The Patriot Post® · A Necessary Defense of Girls' Sports

How surreal it must’ve been for Selina Soule and the other girls to watch it disappear like it did. Everything they’d worked so hard for in track and field had just evaporated.

Soule had run a great race, missing her personal best in the 55-meter dash by a mere hundredth of a second. And yet she was denied a spot in the Connecticut high school state finals by two “transgender” runners who smoked the rest of the field.

“It’s just really frustrating and heartbreaking,” she said last year, “because we all train extremely hard to shave off just fractions of a second off of our time. And these athletes can do half the amount of work that we do, and it doesn’t matter. We have no chance of winning.”

Soule, who’s been smeared by the always-classy Left as “transphobic” and a “sore loser,” was speaking about her state’s anti-science policy of allowing high school student athletes to compete based solely on their expressed gender identity. This policy is at odds with both the International Olympic Committee and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which require “transgender” athletes to take testosterone-suppressing drugs to compete in the women’s category. It’s a policy that cost Soule and a number of other girls the satisfaction and the college scholarships that typically accompany championship-level performances in track and field. (To get a sense of the ridiculousness of expressed gender identity, check out Oxford-educated British rapper Zuby, who one day expressed himself as a female long enough to smash the British women’s deadlift record.)

Of course, as our Arnold Ahlert pointed out back in February of 2019, the Left insists there’s no difference whatsoever between boys and girls, men and women.

Connecticut is one of 18 states that allow this abomination — this pitting of biological boys against competitors who are, on average, 9% shorter; whose bones are smaller and weaker both in terms of size and density; whose heads are smaller; whose elbows, shoulders, fingers, and pelvises are physically different; whose torsos are longer and whose arms and legs are shorter; and, critically, whose bodies have a significantly smaller proportion of muscle mass. But hey, that’s just the science talking.

Soule, along with two fellow athletes, Alanna Smith and Chelsea Mitchell, finally had enough, and in February the Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit on their behalf. Their argument is that allowing boys to compete in the female category denies girls “opportunities for participation, recruitment, and scholarships,” and is thus at odds with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its Title IX prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sex.

Congress has been curiously silent about this issue. Perhaps our elected representatives are afraid to run afoul of the Rainbow Mafia or be disinvited from all the best cocktail parties. But outgoing Hawaii Representative and former Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard isn’t afraid. Nor is Oklahoma Republican Congressman Markwayne Mullin, himself a former professional MMA fighter. Last week, they introduced a bill called the Protect Women’s Sports Act to secure the sanctity and fundamental decency of women’s sports by clarifying that Title IX rules apply to female athletes based on their biological sex rather than their preferred “gender identity.”

“Title IX,” says Mullin, “was designed to give women and girls an equal chance to succeed, including in sports. Allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports diminishes that equality and takes away from the original intent of Title IX.”

The bill is a nice parting shot from Gabbard, a major in the U.S. Army Reserve and a libertarian-leaning progressive who’s been a steady thorn in the side of the Democrat establishment, as this paint-peeling 2019 Twitter takedown of Hillary Clinton will attest. She’s represented Hawaii’s second congressional district since 2012 and ran for president this year, but she didn’t seek reelection to the House. Not surprisingly, she’s taken plenty of incoming fire from the Left for her bill, but she spent the weekend hitting back via Twitter and educating via an explanatory video.

“My ‘Protect Women’s Sports Act’ is based on science. It safeguards equality & ensures a level playing field for girls & women competing in sports. It upholds Title IX’s original intent which was based on the general biological distinction between men & women athletes based on sex.”

This is all well and good, of course, but unless this bill gets to the House floor for a vote, it’s little more than posturing. And, come to think of it, what are the odds that Nancy Pelosi and her hard-left caucus will actually acknowledge the science and stand up for our daughters?