People want to protect women’s sports, but they must be willing to say so

My latest in the Washington Examiner.

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According to the Biden administration in its argument before the Supreme Court last week, the only difference between boys and girls is gender preference. This fraught ideological premise is in stark relief to the hope from the campaign trail and President-elect Donald Trump’s promises he would ban men in women’s sports, drawing wildly supportive applause from the crowds. Now post-election, leftist pundits such as Joe Scarborough are backtracking on the subject, saying that 85% of the country agrees that boys should not be in girls sports.

It might feel like this issue is behind us in politics and will soon be settled in the courts. But do not be fooled. We have a long road ahead. While some on the Left are examining their prior positions in light of the Republican sweep and the role that gender ideology seemed to play in it, many are actually digging in their heels.

When Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) made the statement post-election that he didn’t want his daughters “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete,” his staff resigned in protest and there were calls for him to step down. He was maligned as a trans-phobe and traitor to the party.

And when CNN panelists broached the subject on News Night with Abby Phillips, it erupted into a shouting match. Panelist Rabbi Jay Michaelson stopped the discussion when co-panelist Shermichael Singleton said, “There are a lot of families out there who don’t believe boys should play girls sports.” Michaelson then threw a fit and screamed, “They’re not boys, I’m not going to listen to transphobia! … When you use a word that’s a slur I’m going to interrupt!”

Phillips then demanded that Singleton talk about the issue in a way that is “respectful.” The word “boys” is now considered a slur, apparently.

But here’s the thing: If we can’t say boys or males in describing the issue of males entering girls sports, we are left with saying, “There are a lot of people who don’t believe girls should play girls sports.” You see the absurdity? No one thinks that. It erases the issue entirely.

If we concede the Left’s framing of the issue — that trans-identified males are girls or women — we lose before we’ve started. We need to unwind that lie to have the appropriate conversation. We need to set aside the idea that we are being “mean” or “harmful” when we speak the truth. We need to ignore the slurs that activists direct at us and continue to advocate fairness and truth until the vast majority of people, who agree with us, are willing to do so too.

Trans-identified males are males. And we’ve been losing the battle in trying to be nice. We need to prioritize being truthful over being nice in order to force a legitimate debate and win the fight.

Former Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki also weighed in on the issue in the days following the election. Psaki said that Moulton is wrong and that “there is no evidence that these [trans-identified boys] are a threat to safety or fairness.”

Psaki might want to tell that to the United Nations, which recently found that over 900 medals were lost by girls and women to male athletes. Or perhaps China’s Yang Liu, the woman who lost gold to boxer Imane Khelif, a male with XY chromosomes, at this summer’s Paris Olympics, would like a word with Psaki? Or, maybe all the female soccer players who lost out on the BBC Women’s Footballer of the Year award to Barbara Banda, another athlete with XY chromosomes competing in the women’s category, have something to say about the issue of fairness?

Psaki is wrong. But make no mistake, she is not alone in digging in her heels. Don’t let Scarborough’s or Moulton’s admissions fool you. The fight is not over until the 85% of people who agree that women’s sports are only for those with XX chromosomes say so, without fear of backlash.

Every win helps move us a little closer. Just last week, the Ladies Professional Golf Association and the U.S. Golf Association made the correct decision to ban any male who has gone through male puberty from competing in the women’s professional golf division. I’d suggest that needs to be taken one step further, banning anyone born with XY chromosomes from competing in women’s sports. But I’ll take the win for now.

Keep in mind, the governing bodies for women’s sports are fractured. Each sport, each level — college, professional, amateur, Olympic — is governed by a separate body. The LPGA making the right decision has no bearing on the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s policies.

The U.S. Olympic movement is governed by the USOPC. The USOPC is almost entirely funded by private companies and takes its direction from corporate America. The International Olympic Committee is also largely funded privately. And as we saw at the Paris Olympics, the IOC is just fine with males beating women up in the boxing ring and awarding them gold medals for it.

While many may hope Trump can fix this whole debacle, the executive branch’s power is limited. Trump can certainly rescind the Biden administration’s rewrite of Title IX, which replaced the protection of women’s sex-based rights in the education system with “gender identity.” But that affects only one pillar of sports governance.

Politics is downstream from culture, and we need to change the culture if we want to win this fight for good. And there is much work to be done on that front.

When I worked with the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein to expose the abuse of gymnasts at the hands of team doctor Larry Nassar, she scorched USA Gymnastics for knowing about the abuse but not doing anything about it. Later, when the sex abuse bill that created the U.S. Center for SafeSport passed, she told me, “Passing a law is the easy part. Changing culture is hard.”

For the last two decades, companies have partnered with the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy organization, to further activist-driven ideas through products and brand advertising. This is how the Left has been winning the culture wars, by smuggling these crazy ideas into the culture through marketing campaigns for all manner of consumer goods.

But even that approach is starting to fray. HRC is losing its stranglehold on corporate America. This nonprofit has been running what amounts to an extortion racket, strong-arming corporate America to further the advocacy organization’s ideological views. HRC has threatened companies with low scores in its rating system, or Corporate Equality Index, if the corporations don’t fall in line, which includes donating money to the nonprofit, adopting its recommended hiring and employment practices, and advertising Pride month, Pride-specific products, and other LGBT-themed merchandise. HRC has threatened bad PR for the companies with low scores and held the false threat of falling sales and an inability to attract employees over their heads.

For years, companies have chased these high scores on HRC’s made-up index. CEOs believed the threats that their businesses would suffer if they didn’t follow the rules set out by HRC. But Walmart recently announced it would be abandoning HRC’s social credit system. It is disentangling itself from this coercion and calling HRC’s bluff.

We need to continue to counter ideology with common sense for people to feel comfortable saying the obvious: Men and women are different, and women deserve safety, privacy, and fairness without fear of reprisal.

The fight is not over. Those who have remained silent for fear of backlash have contributed to a manufactured, false consensus by letting the loudest activist bullies have the mic. When that changes, the culture changes, and the governing bodies will fall in line. Then women’s sports will be female again.