Texas lawmakers are taking a stand against the absurdity and unfairness of allowing biological males to compete against biological females in women’s school sports, making Texas the 10th state to address the controversy through the legislative process this year already.
State Representative Valoree Swanson (R-Spring) has introduced a bill that would preserve “single-sex” sports for public K-12 schools, colleges, and universities, Breitbart reports. The bill reads,
Each interscholastic, intramural, or other extracurricular athletic team sponsored by a school district or open-enrollment charter school shall be designated for participation by:
• Only students of the same biological sex; or
• Students of both biological sexes.
The bill adds, “A biologically male student may not participate in an athletic team … that is designated for participation by only biologically female students.” It will continue to allow for co-ed intramural and interscholastic sports to continue at colleges and universities.
Swanson asserts her measure will protect women’s rights under Title IX. “This bill is a common sense measure that is sadly necessary in a world where male athletes are robbing women of both championship trophies and educational opportunities,” Swanson said in a statement Thursday.
Currently, the University Interscholastic League of Texas, the governing body for high-school athletics and extracurricular activities, uses birth certificates to determine participation in athletics, but the group has said it will recognize changes made to birth certificates to alter gender. Texas universities follow National College Athletic Association rules, which allow students to compete in sports based on their gender identity, the Texas Tribune reports.
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In addition to Swanson’s legislation, State Senator Charles Perry (R-Lubbock) has filed a Senate bill to prohibit biological boys from playing on female sports teams in public and charter schools.
“This is purely 100 percent devoted to the preservation of Title IX and allowing women to compete against women in their peer groups in that biological category, so they know they can have an equal and fighting chance based on ability and not over some political narrative of the day that undermines fairness,” Perry said.
The debate over “transgender” women in female sports was propelled to national attention once again when President Biden signed an executive order on gender identity and sexual orientation that would allow biological males to compete in women’s sports. The measure sparked the hashtag #BidenErasedWomen and “TERFS” (an acronym for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist”) to trend on social media.
Groups such as Equality Texas are accusing Republicans of politicizing the issue to target transgender children. “It’s very unsettling to transgender children who just want to live. They don’t want to have to come down to the Capitol and testify every single legislative session just so that they can live and go about their daily lives,” said Angela Hale, senior advisor at Equality Texas.
But critics argue the campaign to keep male athletes out of women’s sports is not anti-LGBTQ, but pro-women. “A new glass ceiling was just placed over girls,” Wall Street Journal contributor Abigail Shrier tweeted after Biden signed the executive order.
Duke Law School Professor Doriane Lambelet Coleman has been an outspoken critic of allowing biological males to compete in female sports. As a former athlete who received a full track scholarship to Villanova University, Coleman contends Title IX afforded her opportunities that she may not have otherwise had. She contends it leveled the playing field by providing her “the same chance as the best boys coming out of high school at securing the longer-term benefits of participation in elite sport.”
Coleman has observed that testosterone makes men bigger, stronger, and faster, creating a considerable gap in male-female athletic performance that is not easily overcome, even when males are able to reduce their testosterone levels.
“This differential isn’t the result of boys and men having a male identity, more resources, better training, or superior discipline,” Coleman said in 2019. “It’s because they have an androgenized body.”
Coleman asserts separate categories for males and females have long been understood by scientists, athletes, coaches, and governing bodies as the only fair way to elevate female athletes. If inherent differences between the sexes were not taken into account, she observes, “the best athletes — the ones we see and celebrate — would always be boys and men.”
And the campaign against allowing “transgender” athletes to compete in female sports is by no means limited to Republican-led efforts.
In the final days of her congressional term, Democratic presidential candidate Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) introduced a bill to strengthen Title IX protections for female athletes based on biological sex.
Even outspoken LGBT activists have raised concerns over “transgender” athletes. The LGB Alliance, a U.K.-based lesbian, gay, and bisexual alliance group, said it was “appalled” by Biden’s order.
“It deals a severe blow to women and girls in sport, prisons, rape shelters, hospitals, etc. and bans lesbians and gays from having our own spaces,” the group tweeted. “We will help our US friends to oppose it.”
Predictably, the group has been labeled “transphobic,” the New York Post reports.
Unfortunately, LGBT activists who dare refuse to support biologically male athletes in female sports run the risk of being ostracized as pariahs.
Martina Navratilova, 18-time Grand Slam tennis champion and one of the sports’ most recognized LGBT voices, was accused of transphobia when she said, “Letting men compete as women simply if they change their name and take hormones is unfair — no matter how those athletes may throw their weight around.”
Within hours of her statement, Athlete Ally, an LGBT nonprofit Navratilova had served for years, removed her from the board.
With Representative Swanson’s bill, Texas joins several other states in taking action against the inclusion of biological males in female sports. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, nine other states are moving similar bills through their legislatures this year. Equality Texas adds that more states are also filing bills this year that would apply to colleges as well.
