Gender-critical activists insist that concerns about genital inspections are transgender fearmongering. Then another proposal comes along demanding that girls prove their biological sex. Funny how that keeps happening.
There is something deeply strange about a political movement that claims to defend women’s privacy while repeatedly supporting policies that invite strangers to investigate women’s bodies.
For years, gender-critical activists, commonly called GCs or TERFs, have insisted that transgender people are inventing the threat of genital inspections. Bring up the practical consequences of policing bathrooms, locker rooms, or women’s sports, and the response is predictable. Nobody wants to inspect anyone’s genitals, they insist. A simple cheek swab can establish biological sex. Problem solved.
Except it isn’t.
Washington state’s latest battle over transgender participation in school sports demonstrates precisely why the argument falls apart when political slogans encounter real-world implementation.
And after yesterday’s TransVitae article, When Did Feminism Become So Interested in Other Women’s Genitals?, attracted pushback from critics claiming transgender people are the ones obsessed with discussing genitalia, the timing couldn’t be more appropriate.
Apparently, we’re supposed to ignore the people proposing sex-verification requirements and blame the people asking how those requirements would actually work.
That’s quite a magic trick.
Washington Just Made the Argument for Us
Washington’s Initiative 638, backed by the conservative political action committee Let’s Go Washington, would prohibit transgender girls from participating in girls’ school sports. But the proposal contains a provision that should make every parent of a school-age daughter pay attention.
Girls seeking to participate in female-designated school sports would need a healthcare provider to verify their biological sex using reproductive anatomy, genetic information, or naturally produced testosterone levels.
Not just transgender girls. Every girl covered by the requirement.
According to reporting, more than 140 healthcare professionals have opposed the proposal, warning about unnecessary and potentially invasive medical examinations. The Washington State PTA has also criticized the measure, noting that routine sports physicals do not require this kind of sex verification.
Supporters argue that the proposal protects fairness in female athletics and that families can choose among the permitted verification methods. That’s an argument worth examining rather than pretending it doesn’t exist.
But offering three methods doesn’t eliminate the privacy concern. It merely gives families three different ways to surrender information about their daughters’ bodies.
And that’s where the familiar cheek-swab defense starts looking considerably less reassuring.
The Magical Cheek Swab That Supposedly Solves Everything
Whenever transgender advocates ask how sex-based restrictions would be enforced, some gender-critical commentators confidently announce that a cheek swab settles the matter.
No inspections necessary. No uncomfortable questions. Just collect a few cells, run a test, and move along.
Except genetics is considerably more complicated than a high-school biology diagram.
Most people have chromosomal patterns commonly associated with male or female development. But variations in sex development exist, including differences involving chromosomes, hormone production, and hormone sensitivity. Chromosomal information alone does not necessarily provide a complete picture of someone’s reproductive anatomy or physiological development.
Then there’s the practical question of what happens when results don’t match the categories lawmakers expect.
Does a girl with an atypical chromosomal pattern lose eligibility? Does a teenager with a naturally elevated testosterone level suddenly become suspect? What happens when different verification methods produce conflicting information?
Washington’s proposal does not establish clear thresholds for determining sex using the permitted methods, according to the Washington State PTA’s analysis.
And genetic testing isn’t free. Neither are hormone tests. Who pays for them? What happens when a family cannot afford them or lacks convenient access to medical care?
Suddenly, the supposedly simple solution involves laboratories, medical appointments, insurance questions, privacy protections, and decisions about children whose biology doesn’t fit neatly into political talking points.
But sure. Just a cheek swab.
Are We Putting Technicians Outside Every Bathroom Now?
Let’s extend the argument beyond school sports, because gender-critical activists frequently advocate sex-based restrictions in bathrooms, locker rooms, changing facilities, and other public spaces.
How exactly would those restrictions be enforced?
Are we supposed to station a technician outside every women’s restroom with a box of cheek swabs?
Imagine the scene. You’re shopping at Target, you’ve had three iced coffees, and nature is making some increasingly aggressive demands. Before entering the bathroom, however, you’re informed that someone needs to collect your DNA.
Please remain seated. Your chromosomes are being processed.
Obviously, that’s absurd. And to be clear, Washington’s sports initiative does not propose bathroom checkpoints or technicians collecting samples outside locker rooms.
The hypothetical illustrates a real problem with broader demands for sex-based access restrictions: a rule is only as practical as the system used to enforce it.
If nobody checks, how does the restriction function? If someone does check, what triggers that investigation?
Appearance? A stranger’s complaint? A birth certificate? A medical record? An accusation from someone who thinks a woman looks insufficiently feminine?
None of those options is particularly comforting.
