The Patriot Post® · A Righteous Forfeit

In the land of the science-denying Democrats, “men” can have babies. There, too, in that God-forsaken land, men can compete against our daughters in sports — but not if we stand up for normalcy and sanity and, yes, science.

Such a principled stand took place in deep-blue Vermont recently, where, as Valley News reports, “The Mid Vermont Christian School girls basketball team withdrew from the Vermont Division IV state tournament because of a refusal to play against an opponent with a transgender student-athlete.”

The 12th-seeded Eagles were scheduled to play a first-round road game last Tuesday against the 5th-seeded Long Trail Mountain Lions, but they chose to forfeit rather than take part in the sick charade of transgender participation in girls’ sports.

Good for them.

“We withdrew from the tournament,” said Head of School Vicky Fogg, “because we believe playing against an opponent with a biological male jeopardizes the fairness of the game and the safety of our players. Allowing biological males to participate in women’s sports sets a bad precedent for the future of women’s sports in general.”

Fogg apparently declined a request for an interview, but what’s more to say? The statement above says it all. Or nearly all. The statement fails to note that only a deeply sick society could allow such a thing in the first place.

We’ve written on this topic before, even as the father of girls who competed in club sports and high school athletics, even as one who was spared the ghoulish sight of his daughter’s head bouncing off the hardwood with a sickening thud because a young man steamrolled her on his way to the hoop. Who knows whether the decision by Mid Vermont Christian School spared one of its girls some similar fate?

This isn’t the first transgender controversy to visit Vermont high school athletics. As National Review reports:

In October 2022, a middle school girls soccer coach from Randolph Union High School was suspended after he reportedly “misgendered” a trans student while defending his daughter who was uncomfortable with the individual being in the girls locker room. That same month, administrators at the school banned members of the girls volleyball team after objecting to sharing it with a biological male student.

Indeed, the girls of the Randolph Union volleyball team spoke out last October in a gut-wrenching nine-minute video produced by journalist Mary Margaret Olohan. What they describe is the locker-room tyranny of the one transgender male student’s wishes trumping the collective privacy concerns of all the girls:

NEW: @DailySignal spent this week in Randolph, Vermont, speaking to high school girls who face heavy criticism + potential punishment from their school for pushing back against a biological male using their locker room. Here’s what these girls have to say for themselves: pic.twitter.com/trYW8c6e1z

— Mary Margaret Olohan (@MaryMargOlohan) October 13, 2022

Vermont state law enforces this tyranny. “Transgender and gender nonconforming students are to be provided the same opportunities to participate in physical education as are all other students,” according to the Vermont Agency of Education’s best practices. “Generally, students should be permitted to participate in physical education and sports in accordance with the student’s gender identity. Participation in competitive athletic activities and sports will be resolved on a case-by-case basis.”

This would seem to indicate that in this case, no one at Long Trail High School objected to allowing a biologically male player to compete against the girls of other teams. But what about those other teams? Shouldn’t they also have a say in the matter?

It’s not just these high schools and their leftist administrations that are to blame. Beyond them is the NCAA, which has proven to be gutless when it comes to standing up for women’s sports and standing up for Title IX’s original intent — which was based on the undeniable biological distinction between men and women athletes.

So long as those on the Left continue to deny the science of biology, we have to keep calling them out. Our daughters deserve nothing less.