Trans Women Are… Stealing… Role Model…ness?

An incoherent op-ed for the National Review is mad about the decline in traditional values and that trans women are treated as women by non-transphobes.

by Evan Urquhart

Ideally, when you throw spaghetti at a wall, you’re hoping some of it sticks. As Madeline Kearns of the National Review is finding out, however, sometimes you wind up with a bunch of sad, cold, inedible strings on the floor by your baseboard. One says “Drew Barrymore was nice to Dylan Mulvaney,” another “a trans woman was featured in one of Chelsea Clinton’s 48 children’s books,” a third “traditional values are in decline.” Add it all together and you get “Transgenderism is Supplanting Female Role Models,” an essay which argues that there are a finite number of people young women can look up to in the world, and if some of them are trans women… then… something? I’m not really sure what Kearns thinks the end game is, other than the decline of traditional values which is used in her essay as both a cause and an effect.

No matter, though. In an anti-trans polemic the point isn’t to make a coherent argument, it’s to be really fucking mean to as many trans women as you can. The essay starts out churlish and continues as it began. Here’s an excerpt, for flavor:

screenshot from the National Review

Kearns cites record numbers of something she calls “transgender identification in girls” alongside statistics indicating that depression has increased for (cis) girls. “One possible solution is for girls to find better female role models,” she suggests. without explaining how that would solve anything or how she intends to bring it about. She proceeds to list several trans women with a variety of accomplishments and honors who might be considered role models by girls in some way.

Kearns’ conservative audience presumably already believe that traditional values are in decline and every bad thing in the world is the result. So for them it’s probably fine to just list off examples of notable trans women, vaguely wave her hands at the idea that girls and women’s lives would somehow improve if these women did not exist, and call it a day. The rest of us, however, might have some more questions. For example: Would a return to traditional values really result in more cis women achieving the sorts of honors associated with becoming a role model, or would there be fewer because women would be expected to stay out of public life? How would having better role models fix the problem of depression in cisgender girls? How does Kearns propose we ensure that girls have the right role models and not the wrong ones? Is it really just a matter of not honoring trans women, or is there more to it than that? What are trans women actually doing that prevents cis girls from finding cis women as role models? Is there really no difference in a TikTok star like Dylan Mulvaney, an athlete like Lia Thomas, and a public servant like Rachel Levine, in role-model terms? Do people really need all their role-models to be of their same sex, or can boys look up to women and girls look up to men? Wasn’t this article just an excuse to misgender a bunch of trans women, though?

In the end “role models” is left undefined, and its impact unmeasured or even speculated about, because it’s only being used by Kearns as a way to talk about a bunch of trans women she doesn’t like. These women and their accomplishments would normally be far too different from one another to coherently fit in a single article, so Kearns labels them “role models” to fit them all in.

From winning bike races to having children’s books written about them to being honored at the State Department, trans women certainly do exist and are treated as women sometimes! Kearns can’t explain why that’s a problem, but it’s clear that she doesn’t like people who don’t share her values going about their lives peacefully. This suggests she wouldn’t make a particularly good role model for young women herself.