A Gutted Amendment

College athlete Lia Thomas, whose success in Ivy League swimming competitions has ignited a heated debate over transgender participants in women's sports, may also contribute to the demise of the recent effort to push the long-stalled Equal Rights Amendment past the finish line.

As of now, a net 32 states of the 38 required for enactment have ratified the amendment ("net," because six states that ratified it revoked their ratifications). There are some legal gray areas in these revocations, as well as in the extension of the ratification deadline, but that's secondary to the broader contemporary issue of such an amendment, which provides that:

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Today, the definition of "sex" has gotten murky, with the modification to "biological sex" almost required to distinguish it from the more common and aggressively re-defined "gender," and one would wonder how the courts would interpret the language of the Amendment in present-day activities.

Because, as an Internet acquaintance put it,

The progressive agenda in this area has been co-opted by transgender activists who seek to eradicate the very premise of biological sex other than as a (sometimes unfortunate) "assignment at birth."

The LGBTQ+ community even has acronyms and terminology (because, of course it does) for this:

AFAB and AMAB: Acronyms meaning “assigned female/male at birth” (also designated female/male at birth or female/male assigned at birth). No one, whether cis or trans, gets to choose what sex they're assigned at birth.

Womens' rights has long been claimed by liberals, Democrats, and leftists as their exclusive domain and cause. The recent decision to side... not with the LGBTQ community, but with a small subset of radical activists, is costing them allies. Gay men are being told they should be attracted to transgender men who don't have the "plumbing" they prefer. Women are seeing all the equality and access they fought for being eradicated by the redefinition of "gender." Safe, penis-free spaces for women are now considered transphobic. We all see what's happening to women's sports.

Transgender individuals deserve the same rights and liberties as everyone else. Their "way," for want of a better word, does not, however, deserve exceptional rights, nor does it justify the wiping out of centuries of women's pursuit of equal societal footing.

I'm skeptical of the ERA, because I think it'd do as much harm as good in an era where women have already achieved vast societal gains without this sort of blanket coercion, but if the very definition of "sex" is "whatever I pick for myself," then what'd be the point?