The Health and Human Services assistant secretary, billed as the first transgender Senate-confirmed Cabinet official, was honored Sunday by USA Today as a “ground-breaking leader, public health champion, and an advocate.”
“My definition of courage would be to be true to yourself and to be true to who you are, and then to pay that forward, to work toward the common good,” said Ms. Levine in a video on the newspaper’s “Women of the Year” site.
The newspaper’s decision to bestow the honor on a male-born figure was greeted with pushback online from conservatives, feminists and the Babylon Bee, which declared Tuesday that Ms. Levine was its first annual Man of the Year.
“Levine is the U.S. assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he serves proudly as the first man in that position to dress like a western cultural stereotype of a woman,” said the satirical outlet.
