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.”
Highly doubtful. Individuals such as athletes have highly ingrained political views. It's so bad that somehow they'll blame Republicans for *this* mess, and the MSM will report it as such.
they will run a third category for trans athletes...
* * *
That’s the answer! The trans-Olympics. Trans-NCAA basketball. And make ESPN cover the freak games and the season ending Freak Madness tournament.
Between COVID-19 and this, something tells me collegiate sports is about to suffer a big collapse. By September 1st, we’ll know how all this will turn out.
Will the Dawgs be allowed to practice or play? Will the BLM Football League survive its present form?
Actually it’s sow, then reap. But yeah they made the mess they deal with it. Let’s not forget all the male teams-swimming, gymnastics, tennis, golf, track that were shut down to “even” things up for Title 9 crap.
It is the feminists fault and they have ‘painted themselves’ into a corner because for years they were screaming that women were just as good as men when it came to CEOs.. ADMS, GENs, Pilots, Combat, sports etc etc etc.
Finally enough lib BUllShiff got through the cracks and it turns out that stretch the rules and now boys can share girls locker rooms, play girls softball etc etc and the WOMEN can virtually do nothing because they have been claiming equality.
>> Where were women athletes when that was debated?<<
burn loot and murder rallies I guess.
And I think women who are psychologically confused can go into men’s restrooms b/c men do not care a whit.
The average male can break the average female in half. The average very fit male can break the average very fit female in half. To suggest otherwise is to deny science, mock biology, and create real danger to women and girls.
I agree more funding for lady sports....better to have them on the court/track as opposed to assaulting police officers
True, but they need to wake up...
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