A profanity-laced argument that nearly become a bodily altercation. An auditorium full of individuals turning their backs and buzzing to drown out an anti-transgender protester. A defiant rendition of “This Little Mild of Mine.”

The near-constant disruptions stretched the November assembly of a Manhattan dad or mum council to almost 4 hours. About midway by means of, Maud Maron, a conservative activist and the council’s best-known member, paused to admonish the gang.

“This has develop into theater,” she stated. “Subsequent month would be the tenth month of those histrionics.”

Ms. Maron’s critics say she’s the one placing on a present. As she spoke, she wore a black trucker hat with the blue and inexperienced emblem of “XX-XY Athletics” — a clothes firm whose mission assertion revolves round the concept “ladies’s sports activities want to stay feminine.”

The query of whether or not transgender women must be allowed to play women’ sports activities and the controversy over the rights of transgender folks extra broadly have prompted political skirmishes on county commissions, faculty campuses and the presidential marketing campaign path.

In New York, that query has made the group training council for District 2 — one of many metropolis’s largest and wealthiest faculty districts, overlaying Decrease Manhattan, Midtown and the Higher East Facet — virtually fully unable to operate.

And on the heart of all of it is Ms. Maron, 53, who in March led the passage of a decision that requested town’s Division of Training to rethink its coverage of permitting transgender college students to play on groups that match their gender identification.