People who strongly oppose biological men playing in women’s sports outnumber strong supporters 2.4 to 1, according to a new poll.
Twenty-six percent of people who strongly believe men playing against women would have a negative impact compared to only 11 percent who strongly believe it would have a positive impact.
Overall, a majority of 53 percent oppose allowing men who consider themselves transgender women to compete against biological women, with only 26 percent supporting it.
Arizona State University’s reporting on the poll, conducted by its Global Sport Institute and OH Predictive Insights, tried to downplay the results by cherry-picking statistics favorable to transgender sports ideology.
The article featured a misleading drop quote as its introduction — “Amid a wave of legislation targeting transgender athletes, a new national poll from the Global Sport Institute at Arizona State University indicates that the American public lacks certainty and consensus on the topic.”
Even with its nuanced approach to the poll, including asking participants to first self-report on whether they had “a good understanding of transgender issues,” a slightly higher percentage of people believe biological men competing against women is unfair.
The poll found that “49 percent of respondents thought allowing trans girls to compete in girls sports would have a negative impact, while that percentage for boys sports was lower, at 40 percent.”
“About 41 percent of respondents believe that refusing to allow transgender athletes to compete in the category of their gender identity would harm them mentally or emotionally,” the poll found.
The report said the poll was needed because of the nationwide effort by state legislatures to protect women’s sports as the transgender movement ramped up its efforts to erase biological sex in favor of gender ideology:
In the first few months of 2021, approximately 35 bills were introduced at the state level that would limit or prohibit transgender kids and young adults from competing in sports. With pieces of legislation titled “Save Women’s Sports” or “Protect Women’s Sports,” lawmakers have painted a picture of an existential athletic crisis, arguing that trans athletes who identify as women have an inherent and unfair competitive advantage over cisgender women and girls – that is, those who identify with the sex assigned to them at birth.
Though the state legislators behind these bills often have been unable to point to any examples of trans girls causing problems by participating in sports – or even to any publicly out trans athletes in their states – they nevertheless have been moving forward with their proposals, which have been criticized by LGBTQ advocacy groups and others as discriminatory against trans people and rooted in unsubstantiated assumptions about sports performance.
In fact, there are many documented cases of women being beaten by biological male competitors, including those presented in legal challenges from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization that fights for religious liberty, sanctity of life, family, and parental rights.
Breitbart has extensively reported on polls focused on the transgender issue.
And NBC reported on a recent study on the issue, using the language acceptable to LGBT activists:
A new study suggests transgender women maintain an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers even after a year on hormone therapy.
The results, published last month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, could mean the current one-year waiting period for Olympic athletes who are transitioning is inadequate.
The ASU poll also focused on categorizing people based on race and age and found that young people are more in favor of transgender athletes:
In addition, younger, more affluent people living in urban areas were more likely to report that they had competed with a transgender athlete – 25% versus the 14% of overall respondents – rather than having only read or heard about trans athletes through media. This finding may help explain why younger respondents were more open to and supportive of trans sports participation.
The article concludes that the public is still in a state of confusion even if they are concerned about the transgender sports issue and warns that the fate of transgender people is up to the public and lawmakers while clearly siding in favor of the transgender ideology not only in sports but as an overall acceptable lifestyle.
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com.
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