In the past several months, several state and federal lawmakers outside of Massachusetts have announced bills that would ban so-called "transgender athletes" from participating in women's high school and college sports.
While such decisions clearly mark short-term tactical victories for defenders of women's sports, conservative lawmakers' continued use of the term "transgender athlete" actually helps to solidify a strategic defeat in the long run. This is so because such terminology tacitly concedes that there actually exists a new metaphysical category of person ("transgender athlete") in addition to just males and females, when there in fact is no such category or type of person whatsoever.
