Trans ideology is at the end of the beginning

In early November 1942, the Allied forces finally and permanently gained control of Libya and Egypt from the Axis powers following the Second Battle at El Alamein. Along with the November 8 Allied invasion of Algeria and Morocco in Operation Torch, Winston Churchill saw these successful campaigns as a turn in the momentum of World War II. In an address to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Mansion House on November 10, Churchill famously observed, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”

I thought of these events in the context of several recent victories in the war against transgender ideology. As with World War II in November 1942, there’s still much work to do. But clearly the momentum has shifted toward sanity. Children, girls, and women are the principal beneficiaries.

Broadly speaking, there are three major fronts in the war against transgender ideology: males cheating females in athletics; men invading women’s private spaces; and the medical and surgical mutilation of children. Recent news is very good on two of those fronts: athletics and mutilation. I am hopeful that the momentum in these campaigns will have a positive impact on protecting women’s private spaces.

The integrity of women’s athletics

Over the last several years, boys and men have cheated girls and women out of thousands of opportunities to make school, club, and national sports teams or to place in athletic contests.

These range from stolen places in high school sports in California, Maine, Washington, and Minnesota (to list only a few), to pilfered NCAA championships in swimming and track & field, to cheating on Olympian heights, in boxing, athletics (track & field in the U.S.), and soccer. This battle started to turn a few years ago, when international governing bodies for swimming, athletics, and cycling all implemented regulations protecting the integrity of women’s contests from men. Under pressure from the Trump administration, the NCAA recently followed suit.

In the U.S., 27 states have implemented legislation protecting the integrity of girls’ sports. Laws in two of those states—Idaho (Little v. Hecox) and West Virginia (West Virginia v. B.P.J.)—are currently under review by the United States Supreme Court. Judging by the oral argument on January 13, 2026, it appears that SCOTUS will uphold these laws under Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as amended in ‘72 and ‘74. While limited to these two states’ laws, the outcome of these cases will effectively affirm similar statutes protecting girls’ sports in the other 25 states.

But this is only the end of the beginning. The Hecox and B.P.J. cases are limited to whether states may protect girls’ sports, not whether they are required to protect them. Twenty-three other states still permit boys to endanger the health and safety of girls and to cheat girls out of athletic opportunities. That will take another case, which will almost certainly get to SCOTUS within the next few years. The Trump administration is aggressively pursuing those states’ laws, and numerous private lawsuits are also pending.

Protecting children from mutilating surgery and permanent injury

In late January, a young New York woman won the first medical malpractice lawsuit—along with a $2 million judgment—against gender ideology activists posing as healthcare providers. As a 16-year-old, Fox Varian suffered from a variety of mental health issues, including gender dysphoria. According to testimony in the lawsuit, when she determined that she identified as a boy, her psychologist and surgeon affirmed her self-diagnosis and rushed her into a double mastectomy.

Varian’s mother testified that the surgeon recited the common trope from trans-activist physicians that she’d be better off with a live son than a dead daughter (a lie that was exposed in another recent Supreme Court case discussed below). A New York jury found that the defendants violated the standard of care in making the financial award to Varian.

The judgment in the Varian case had an immediate and broader impact on the war against child mutilation. Immediately after news broke about the verdict, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) issued a statement recommending that mutilating genital and breast surgery not be performed on anyone under the age of 19. Representing about 90% of the 11,000 plastic surgeons in the U.S. and Canada, the ASPS statement said that there is “insufficient evidence demonstrating a favorable risk-benefit ratio for the pathway of gender-related endocrine and surgical interventions in children and adolescents.”

The American Medical Association joined the chorus the next day. “In the absence of clear evidence,” the AMA said in a statement, “surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.”

The ASPS statement was met with immediate approbation by the Department of Health and Human Services. “By taking this stand,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the ASPS is “helping protect future generations of American children from irreversible harm.” Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill echoed Kennedy, saying, “Today marks another victory for biological truth.”

The ASPS and AMA statements constitute a seismic shift, which is almost certainly the effect of the Varian lawsuit. Even though the ASPS claims its decision is based on the 2024 Cass Review in the United Kingdom and a 2025 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (both of which conclude that so-called gender-affirming case does not produce positive long-term results), the timing cannot be ignored. Personal injury litigation is a time-honored vehicle for policy changes in the U.S., and the Varian decision is a case in point. Fox Varian’s courage has probably saved thousands of children from disfiguring surgery, permanent infertility, and a lifetime of chronic health issues related to trans-butchery.

The Varian lawsuit follows the landmark 2025 SCOTUS case of United States v. Skrmetti. In that case, the Court upheld a Tennessee law banning puberty blockers and cross-hormone therapy to treat children who claim to be experiencing gender dysphoria. Two fatal concessions were made in the case by an ACLU attorney, Chase Strangio, who argued against the Tennessee law.

First, she conceded that gender identity is not an immutable characteristic. Justice Samuel Alito asked whether there are people who go back and forth on their alleged gender identity. “There are such people,” Strangio admitted. “So it’s not an immutable characteristic, is it?” replied Alito. This concession removes “gender identity” from a “protected class” under the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause.

Second, Strangio admitted that there is no evidence of increased suicide rates among children who do not receive gender-denying treatment versus those who do. “Suicide,” she admitted, “is rare, and we’re talking about a very small population of individuals with studies that don’t necessarily have completed suicides within them.” In making these concessions, Strangio almost certainly sealed the fate of her own clients.

As Leor Sapir wrote in City Journal, “It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of Strangio’s concessions. Transgender activists and their media allies, gender clinicians, and Democrats have consistently and emphatically told the public that suicide is a serious risk for transgender-identified youth and that ‘gender-affirming care’ is necessary to mitigate that risk.” The ACLU’s own attorney, arguing the most important “gender-affirming” care case in U.S. history, conceded that it is a lie. As noted above, the lie has been used by clinicians to coerce parents into approving mutilating surgery for their minor children.

The Court affirmed Tennessee’s law by a vote of 6 to 3, sending a clear signal to other states that have proposed or passed legislation protecting minors from trans ideologues posing as health care providers.

The fad is fading

Especially among adolescent and teen girls, so-called gender dysphoria has been a clear case of social contagion. Rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) is clustered around social groups of teenage girls, highly influenced by TikTok and other social media platforms.

But the fad is fading. Like anorexia, bulimia, and other social contagions, ROGD is not as cool as it used to be among young girls. This is obviously a good sign, as it takes pressure off parents to deal with the social and medical issues related to gender dysphoria. This, again, is a sign that the winds of war are shifting.

Like El Alamein in 1942, this good news is far from ending the transgender wars. It is neither the end nor the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning. Like the Allies in late 1942, sanity, science, and common sense are now starting to prevail. But there will still be casualties, as the enemies have not yet been vanquished.