The 2022 NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships were underway in Atlanta, Georgia last week, igniting a new round of heartbreak. University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas beat out an Olympic silver medalist to win an NCAA Division I title on Thursday and is considered the “favorite” for other women’s events still to come. That’s hardly surprising. Until 2019, Lia went by William and ranked #462nd among male swimmers in the country. Now identifying as a woman, the swimmer has broken swimming records at every turn and could soon be the best swimmer competing in the women’s division in the history of the NCAA.
Thomas has become the face of the debate over transgender athletes, but the same story is playing out all over America. Female athletes who have dedicated their lives to their sport are seeing their opportunities erased by men dominating their field. This is outrageous. Pitting females against males and pretending it’s still a fair competition makes a mockery of women’s sports and undermines the very reason athletics are separated by sex in the first place.
Consider Connecticut, where high school female track athletes were forced to compete against males. As a result, they lost medals, state titles, and other victories they should’ve earned. In fact, ever since the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference started allowing men who identify as girls to compete in female sports, two male athletes have claimed 15 state titles previously held by nine different girls. It’s not just Connecticut runners being affected, either. One of these male athletes went on to win the women’s 200-meter dash at an interscholastic championship, which draws competitors from all over the New England region.
And in 2019, the Division II NCAA national title in the women’s 400-meter hurdles went to a male athlete who competed on the men’s team for three years. As a result, female athletes were cheated out of their place on the podium.
Then there’s Madison Kenyon, a sophomore at Idaho State University, and Mary Kate Marshall, a junior, who both compete on the women’s cross country and track teams for their college. The news that they’d be racing against a biological male who had previously competed on the men’s team sparked a legal battle for fair competition that’s still working its way through the court system.
Each of these stories have one thing in common: the system failed these girls. Laws like Title IX are supposed to protect women’s sports and give female athletes a level playing field. But when females are forced to compete against men, the winner is obvious before the race even starts. It’s simple biology. Regardless of how an athlete identifies, males are typically bigger, faster, and stronger than females. They have larger hearts, lungs with bigger capacity, denser bones, and stronger muscles, giving them more power and greater endurance. No amount of testosterone suppression can change this.
But far-left politicians and the chattering class refuse to acknowledge this. For all their grandstanding about feminism, equality, and women’s empowerment, they are betraying female athletes when their rights are truly under attack. Joe Biden caved to far-left, woke activists who want biological males to compete in women’s sports. On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order calling on schools across the country to let students compete in the sport corresponding with their “gender identity.” Meanwhile, the corporate media has refused to cover the real victims here: women excluded from their own sports.
While liberal elites fail our daughters, Republicans are fighting to save women’s sports. So far, lawmakers have passed legislation protecting female athletics in nine states, with legislation introduced in 26 more. The issue has also gathered national traction, with GOP lawmakers like Sen. Marsha Blackburn advocating for legislation to protect women and girls from being forced to compete against men who claim to be the opposite sex. Republicans will continue to fight to preserve athletic opportunities and scholarships for female athletes, both at the state and federal levels.