Back in 2016, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg made elitist and demeaning comments about Midwestern rubes who are too uneducated to support transgender bathroom access. The remarks, which resurfaced on Friday, illustrate the patronizing attitude many pro-transgender activists have toward those who dare to disagree with the view that gender identity overrides biological sex. Ironically, transgender activists were triggered by how the former mayor insulted the Midwesterners who disagree with them.

Speaking to an audience at Oxford University and addressing the Brexit vote, Bloomberg said, “We, the intelligentsia, the people who could make it into this room, we believe a lot of things in terms of equality and protecting individual rights that make no sense to the vast bulk of people.”

“They are not opposed to you having some rights, but there’s a fundamental disconnect between us believing the rights of the individual come first and the general belief around the world, I think it’s fair to say, that the rights of society comes first,” Bloomberg continued.

Then came the geographical snobbery.

“If you want to know if somebody is a good salesman, give him the job of going to the Midwest and picking a town and selling to that town the concept that some man wearing a dress should be in a locker room with their daughter. If you can sell that, you can sell anything,” he said.

“They just look at you and they say, ‘What on Earth are you talking about?’ And you say, ‘Well this person identifies his or her gender as different than what’s on their birth certificate.’ And they say, ‘What do you mean? You’re either born this or you’re born that.'”

Here's @MikeBloomberg in December 2016 at Oxford explaining how trans rights simply won't fly in the midwest because only the "intelligentsia" can understand why "some man wearing a dress should be in a locker room with their daughter." pic.twitter.com/g6aa8aB1jq — Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) February 6, 2020

These remarks managed to trigger transgender activists while insulting both Midwesterners and those who believe biological sex takes precedence over gender identity.

Charlotte Clymer, a biological male who identifies as a woman and campaigns for transgenderism, called Bloomberg’s remarks “deeply disgusting and disqualifying.”

“Trans people were living openly in the Midwest long before Bloomberg woke up one morning and decided to start buying elections,” Clymer added.

This is deeply disgusting and disqualifying, and @MikeBloomberg needs to apologize for it. Trans people were living openly in the Midwest long before Bloomberg woke up one morning and decided to start buying elections. https://t.co/zHIbyjkqg2 — Charlotte Clymer 🏳️‍🌈 (@cmclymer) February 6, 2020

Activists like Clymer objected to the idea that biological men who identify as women and use the women’s restroom should be referred to as “some man.” In their eyes, such a person is a woman because he identifies as a woman, regardless of his male DNA, the effects of testosterone on his body from the womb onward, and the fact that his body developed differently from that of a woman.

Yet Bloomberg appeared to suggest that any disagreement with transgender ideology comes from a lack of education and sophistication. He insulted an entire geographic region of the country — the Midwest — by associating it with a lack of education and sophistication.

Yet a broad coalition of conservatives, feminists, and lesbians have allied against this ideology, for a whole host of reasons.

Feminists have condemned the transgender movement as a “men’s rights movement” since it involves biological men forcing their way into women’s spaces. A group of British lesbians tried to separate the LGB from the T, but eventually settled on removing the L from the acronym instead. “Let the L Out” accused the transgender movement of promoting “rape culture” because it “promotes the right of heterosexual males who ‘identify’ as women and lesbians (despite most of them still retaining their male genitals) over the right of lesbians to choose their sexual partners. This new ‘queer’ LGBT politics thus coerces lesbians to accept the pen*s as a female organ and promotes heterosexual intercourse between male and female as a form of lesbian sex.”

It is very rational to oppose the transgender movement on the bathroom issue, specifically. After Target infamously opened its women’s restrooms and changing rooms to biological men who identify as women, voyeurs across the country reportedly took advantage of the policy. In 2017, a 5-year-old boy allegedly sexually assaulted a 5-year-old girl in a girl’s bathroom — after getting in by claiming he was “non-binary.” Transgender provocateur Jessica Yaniv has allegedly used his transgender identity to prey on girls in bathrooms.

Bloomberg does need to apologize, not just for his smug attitude or his politically incorrect phrasing, but also for promoting a movement that puts girls and women in danger. Sadly, he is far from alone among Democratic presidential candidates on this issue — and the others have become savvier in their pandering to this dangerous movement.

Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.