There’s Only One Maddy Kearns

Please support her brave and valuable work.

Dear NR reader, Maddy Kearns, you might have noticed, is not a sports reporter.   In fact, I don't even know if she likes sports — if she does, it is probably the curling or shinty of her native Scotland.   But there she was last weekend at the NCAA women's swimming championships in Atlanta, Ga., covering what should have been just a sporting event but instead had become an emblem of the trans insanity that Maddy has been fighting against for years now.   She filed multiple pieces about the meet and ensured that there was credible, on-the-ground coverage that didn't share the premises of the rest of the media; i.e., that a biological male going all Michael Phelps on female swimmers is somehow a great advance in our society.   She took several videos capturing the contention surrounding the meet that have gone massively viral, with two of them getting 1.5 million views each. My favorite is a Monty Python-worthy moment of a woman calling out the obvious as an interview with Lia Thomas is played on the video screen at the event: "He's a man!"   We're blessed with a lot of top-notch writers here at NR, but if an editorial genie had asked me to make a wish a few years ago, I might have said, "Give NR a young writer who is talented, productive — and completely tenacious and absolutely fearless on what is going to become one of the foremost cultural battles of our time."   And, lo and behold, that's Maddy Kearns.   If you appreciate her bravery and her valuable work, please help support it. Realizing the significance of the trans fight, especially for the status of women, Maddy took it up when it was almost impossible to imagine how much traction trans activists would gain.   I learned about TERFs through Maddy, who was involved in building cross-ideological coalitions on this issue as far back as 2018.   She wrote a deeply reported cover story a couple of years ago on the abuses of children undertaken in the name of gender reassignment.   She has highlighted the work of the doctors who have had the courage to push back against the madness.   She might be the foremost journalistic defender of J. K. Rowling, who has become a hate figure for maintaining that women are women and men are men.   She has written compellingly about the innate, inextricable differences between the sexes.   I could go on.   Maddy is not a mindless bomb-thrower and is always careful about the facts, but she never gives an inch and doesn't give a damn what the other side says about her.   You don't make combating trans insanity a personal journalistic cause unless you have incredible fortitude.   There are issues where, even if you're a consistent, hard-line conservative, your work will occasionally overlap with conventional thinking and you'll inadvertently get elite praise — say, if you've always warned against Vladimir Putin and it just happens that in this moment most of the center-left agrees.   The trans fight is never like that. All you'll get is dismissed as an obsessive at best, smeared as a hater at worst.   I've seen Maddy get this sort of treatment, and it doesn't affect her in the least.   She's a credit to NR and to our side, and I'm hoping you'll make a statement in support of her journalism.   NR has always depended on the generosity of our readers, confident that they share our cause and are utterly devoted to it.   So, if you believe that the English language and reality itself shouldn't be shredded to advance an ideological agenda . . .   that the intimidation that trans activists rely on is wrong and must be resisted . . .   that the very notion of womanhood itself is under assault . . .   that we can turn the tide if we insist on speaking the truth, no matter how unfashionable it is at the moment . . .   . . . then, please support a journalist who is committed to these propositions and shows it every day.   If we didn't have Maddy Kearns, we couldn't invent her.   And, who knows, maybe we can look forward to the day when facts and reason again gain the upper hand, and she no longer will have to cover sporting events.   Yours, Rich Lowry Editor in Chief   STAND WITH NR No longer wish to receive our notifications? Adjust your preferences.