Last week, attorneys representing two female collegiate athletes in Idaho argued on their behalf before a U.S. appeals court, contending that Idaho’s law that protects fair play in women’s sports should take effect. After the governor signed the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” into law last year, a federal judge blocked it.
Attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom represent Madison Kenyon and Mary Kate Marshall, veteran athletes who have to compete against transgender athletes (in this case, biological men) because the federal judge temporarily halted enforcement of the law reflecting Idaho constituents’ concerns over fairness in women’s sports. Medical professionals, feminist groups, and 14 states that filed friend-of-the-court briefs also offered their support in the hearing of the collegiate athletes and their quest to compete on a fair playing field.
At a press conference following the hearing, Mary Kate Marshall, a competitive cross-country and track athlete at Idaho State University, said something profound:
The liberal media is aligned with the LGBT agenda, so most headlines on this topic are phrased in such an acute, anti-female way that it’s a wonder that the whole country hasn’t turned against women entirely in favor of the handful of transgender athletes who compete in sports. Take the headline “Florida house passes bill banning transgender athletes from women’s sports” or a recent favorite, “Wave Of Bills To Block Trans Athletes Has No Basis In Science, Researcher Says,” via NPR.
Laws such as the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” aren’t banning transgender athletes as much as they are protecting girls and women by reinforcing Title IX, which already exists to ensure they are treated equally. Observers, especially liberals, might think the debate is a silly game of semantics — you say “tomato, I say tomahto” — but it’s an important distinction. As Jordan Peterson said in a recent interview with Abigail Shrier (the author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters), “Language tends to be associated with action.”
Banning transgender athletes sounds like something to get upset about; protecting fairness in women’s sports sounds benign. In a bizarre reversal, women’s rights are giving way to men who happen to identify as female and happen to want to compete in a sport they often never have won until they started competing against women.
It’s clear that the only people being treated unfairly here are women and girls — not transgender athletes. Even Caitlyn Jenner, who is transgender, recently said that “it just isn’t fair” for girls and women to compete against biological men in sports. As a former world-class athlete, Jenner would know firsthand the advantages that biological men have against biological women when it comes to athletic competition.
Mary Kate Marshall pointed out something that legacy media outlets, liberals, and the transgender lobby seem to be willfully ignoring: If girls and women continue to lose to biological males in sports in the name of “fairness for transgender athletes,” they will eventually want to quit competing altogether. And who could blame them?
Transgender athletes who identify as female (biological males) will drive women out of athletic competition — and for what? For political correctness? For the sake of liberal ideology? Erasing women from an entire sector, such as athletics, is not only against the spirit of Title IX but wholly inhumane and un-American.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
