If you can’t beat them, dismiss them as MAGA.
That seems to be the strategy of our Manhattan Borough President, Mark Levine.
A Thursday piece in the New York Times explored how NYC school parent meetings have became “mean,” focusing largely on a March session that took place in District 2, which runs through Manhattan.
Parents were there to discuss a resolution to add transparency and public review of DOE guidelines — like allowing transgender students to join sports teams in accordance with their gender identity.
According to the Times, “several elected officials called the discussion “’disgraceful.’”
The Times reporter acknowledged that there’s tension about “issues that don’t always break cleanly along party lines.” And yet Levine made it strictly red versus blue — issuing the ominous warning “the MAGA movement has come to Manhattan.”
I would rephrase the Times’ “mean” headline to “How New York City pols got soft.” They cannot withstand any dissenting voices that might permeate their bizarre far-far-left worldview, particularly on the issue of biological boys playing girls sports.
When did raising common sense questions about female safety and fairness become political?
When opponents don’t have logic on their side.
The Times story also puts a spotlight on public school parent Maud Maron, a former progressive Democrat, who is on the District 2 Community Education Council.
“It’s OK if you want to disagree with me, but can’t we even have a polite conversation,” Maron said of the city politicans. “Their ideas will fall apart and, on some level, they know that.”
That’s all that Maron wanted, she said: A conversation about the city’s gender guidelines, passed in 2019, which replaced the phrase biological sex with “gender identity.” As a result, it allows boys who think they are girls to compete in girls sports, and vice versa.
At this March meeting, the CEC passed resolution 248, which simply asks “respectfully … that NYCPS immediately convenes a Gender Guidelines review committee which: Includes NYC PSAL female athletes, parents, coaches, relevant medical professionals and evolutionary biology experts.”
It also asked for the authority to propose amendments.
The horror. A panel of experts to explore this very insane, very new thing that we are doing.
“Girls have the right to single-sex sports,” said Maron, whose daughter is a public school athlete. “It’s very clear, and the majority of Americans agree with that. Instead they’re painting me as some right-wing MAGA lover. I’ve voted Dem my whole life.”
That’s the inconvenient reality for these gender zealots.
Anyone who has done a scintilla of research or reporting on trans ideology knows this issue is hardly partisan and that it blurs all kinds of political divisions. Look no further than the advocacy of JK Rowling, once a liberal icon who is now tarred for her beliefs.
While most people with common sense see this, the gender ideologists treat their side as religious dogma not to be questioned.
“My party went galloping off to the radical fringes, telling women and girls they have to sit down and miss out on being on a sports team,” Maron said.
City’s schools chancellor David C. Banks said, “Won’t you just leave the kids alone?”
In blocking this very important conversation, Banks is leaving girls alone. And out to dry. Without a voice.
Perhaps he and others have chosen to ignore this week’s report about the trans high-school basketball player in Massachusetts — who not only injured a female opponent, tossing her like a rag doll, but reportedly ogled a teammate’s breasts in the locker room.
Banks and Levine’s idea of inclusion means giving males who claim to be females carte blanche to injure or defeat hard-working females on the field and ogle their private bits in the locker room.
This is not an isolated incident.
Levine’s dismissive language completely disempowers female athletes, reinforcing the notion that speaking up will only result in being smeared as a MAGA queen — another deplorable to toss in the basket.
“If a parent or a girl sees what happens to a parent like me, in what universe would they feel comfortable saying, ‘I have a concern’?” Maron said. “I don’t see how our girls have any path going forward.”
Their path in the Big Apple — where pink pussy hats and “The future is female” shirts were once the feminist uniform — is, apparently, to shut up.
And take it on the chin. Like a man.
