On May 18, Smith College, a historically women’s institution, awarded an honorary degree to Rachel Levine, the former Assistant Secretary for Health in the Biden administration. This award from a women’s college was ironic, of course, because Levine is a man. While Smith College still claims to be a women’s college, they consider themselves to be “trans-inclusive,” which means they accept men claiming to be women along with actual women.

Honorary degrees have long been used to honor those to whom honor is due, and appropriately so. But at least a few of the graduates had to be puzzled at the sight of a women’s college giving a fake degree to a fake woman. Levine also delivered the commencement address. Despite the awkwardness, the entire episode is a valuable picture of what progressivism creates: a world where symbolism is valued over substance, sentiment over truth, and all the observers who know better have learned to keep their mouths shut to prove what good and decent people they are.

While we’re never too surprised when progressive institutions do progressive things, this moment is out of touch with cultural trends that suggest the woke fever has broken. Despite a decade of assurance from all the smart people that feelings really do determine reality, a 2024 Rasmussen survey found that only 23% of U.S. adults believe that someone can become a different gender than the one God made them.

New York Times/Ipsos polling shows a similar trend: while Americans don’t generally care how you identify, the public is increasingly skeptical of gender ideology in practice. Americans don’t want anyone telling them they must talk to a man like he’s really a woman, they don’t want to pay for cosmetic surgery that will make him look more like a woman, and they definitely don’t want him in the lane next to their daughter at the track meet.

When we look back on the Biden administration 50 years from now, it’s possible their zealous commit to transgenderism could be the defining issue. There are many reasons voters might have preferred something other than more Biden/Harris, including a disastrous foreign policy, record inflation, and serious questions about who was actually in charge. But the Trump campaign’s strongest message in defeating the Biden regime was an ad in which Kamala Harris expressed her support for taxpayer funded gender transition surgeries for federal inmates. The ad finished with a line polling proved was devastating, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”

If transgenderism was the defining issue of the Biden administration, Rachel Levine is the personification of their demise. He never would have gotten the job if the Biden administration wasn’t so zealous about gender theory and DEI, but everyone else might have kept theirs.

Of course, neither the end of the Biden administration nor polling that shows the public rejecting the premise of transgenderism means these debates are over. In fact, every day in America children and their parents are still being lied to about why they’re sad and what will make them feel better. If nothing else, Smith College is here to remind us that there are plenty of people who are still very much for they/them. But you knew that. Since the third chapter of Genesis, there have always been voices asking inquisitively, “Did God really say…?” and there always will be.

So be careful which college you send your kids to and stay vigilant. And the next time you see something like a college giving a fake degree to a fake woman even in the face of predictable public ridicule, you might be tempted to laugh — but instead resolve to make sure your commitment to the truth is stronger than their commitment to the lie.