Young women taking part in high school and college athletics across the country have had their dreams of winning dashed by the movement to allow biological male who “identify” as female to compete against them.
The non-profit Christian legal group Alliance for Defending Freedom, which is representing three of these female athletes in the state of Connecticut, recently posted a video to illustrate what it is like to lose — not in a race against the best of your peers but against a runner whose biological sex gives him an innate advantage.
The headline of the recent blog post on ADF’s website says: This Video Shows Why We Must Protect Women’s Sports in Idaho and Beyond.
The title refers to the only state so far that has successfully pushed back against the transgender athletics movement by passing the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, signed into law by Idaho Gov. Brad Little on March 30.
The video is the from the pre-coronavirus Big Sky Conference Championship held in February of this year. It shows biological girls and one transgender girl in the 1-mile race.
Maureen Collins wrote a blog about the video for ADF:
Why shouldn’t males be permitted to compete in women’s sports?
Well, I could answer this by explaining the physiological differences between males and females. I could talk about how males are generally physically stronger and faster than females and have more muscle and a greater bone density and lung capacity. I could argue that whenever a male is permitted to compete against females, that likely means women will be displaced from the podium and even miss out on opportunities to compete altogether.
But this isn’t surprising when you learn that this athlete is a male, who is unfairly allowed to compete in the female category by NCAA policies.
Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated incident. Across the country, female athletes are being forced to compete against males. It’s happening in Connecticut, where the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference allows males to compete in high school women’s athletics. As a result, two male athletes have taken 15 women’s state championship titles previously held by nine individual girls!
ADF’s website also explains its support for the trio of female runners in Connecticut:
Ever since the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference adopted a policy that allows males who identify as female to compete in girls’ athletic events, boys have consistently deprived Selina Soule, Alanna Smith, and Chelsea Mitchell of honors and opportunities to compete at elite levels. Mitchell, for example, would have won the 2019 state championship in the women’s 55-meter indoor track competition, but because two males took first and second place, she was denied the gold medal. Soule and Smith likewise have been denied medals and/or advancement opportunities.
The complaint filed in Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools with the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut explains that CIAC’s new policy and others like it pose a concrete threat to Title IX gains because “inescapable biological facts of the human species [are] not stereotypes, ‘social constructs,’ or relics of past discrimination. As a result of these many inherent physiological differences between men and women after puberty, male athletes consistently achieve records 10-20% higher than comparably fit and trained women across almost all athletic events, with even wider consistent disparities in long-term endurance events and contests of sheer strength such as weight-lifting.”
“In track-and-field events that do not use equipment, the physiological differences between males and females after puberty are stark in the record books,” the complaint says. “No one doubts that top male and female high school athletes are equally committed to excelling in their sport, and train equally hard. Yet boys and men consistently run faster and jump higher and farther than girls and women.”
“Girls deserve to compete on a level playing field. Forcing them to compete against boys isn’t fair, shatters their dreams, and destroys their athletic opportunities,” ADF Legal Counsel Christiana Holcomb said in an article posted on ADF’s website. “Having separate boys’ and girls’ sports has always been based on biological differences, not what people believe about their gender, because those differences matter for fair competition. And forcing girls to be spectators in their own sports is completely at odds with Title IX, a federal law designed to create equal opportunities for women in education and athletics. Connecticut’s policy violates that law and reverses nearly 50 years of advances for women.”
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