Posted on 07/30/2020 8:13:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
Under the NCAA’s current rules, I’m concerned that we will soon effectively have men’s sports and co-ed sports — without any dedicated category for females,' said Madison Kenyon, a college athlete who's lost to transgender athletes.
More than 300 high-profile female athletes signed a letter released Wednesday asking the National College Athletic Association Board of Governors to preserve a “fair and level playing field” for women’s sports.
“True athletic parity for women demands that women’s sports be protected for biological females,” the letter said. “Protecting the integrity of women’s sports has, for decades, played an integral role in remedying past discrimination against women and empowering them to achieve their full athletic potential.”
The letter urges the NCAA not to boycott Idaho over passing the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which requires students to compete in sports based on their biological sex. The American Civil Liberties Union has challenged Idaho’s law in a lawsuit representing transgender athlete Lindsay Hecox, and attempted to start a boycott of the state.
The athletes who signed the letter — including world-class competitors as well as college athletes — insisted the issue was one of fairness, not politics. “Fairness for female athletes should not be a political or partisan issue,” they said. “We athletes have diverse views on many topics, but stand united on this fact: protecting the integrity of women’s sports is pro-woman, pro-fairness, and consistent with the purpose and promise of Title IX.”
Madison Kenyon and Mary Kate Marshall are cross country and track and field athletes at Idaho State University who signed the letter, and have lost to transgender competitors at the NCAA Big Sky Conference. Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, they’ve filed a motion supporting the Idaho law in the Hecox case.
“Allowing males to enter women’s sports eliminates the connection between an athlete’s effort and her success,” Kenyon said. “Under the NCAA’s current rules, I’m concerned that we will soon effectively have men’s sports and co-ed sports — without any dedicated category for females only.”
Meanwhile, a poll by Just The News and Scott Rasmussen last month found that three times as many Americans believed biological males should not be allowed to compete in women’s sports as thought they should.
“Activists like the ACLU are completely out of touch with what the vast majority of Americans actually want and believe about what’s fair to female athletes,” said Christiana Holcomb, an attorney from Alliance Defending Freedom who is representing the young women.
Those activists organizations calling for boycotts of Idaho “are just representing the voices that are the loudest,” Marshall added. “That’s why it’s so important that we’re standing up and representing ourselves.”
Although Kenyon and Marshall are speaking out publicly on the issue, Holcomb said she’s heard from female athletes who are afraid to speak out or have faced retaliation for their beliefs. “They’re afraid of the backlash that they might get on social media, of being labeled a transphobe or a hater,” she said, “everything except what they actually are: which is courageous, for standing up for women’s rights and women’s opportunity.”
Marshall also noted that at competitions, teams have to share locker rooms and lodging. “We have to share pretty much everything,” she said. While she hasn’t personally shared a facility with a transgender athlete, the inclusion of biological males on female teams raises concerns about shared showers and sleeping arrangements for traveling teams.
Chelsea Mitchell is another track athlete who’s suing to protect women’s sports in Connecticut. In high school, racing against transgender athletes, she lost out on four state championship titles and two All-New-England awards. “Going into college, I want a better playing field,” she said. “I want it to be more fair.”
“Anytime you allow a biological male into their category and allow them to take away spots and push female athletes down in the rankings, that is discrimination against female athletes because Title IX was designed to give them those opportunities,” Holcomb added. “There’s a lot of loud activist organizations out there that are striving to tell the American public that this is the way that sports should look and telling female athletes that they need to be silent.”
The letter’s signers also include cyclist Jennifer Wagner-Assali, who came in third place behind transgender competitor Rachel McKinnon in the UCI Masters Track World Championship in 2018, and marathon swimmer Sandra Bucha-Kerscher, a pioneer for women’s opportunities in sports during the 1970s. It’s also signed by Cynthia Monteleone, an award-winning track runner and high school track coach whose daughter is a track athlete.
Since Hecox and the ACLU filed their lawsuit, the Washington Post and Sports Illustrated have profiled Hecox, but the Sports Illustrated article hardly mentioned Kenyon and Marshall and the Post didn’t mention them at all.
The activist groups pushing against laws like Idaho’s, Holcomb says, are ultimately ascribing to a gender ideology that’s anti-science. “Biology is not bigotry,” she said. “Biology is the whole reason that we have separate sports for women, so that girls can compete and showcase their talents, earn their championship titles and their medals.”
“We hope the NCAA chooses to side with female athletes over activists.”
Very good. Casting pearls to swine and they cry when the mud sticks.
Yup. Don’t mean to be a grammar nazi but it’s ‘sow’.
Maybe Amazon can sponsor some of these women’s sports.
“Women’s Amazon Basketball Team!”
Agreed. All of these 300 woman probably vote straight democrat and then comp!ain when democrats hurt them using their tax money.
Is that the definition of useful idiot or what?
JoMa
NCAA?
Bwahahahahahahahahahaah!
I constantly upset libs whenever the Olympics come up in conversation. I point out that whenever you see our wrestlers get their butts kicked by other nation’s wrestlers you can thank Title IX. They just fume having no reply.
If they'd focused on sports and not spent all their time and effort worrying about past discrimination, they might not be in this fix. Hoist on their own petard, I'd say.
Wish them all the best, but cowardly PC administrators of all levels have sold women down the river. Coupled with cowardly PC coaches and other athletes, it’s a done deal.
After all, XX women are a special minority too.
/S
Why have women’s sports to begin with anyway? Nobody watches it. They are money losers for the university. Its only purpose is to give scholarships to lesbians.
If these “women” truly like sports, go join an intramural team.
I remember some saying about chickens roosting, I’ll thinks of it at some point . . . .
So? Liberals getting mugged by reality is ... well, the start of a lot of things. These women should be encouraged to stand firm and press their case. As the hatefest descends upon them, they will find out who their allies are. They will also start to realize how deep the insanity runs. They are now recruitable.
I’m concerned that we effectively have men’s restrooms and co-ed restrooms. Where were women athletes when that was debated?
Who can blame them.Competing against males is basically unfair.Of course the East Germans were able to pull it off...with some success...courtesy of testosterone injections.
it was funny, until it wasn’t
they will run a third category for trans athletes...
that is the only way.
then they will cry foul for not including them...
boo hoo hoo.
Chickens. Home. Roost. Well girls (is this a valid category of humans anymore?) keep voting Democrat. These God denying demons have barely scratched the surface to the perversions they are planning to unleash.
When you figure out that the way YOU vote is the way it is, maybe just maybe, you’ll vote conservative this year...
You can’t run around clamoring for “equality” while at the same time demanding to keep sports segregated just because you don’t like where “equality” leads in YOUR particular situation.
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