This should burst a few narratives, as well as embolden policymakers to use some common sense when it comes to athletic competition. Despite attempts by the media and progressives to shame anyone who questions whether biological males should compete against biological females, the champions of transgender access to women’s sports turn out to be in a small minority. Majorities of Americans oppose those policies at every level of competition except for younger children, and even in that case opposition has a double-digit plurality in today’s Washington Post/University of Maryland poll:

Even as an increasing share of Americans report familiarity with and tolerance for transgender people, most oppose allowing transgender female athletes to compete against other women at the professional, college and high school level, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

The poll, conducted May 4 through 17 among 1,503 people across the United States, finds 55 percent of Americans opposed to allowing transgender women and girls to compete with other women and girls in high school sports and 58 percent opposed to it for college and professional sports. About 3 in 10 Americans said transgender women and girls should be allowed to compete at each of those levels, while an additional 15 percent have no opinion.

At the youth level, 49 percent are opposed to transgender girls competing with other girls, while 33 percent say they should be allowed to compete and 17 percent have no opinion.

The poll was taken as an increasing portion of Americans, particularly younger ones, identify as transgender and the issue of whether transgender females should compete against cisgender women and girls has become a point of social and political debate.

It’s become a ridiculous point of social and political debate. Progressive activists made “follow the science” a nearly religious chant over the last couple of years, but that’s only when science suits them. Advocates of trans access to women’s sports not only don’t follow biological science, they actively reject it as well as the history of athletic competition for women. In most sports, biological males have so much of a physiological advantage over women that it took the creation of parallel categories and later Title IX law to allow women meaningful access to competition. And every time a biological male is allowed to compete against women, the results of those competitions demonstrate the absurdity of abrogating this policy.

Activists and their allies in the media have largely succeeded into bullying opponents into silence on this matter. At the college levels, school administrators have turned into bullies themselves to keep female student athletes from openly opposing these policies, especially those which give biological males who aren’t even physically transitioned access to women’s shower and changing facilities. The NCAA’s leaders are just as bad if not worse, throwing female athletes under the bus to preen for the radical-chic fad of the moment. Opponents who actually “follow the science” of biology are painted as bigots and intolerant, when the truth is that the advocates are the ones that are attempting to bully people out of debating the issue at all.

In fact, that media-Academia dynamic is so strong that it’s surprising to see the Washington Post and University of Maryland actively challenging that status quo with this poll. Kudos to them, indeed, for showing gutless policymakers and school administrators what political reality on this question actually is.

Besides, the solution to this is simple and equitable. If schools want to allow transgenders to compete in individual sports, simply create a transgender category as a voluntary choice. Transgenders can then compete against each other rather than against women, who can then compete on a biologically fair basis and maintain their equity of access to athletic competition.

That would be the tolerant policy, and yet it’s amazing that all of the supposed geniuses who run universities and media outlets have never bothered to even raise that as a possibility, let alone pursue it seriously. They seem to value radical-chic fads a lot more than biological science or common sense.