#Save Women’s Sports: Good News Roundup (Part 2)

Trans-Related Title IX Updates

Hi friends and welcome newcomers!

Note: I added links to the Stronger Women home page to make it easy for you to find the two main topics. See the top ribbon for collected stories about 1) #Save Women’s Sports (like this one) and 2) #Aging Up (older female athletes).

How did men who identify as women become more deserving of women’s rights than women themselves?

So many hurdles before women achieve equal rights to play, compete, win.

Yesterday, Locker Room, Community Pool:

After another satisfying swim, I shower, dry off, zip up my jeans, and pull my sweatshirt overhead. As I sit down on a bench to lace my boots, two exuberant young sisters strike up a conversation with me while leaping around the locker room naked, waving their tiny socks and undies like magic wands. This is life in my lane. You never know when a party will break out. Nearby, their mom is dressing and patiently prompting them to do the same.

“I passed my swimming test!” proclaims the six-year-old.

“So impressive!” I respond.

“I was too afraid to take the diving test,” she adds matter-of-factly, hopping on both feet now, rabbit-style.

Her little sister, about three years old, circles us intently: a jump-roper awaiting her chance to enter the conversation game.

“What’s scary about diving?” I ask the older one, smiling invitingly at Little Sister.

“The board is too high.”

“Having you tried jumping off it?”

Little Sister suddenly sees her chance and announces, “I’M NAKED!”

I laugh, glancing at the mom. “Indeed.”

Now Little Sister points her finger: “And this is my vagina!”

Protection of Girls and Women in Sports

I share this cute kid story not to make the case for all-female locker rooms, though that’s one obvious conclusion. My team and I explain elsewhere why we need that.

I share it to introduce this report: Strangely enough, Republicans and Democrats in Congress both seem eager to protect innocent girls such as these two – though our concerns and proposals differ.

So do our definitions of who girls are. Republicans say girls are just girls: young, human females. Democrats, confoundingly, say that boys who prefer such things as long hair and “girl toys” can be girls, too.

Here’s what those Congressional leaders were up to this week: On January 14, the House of Representatives voted in favor of the Protection of Girls and Women in Sports Act (218-206-1). If signed into law, this would forbid “a person whose sex is male” from participating in athletic programs designated for women or girls, thus restoring Title IX to its original intent, which I described in #Save Women’s Sports: Good News Roundup Part One.

Texas Democrats Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez joined all Republicans in voting for the bill.¹

Democrat Seth Moulton (Massachusetts), who had expressed his support, issued an explainer. His daughter enjoys coed sports, he wrote, which is irrelevant; the bill only addresses programs designated as female-only.

“Under this law, a ten-year-old girl who seems ‘too tall’ or even just ‘too good’ could be targeted by officials and forced to release medical information or have her private parts inspected, which is disturbing to say the least,” he added.

Disturbing indeed. Except there are already laws (such as HIPPA) that protect confidential medical information. And the prospect of anyone’s enforcing Title IX by “inspecting private parts” is a myth. It hasn’t happened in Title IX’s first 53 years, when everyone knew who women were, and isn’t about to now.

Watching the hearings live online was like being in the land of Topsy-Turvy. I heard Republicans — who twice elected a “grab ‘em by the pussy,” toxically-masculine man to the presidency — say reasonable things like, “Girls deserve sports of their own” and "Men have no place in women's sports."

Guess which shot-putter is not a girl? Connecticut high school track team, 2024

Democrats, standing next to a sign that inexplicably renamed the bill the GOP Child Predator Empowerment Act, ignored parents who believe “males who identify as female” should not be allowed to participate on girls’ sports teams (78 percent); minimized girls’ and women’s legitimate concerns for fairness and safety; attempted the magician’s diversion trick by pointing to “more important problems”; and threatened that this law would “allow predators to look inside girls’ underwear.” They wailed “genital exams on children!” so often they seemed determined to traumatize any young spectators.

Where Did My Democrats Go?

Many of us wonder: Where did my Democrats go?

How did men who identify as women become more deserving of women’s rights, according to Democrats’ priorities, than women themselves?

In fact, sex verification happens early and routinely when a family physician signs a sports-participation form clearing a child to play school sports. The form asks about a child’s fitness (heart, lungs, vision) and what sex the child is.

No genital exams are involved — unless you count newborns.

Where’s the Good News?

• The bill passed — and with support from two more Democrats than the zero who voted for it in 2023.

• The Senate is expected to bring their version to the floor soon.

• The incoming president has pledged to sign it.

But it needs Democratic support.

Action Step: Contact Your Senators

Please contact your Senators and ask them to vote yes on the Protection of Girls and Women in Sports Act.

Remind them that female athletes deserve an all-female category. That’s why the female category exists.²

Consider linking to this well-researched rationale by the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group. Unlike most legislators, the six of us are former champion athletes, lawyers, researchers, and administrators with a combined 300+ years of expertise in women’s sports.

We’re a trusted source. We also cite other experts.

And, like Little Sister, my friend in the locker room, we know who girls are.

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Selected Stronger Women essays about the need for female-only sports:

• #Save Women’s Sports: Good News Roundup (Part 1)

• 28 More Reasons Males Don’t Belong in Women’s Sports

• Guest Column by Martina Navratilova

• “I Would Have Been Trans”

• What Does Non-Binary Mean?

1. North Carolina Rep. Don Davis, a Democrat, voted present.

2. The fastest high school boys run faster than the fastest female Olympians.