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Time magazine decided to herald the 50th anniversary of Title IX by interviewing Megan Rapinoe, a peculiar decision considering the soccer superstar evidently understands nothing about how the landmark education law actually works.
Despite Rapinoe’s status as a prominent equal pay advocate, she pays little more than cheap lip service to the importance of the federal law before making a mockery of its importance at the moment it intersects with the most vocal and radical strain of transgender activists.
When asked by the magazine where she stands on a number of state bills barring biological boys and men from participating in girls and women’s sports, Rapinoe declared herself “100% supportive of trans inclusion,” blaming “consistent” and “relentless” conservatives for coloring the national conversation about it. But after correctly noting that at the regulation of Olympic, professional, and collegiate sports, Rapinoe seems to prioritize feelings over federal law.
“We’re talking about the entire state government coming down on one child in some states, three children in some states,” Rapinoe said. “They are committing suicide, because they are being told that they’re gross and different and evil and sinful and they can’t play sports with their friends that they grew up with. Not to mention trying to take away health care. I think it’s monstrous. I would also encourage everyone out there who is afraid someone’s going to have an unfair advantage over their kid to really take a step back and think what are we actually talking about here. We’re talking about people’s lives. I’m sorry, your kid’s high school volleyball team just isn’t that important. It’s not more important than any one kid’s life.”
As a moral matter, Rapinoe is free to disagree with whether a vocal micro-minority deserves more favor than the entire cis-female population. But as a question of federal law, your child’s high school volleyball team isn’t just more important than some vague notion of “inclusion.” It’s directly protected by Title IX, the very supposed subject of this interview.
Although Title IX has metastasized into a legal leviathan now dictating how schools govern gender politics from pronouns to rape tribunals, women’s sports were preeminent in its authors’ original intentions. Equal access to education, regardless of gender, the law ensured, would include equal opportunity in athletics. But unlike in other domains, such as employment and housing, why did Title IX still separate genders for sports?
“Separate sports for males and females are necessary to assure that females have the same opportunities as males to participate, to win, and obtain scholarships, prize money, publicity, honor and respect,” a petition to Congress signed by top athletes such as Martina Navratilova reads. “No matter how talented and hardworking, female athletes generally will not be able to outperform males as a group.”
So, no, Rapinoe may not view your child’s high school volleyball team as important as virtue-signaling for her sponsors, but that team may provide the least privileged public school students the scholarships to attend a top university debt-free, and so long as taxpayers foot the bill of the higher education cartel, sports slots and scholarships allotted to women cannot go to biological males with all the advantages of male puberty and testosterone.
Rapinoe, of course, ought to understand the importance of keeping the sexes separate but equal in this one crucial domain. A Title IX beneficiary herself, Rapinoe is now a multimillionaire World Cup and Olympic gold medalist, perhaps the most famous soccer star of either gender in the entire country. That would likely not be the case if biological men were allowed to steal women’s spots. When Rapinoe led her professional team in a 2017 scrimmage against a Dallas boys team, the Texans — all younger than 15 — bested the team that would ultimately win the World Cup.
