ORWELLIAN: Women’s College Honors Inveterate Foe of Women’s Rights

Smith College, which presents itself as a women’s college, just granted an honorary degree to a man, and not just any man, but one of the most influential campaigners against women’s rights.

Yes, in a piece of fresh Orwellian insanity, a women’s college granted an honorary degree to Rachel Levine, a man who has fathered children and who has weaponized his medical position as a doctor to attack fairness in women’s sports, privacy in women’s intimate settings, and a generation’s ability to have children.

Levine received the honorary degree at the Smith College commencement Sunday.

To be sure, Smith College’s eligibility requirements for an honorary degree leave open the possibility of awarding men.

“The college will consider women who are exemplars of excellence in a wide range of fields, both academic and non-academic,” the criteria state. “The college will also consider individuals who have had a special impact on Smith College, on the education of women, or on women’s lives.”

Levine has certainly had a “special” impact on the education of women and women’s lives—a horrifically negative one.

Few people have attempted to weaponize medicine quite the way Mr. Levine has.

Richard Becomes ‘Rachel Levine’

To be sure, Mr. Levine is an accomplished doctor. He graduated from Harvard College and Tulane University School of Medicine, training in pediatrics and adolescent medicine. He served as Pennsylvania’s physician general and secretary of health, and President Joe Biden appointed him the assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Around 2011, Mr. Levine decided he was really a woman and went through a process of social transition. He changed his name to Rachel, took feminizing hormone injections, and went under the knife to make his body appear female.

Mr. Levine insists that all of society accept his “transition,” even though it is arguably offensive to real women that he presents himself as one of them. Worse, he has repeatedly condemned commonsense laws protecting women, claiming that these laws represent a threat not just to his worldview but to people’s health.

Gender Ideology

Gender ideology, which Levine champions, teaches that biological sex is not determinative—that a man may be “really” a woman or vice versa, based on a nebulous internal sense of gender. It remains unclear exactly what the source of this “more real” kind of biological sex is, but activists claim that a man need not undergo hormone injections or surgery to remove his organs in order to be “truly” a woman. Activists demand not only that this view be tolerated but that it be imposed throughout society, downstream effects be damned.

Activists demand that women’s bathrooms, changing rooms, and even prisons be opened to men, regardless of whether the men in question have undergone surgery. Anyone with common sense can immediately see the problem, but for those in the back of the class, let me just say it can be rather traumatizing for a young lady to have to undress in the presence of a man, especially if the man is also undressing.

This can also place women at risk of real danger. About half of the men housed in Wisconsin’s women’s prisons have been convicted of at least one count of sexual assault or sexual abuse, for example.

Activists also demand that women allow men to compete in their sports. Again, the problems are obvious to anyone with common sense. Men are, on average, bigger, faster, and stronger than women. (Don’t worry, ladies, you get the last laugh since we also die younger.) When men compete against women, they tend to beat the ladies, unjustly taking trophies and accolades from them. Women don’t just take hits to their pride—sometimes they face permanent injury at the hands of men.

Never mind these threats to women’s safety and privacy, the activists say. The real problem is that gender-confused people need help, and if society doesn’t kowtow to their demands, gender-confused people will commit suicide.

The data doesn’t exactly support this narrative, but even if it did, Americans should reject this emotional blackmail.

Effectively, a loud minority is claiming that all of society must redefine what it means to be male and female in order to prevent that small minority from committing suicide. In the false name of compassion, they seek to impose their worldview in a totalitarian manner.

That’s where Rachel Levine fits in.

Rachel Levine’s Orwellian Gaslighting

You see, across the country, states have been passing laws to protect women’s safety, privacy, and fair play in sports. Levine condemns these commonsense measures, using his authority as a doctor.

In April 2022, he explained what he attempted to achieve in speaking to physicians in training at Texas Christian University. He warned against “very disturbing—and frankly discriminatory—laws and actions that many states are taking that are potentially dangerous, and costing the lives of young people.”

Rather than acknowledging the concerns of critics, Levine attributed the laws to misunderstanding and animus.

“For some people, I think that these issues of gender identity are beyond their experience,” he said. “They don’t understand it, and so they fear it, and that fear can lead to negative feelings and emotions. My goal is to educate about the LGBTQ+ community in general, and to educate about the trans community—that we are people just like everyone else.”

Of course, the problem isn’t fear or lack of empathy. Opponents don’t think transgender people aren’t people—we just don’t want to make women vulnerable.

In a September 2022 speech at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Pediatrics, Levine urged doctors to become “ambassadors” for what he described as “gender-affirming care.”

He championed “acceptance” as a lifesaving message; painted opponents of his ideology as driven by an “agenda” that has “nothing to do with warmth, empathy, compassion, or understanding,” and sent forth the doctors as his new apostles.

“I encourage all of you to think of yourselves as ambassadors to your communities, ambassadors for science, ambassadors for compassion, and ambassadors for care,” Levine intoned.

Of course, the “gender-affirming care” Levine championed involves experimental hormone injections and surgeries, seeking in vain to make men appear female and vice versa. These interventions—God forbid we refer to them as “care”—leave kids stunted, scarred, and infertile.

While Levine has at least practiced what he preaches, he has also expressed gratitude that he did not begin his “gender transition” until later in life, because otherwise he would not have been able to have children.

“I have no regrets, because if I had transitioned when I was younger, then I wouldn’t have my children,” Levine, a father of two, said in a 2019 speech. “I can’t imagine a life without my children.”

Yet Levine seems not to care about the next generation’s ability to have children. Not only does he champion “gender-affirming care” for young people, but he pressured the World Professional Association for Transgender Health—an activist group masquerading as the authority on health care for transgender people—to remove age limits for transgender surgery.

Levine couches his activism in the language of compassion, health, and medicine, but make no mistake—he’s weaponizing his position as a doctor to force broad societal changes that will make women less safe and will remove the possibility of parenthood from thousands of young people.

He is the last person a women’s college should honor.

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