The thumb always on the scale.

Right before Becky Pepper-Jackson sets up to shot put, she always taps her left foot on a board at the edge of the throwing circle.

The ritual helps her focus on her form amid the pressure of the track and field competition — not to mention the additional pressure of spectators wearing T-shirts that say things like “Protect Women’s Sports,” which Pepper-Jackson says are worn specifically for her.

The 15-year-old is the sole transgender student-athlete in West Virginia, according to her attorneys, and her bid to continue playing competitive sports is in the hands of the Supreme Court.

Three words in, there’s the thumb – Becky. Followed by she, her, her, her, her, transgender, her, her.

It’s the Washington Post and it picks a side in the first clause of the first sentence. It’s the Washington Post and it picks the side that tells blatant lies. It’s the Washington Post and it reports this story as if women and girls have no rights at all and simply don’t matter.

The justices are scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday about whether Pepper-Jackson should continue competing, considering that a state law bans transgender women and girls from playing on women’s sports teams.

In other words he’s a boy and he shouldn’t be playing on a girls’ sports team. It doesn’t matter that he’s a “transgender girl” any more than it would matter if he were a pretend girl or a masquerade girl. He’s a boy.

Pepper-Jackson’s lawyers argue that the ban discriminates against her for being transgender and violates her constitutional equal-protection rights.

The state counters that the ban is necessary to preserve fairness in women’s sports and that Pepper-Jackson should receive no exceptions. Trans women have an unfair physical advantage, no matter their age, because the athletes were designated male at birth, the state argues, adding in its brief that “biological males are, on average, bigger, stronger, and faster than biological females.”

Oh come on. They can’t expect us to believe that men have an unfair physical advantage because they were designated male at birth. They can’t even expect us to believe they believe that. Men have that unfair physical advantage because they are male. They would be male even if nobody had ever “designated” them anything. The reality precedes the label, and is independent of it, and is emphatically not created by it.

Although the Supreme Court in 2020 found that trans workers were covered by federal antidiscrimination laws, it has recently handed defeats to advocates for transgender rights.

But the purported rights in question are not rights. There are no special transgender rights just as there are no special forgers’ rights or imposters’ rights. Trans people have human rights; human rights don’t include rights to force others to join our personal fantasies.

Polls show that two-thirds of Americans agree with bans on trans women playing on women’s sports teams. The science concerning the biological advantages of trans female athletes remains hotly debated.

The debate is political, not scientific or in any other way factual. Everybody knows males have physical advantages.

Pepper-Jackson was designated male at birth. Heather Jackson, Pepper-Jackson’s mother, has testified that she noticed early that there was a difference between her youngest child and two older sons.

Pepper-Jackson had typically feminine preferences, gravitating toward dresses and asking her mother why their bodies were not alike.

Oh well then. Gravitating toward dresses trumps the physical body every time, yeah?

It’s sometimes hard to believe, the way respected news outlets make fools of themselves over this subject.