And if a woman refuses to disclose intimate medical information to a stranger, what happens next?
The people proposing these restrictions should be prepared to answer those questions before demanding that everyone else accept their supposedly straightforward solutions.
The Women Who Don’t Look Female Enough
One of the most troubling consequences of policing sex-based spaces is that transgender women aren’t the only people who become targets.
Cisgender women who are tall, muscular, broad-shouldered, have deeper voices, or otherwise fail someone’s personal femininity test can find themselves questioned.
This isn’t difficult to understand. If enforcement begins with someone deciding that another woman looks suspicious, then every woman becomes vulnerable to that person’s assumptions.
Consider a masculine-presenting lesbian entering a restroom. Or a woman with facial hair caused by a medical condition. Or a competitive female bodybuilder whose physique challenges traditional expectations.
Should any of them have to produce medical documentation because a stranger decided they looked wrong?
Gender-critical activists frequently argue that women shouldn’t have to conform to feminine stereotypes. On that point, we agree.
But a policy that relies on identifying supposedly suspicious women by appearance risks reinforcing the very stereotypes those activists claim to reject.
You cannot simultaneously insist that women shouldn’t be judged by their appearance and support enforcement practices that begin by judging whether someone looks sufficiently female.
At some point, the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.
Hundreds of Thousands of Athletes, a Handful of Trans Kids
The numbers behind Washington’s referendum make the proportionality question particularly difficult to dismiss.
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association has reported awareness of approximately ten transgender athletes among more than 200,000 students participating in school sports statewide. That is not necessarily a complete count, because schools do not systematically report every transgender athlete.
Nevertheless, the proposal would introduce verification requirements affecting girls across the state’s school athletic programs.
Think about that.
A political campaign centered on excluding a very small population of transgender athletes could create new medical documentation requirements for thousands of girls who have never had their eligibility questioned.
The proposal does not require every student to undergo a genital examination. It allows multiple verification methods. But reproductive anatomy examinations are explicitly among those methods, and medical professionals have warned that cost and accessibility could make them the practical option for some families.
That’s not a hypothetical invented by transgender activists. It’s a foreseeable consequence of the proposal’s actual language.
And when medical professionals raise concerns about unnecessary examinations of children, perhaps the appropriate response isn’t to accuse transgender people of being obsessed with genitalia.
Perhaps it’s to reconsider why these requirements are being proposed in the first place.
Stop Blaming Trans People for Asking the Obvious Question
Yesterday’s article questioned why a movement claiming to defend women’s rights spends so much energy debating women’s anatomy.
Some critics responded by claiming transgender people are the ones constantly bringing up genitals. Here’s the problem with that accusation.
When politicians propose laws classifying people by reproductive anatomy, discussing reproductive anatomy becomes unavoidable.
When activists demand that transgender women be excluded from facilities based on biological sex, asking how that classification would be established is a legitimate policy question.
When a ballot initiative explicitly identifies reproductive anatomy as a method of determining eligibility for girls’ sports, reporting that fact isn’t an obsession.
It’s journalism.
There is a meaningful difference between volunteering unsolicited opinions about strangers’ bodies and examining the consequences of policies that regulate those bodies.
Transgender people did not write Washington’s Initiative 638. They didn’t insert reproductive anatomy into its verification provisions. And they aren’t responsible for the uncomfortable questions those provisions create.
Criticizing a proposed inspection requirement does not make someone responsible for proposing it. That should not require a graduate degree in logic.
Women’s Rights Shouldn’t Require an Anatomy Audit
Competitive fairness in sports deserves serious discussion. So do privacy, safeguarding, and the legitimate concerns of female athletes.
But serious discussion requires examining whether proposed solutions are proportionate, medically justified, affordable, and respectful of the people affected.
It also requires acknowledging that there is no universal, instantaneous, foolproof test that neatly resolves every question involving sex, anatomy, hormones, and human development.
Not every gender-critical feminist supports invasive examinations. Some sincerely believe sex-based restrictions can be enforced without them. Others argue that existing records should be sufficient.
Those distinctions matter.
But anyone supporting a policy that makes access contingent on biological verification has an obligation to explain what happens when documentation is unavailable, disputed, or considered inadequate.
And nobody gets to dismiss concerns about genital examinations as transgender propaganda when reproductive anatomy is explicitly written into a proposed verification system.
The larger issue is whether women’s dignity and privacy remain important when protecting them becomes politically inconvenient.
Because feminism was never supposed to be about giving institutions greater authority to examine women’s bodies. It was supposed to challenge that authority.
If your plan to protect girls requires girls to prove what’s between their legs, perhaps it’s time to reconsider who needs protecting from whom.
