It's not that this was the most important or central issue

It's just the one where most people (on the left or center) found themselves asked to say something they really couldn't believe, not by any stretch https://t.co/o4WYN6Kxct

— Mason (@webdevMason) June 12, 2023

Yeah, that was a huge self-own. What really kicked off the backlash was “the biology isn’t real” dogma that developed and was sacrosanct for so long, and that the average person rightly recognized as nothing but hogwash.

And then applying it to sports…what a ridiculous and preventable bit of self-destruction. A lot of people care a great deal about sports, and almost everyone cares about at least one sport. Claiming against all evidence that biological males have no inherent advantage against bio females on average is counter to science, lived experience and common sense. This bit of fatuousness kicked the backlash into overdrive. And as noted it totally did not have to happen that way.