by Micaiah Bilger
The Biden administration’s changes to Title IX will reverse 50 years of progress for female athletes by allowing biological men to keep competing in women’s sports, pro-women’s sports leaders said Friday at an Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition rally.
The event in Lancaster, Pennsylvania was one of the first stops on the coalition’s Take Back Title IX bus tour, which calls on America’s leaders to ensure equal protections for female athletes under the federal regulation.
“How awkward, how embarrassing, how uncomfortable, how traumatizing it is to share a locker room with a man,” former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines said. “… Put yourself in our shoes. Put your daughters yet in our shoes.”
Gaines began speaking out on the issue after she competed against transgender athlete Lia Thomas. When they tied during an NCAA event, Gaines said she was told Thomas would get to hold the trophy for publicity photos.
Through the bus tour, Gaines and other athletes and coaches aim to raise awareness about changes to the regulation that “strip away protections for women” and “giv[e] them to men,” according to a coalition news release. The changes are set to go into effect Aug. 1.
The campaign kicked off in Pennsylvania, and includes more than a dozen stops in Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Virginia, and other states.
Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education institutions, but Gaines said the Biden administration recently re-wrote regulations to equate sex with gender identity.
“They do this under the guise of progress, but it’s deeply regressive,” she said.
Under the changes, Gaines said a 17-year-old college student leaving home for the first time could potentially find herself in legal trouble if she complains that her dorm mate is a biological male.
Barbara Ehardt, a former NCAA women’s basketball coach and player, said Biden’s changes will reverse progress for women over the past 50 years.
Ehardt said she was 8 years old when Title IX passed, and she has seen the huge impact it made on women’s opportunities. Ehardt currently serves as a lawmaker in the Idaho House.
As a little girl, when people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, Ehardt said she would tell them she wanted to be an athlete.
“‘That’s not what girls do,'” she remembered them telling her.
At the time, she said they were right, but Title IX changed that. Now, she said nearly half of all high school athletes are girls.
“Shame on Biden for turning his back on girls and women. Shame on Biden in his current mental state for pretending that boys and men can be women,” Ehardt said. “And shame on that entire administration … for denigrating girls and women and taking us back to where we were 50 years ago when I was told, ‘That’s not what girls do.'”
Young athletes also spoke about how the allowance of transgender athletes in women’s sports has affected them – physically as well as emotionally.
Payton McNabb, a former North Carolina high school volleyball player, said she was injured during her senior year while playing against a transgender player on an opposing team.
“That was my last game ever,” McNabb said.
Today, the young woman is partially paralyzed, and she said she never will be able to play sports again.
Now an Independent Women’s Forum ambassador, McNabb said she is dedicated to the fight for women’s sports programs.
“Every girl deserves the right to a fair competition,” she said.
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Macy Petty, an NCAA volleyball player at Lee University and Young Women for America ambassador, urged women and girls at the rally to take action, saying, “We can’t wait for more girls to get hurt to take action.”
In an interview after the rally with The College Fix, Petty encouraged young women to speak up and remember they are not alone.
“I remember testifying from my dorm room in the middle of COVID, absolutely terrified. But now my face is on a bus!” she said. “Never underestimate the power of your own voice. Young people all around me are rising up and we’re able to link arms together and be a powerful force.”
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Micaiah Bilger is an assistant editor at The College Fix.
Photo “Riley Gaines” by Our Bodies, Our Sports.
