Celebrating Self-Destruction

By Madeleine Kearns

Wednesday, January 11, 2023

 

When I attended the NCAA swim championship in Atlanta, Ga., in April last year, there were two swimmers participating who identified as transgender. One was Lia Thomas, a male, whose involvement in the women’s event sparked ferocious controversy. The second was Iszac Henig, a female, also competing in the women’s events, whose transgender identity went largely unnoticed.

 

The fact that no one cared that Henig identified as trans while swimming on the women’s team proved the point that when it comes to competitive sports, the relevant factor is not identity, but sex. In a recent essay for the New York Times, Henig explains why her decision to ultimately compete with men was a liberating experience. Her argument is unconvincing. What emerges from her piece is an example of how trans ideology thwarts women’s full potential.

 

Henig’s is a sad story, one that fits the profile of many troubled young women who come to reject their sex. Henig says that she became convinced of her trans identity “after reading other people’s stories of realization online.” She had struggled with her same-sex attraction and “deeply internalized homophobia.” Later, in the locker rooms, she worried that her “sexuality made others feel uncomfortable.”

 

“The more I clung to womanhood, the worse I felt. Realizing this with the help of my therapist, I dived deeper into queerness,” she writes. She “discovered binders” and, in 2021, proceeded with a double mastectomy.

 

Upon her return to Yale, she had a decision to make. Now that she identified as trans, would she swim with the men’s or the women’s teams?

 

At age 18, Henig had been “one of the top 20 high school swimmers in California and one of the top 100 swimmers in the country.” She reasoned that the women’s team was more “familiar,” she “loved” her teammates, and “also understood that I would have been closer to the bottom of the pack on the men’s team.” Those are all good reasons to stay.

 

The results speak for themselves: “I ended up having the best swim season of my life that year on the women’s team and went mostly undefeated. I won my first individual Ivy League title in the 50 free and, at my first N.C.A.A. championship meet, placed fifth in the 100 free, earning All-America honors.”

 

In other words, Henig was highly successful and warmly welcome on the female team. And yet, she still felt like she didn’t belong, that she would rather be with the boys — even if that meant undermining her performance. She admits that she is “not as successful in the sport” as she was on the women’s team but says she is “trying to connect with my teammates in new ways, to cheer loudly, to focus more on the excitement of the sport.”

 

It’s little wonder that Henig thinks this way. After having body parts removed, it would be difficult for anyone to contemplate going back. But while she concludes that she has “internalized a lifetime of negative messaging around being trans,” the reality, it seems, is that she has internalized a lifetime of negative messaging around being female.

 

Most of us apply a libertarian principle when it comes to transgenderism. We might feel sad that a young woman would be so consumed by self-loathing that she would enthusiastically remove healthy body parts and “cheer loudly” from the sidelines as she allows opportunities to fulfill her potential to pass her by. But ultimately, that’s her choice, and it mostly affects her.

 

What’s important to realize, though, is how she arrived at this choice. Which is not, whatever conventional wisdom may suggest, spontaneously. Henig’s story is peppered with external influence: The online forums, coaches, therapists, surgeons, and friends Henig made all played a part in encouraging her to pursue a path of destructive self-delusion.

 

The same is true, of course, for the male athletes in this debate. People often ask how it is that Lia Thomas can feel no guilt about displacing and demoralizing countless women. Is he a psychopath? Probably he’s simply surrounded by people who tell him he’s a hero.

 

Back to the facts: People cannot change their sex. And encouraging people in self-delusion is not a long-term cure for unhappiness. Perhaps Henig is only harming herself. Still, the truth is worth stating. Henig is a talented swimmer who deserves the chance to excel where she can — on the women’s team.