on starting culture wars.”
“Well, I do think that the culture wars are getting in the way sometimes,” he replied.
“I mean, just the other day I was testifying in the appropriations subcommittee explaining how our budget was going to help with things like railroad safety, air traffic control, and other transportation needs.”
“We had to take a break so they could all go and vote on a bill to kick transgender teenagers off of sports teams,” he whined.
“That was the priority for the House GOP that day,” Buttigieg stated.
“So these things really are getting in the way of our ability to get work done. We’re literally building bridges, and they are literally banning books.”
Former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who won an NCAA Women’s Championship in 2022 after competing as a middling swimmer in the Men’s category the year before, claimed that feminists are “transphobic.”
Thomas made the remarks on the podcast of former NCAA swimmer Schuyler Bailar, who identifies as a transgender male.
Thomas complained that the parents of her fellow UPenn teammates sent a letter to the NCAA in protest of her participation on the team.
“They’re like, ‘Oh, we respect Lia, as a woman, as a trans woman or whatever, we respect her identity, we just don’t think it’s fair,’ you can’t really have that sort of half-support where you’re like, ‘Oh, I respect her as a woman here, but not here,’” Thomas said.
She added that people shouldn’t be allowed to break down others “as a person into little pieces.”
“They’re using the guise of feminism to sort of push transphobic beliefs,” Thomas charged.
“I think a lot of people in that camp sort of carry an implicit bias against trans people, but don’t want to, I guess, fully manifest or speak that out. And so they try to just play it off as this sort of half-support.”
She also insisted that transgender bias was a “patriarchal ideal” utilized to hold women back.
“At the end of the day, everybody’s trying to — under a true feminist — is everybody trying to come together to sort of break down these patriarchal ideals of what a woman is and who can be a woman and sort of open that up to the very broad range of possibilities that there are,” she concluded.
NCAA swimming foe Riley Gaines skewered Thomas’ recent claims tha banning biological males from competing in the female category was “heartbreaking.”
“Lia Thomas [was] quoted saying, you know, ‘It breaks my heart to see trans kids lose out on opportunities,’” Gaines told Piers Morgan during an interview.
“Replace that with word ‘woman.’ Does it still break Thomas’s heart to see women lose out on opportunities? Because that’s what’s happening.”
Gaines and Thomas tied for fifth place in the 2022 NCAA 200-meter swimming finals.
“From my experience competing against Lia Thomas at the national championships, I watched first-hand women lose out on opportunities,” she detailed.
“I watched women not become All-Americans, missing that eighth and 16th place by one place because they were displaced by a male.”
“This, of course, goes against everything that Title IX was created to protect and now we have the Biden administration, the people in the White House, who are actively working to rewrite Title IX,” Gaines concluded.
A Vermont elementary school recently declared that they would no longer be using “male” or female” pronouns while teaching reproductive health to fifth grade students.
Rather than saying male, teachers will use “person who produces sperm,” and females will be referred to as “person who produces eggs.”
The school’s principal announced the change in a letter to parents on April 20, saying that the swap was a result of the school district’s push for the use of “gender inclusive language.”
“In an effort to align our curriculum with our equity policy, teachers will be using gender inclusive language throughout this unit. With any differences, we strive to use ‘person-first’ language as best practice,” the principal wrote.
Parents Defending Education slammed the lingo change as “dehumanizing” in a statement to Fox News.
“Speaking about anyone in this way is dehumanizing in any context but these new language rules specifically apply to a health unit for 5th graders about puberty and reproduction,” a spokesperson said.
“It is clear that the school has decided to be derelict in their duty to educate students in the name of equity. If anyone is wondering what it looks like when an elementary school has been captured by gender ideology, this is it.”