South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem touts bill on transgender athletes, fairness in women’s sports
The South Dakota governor discusses the new bill signed into law and the fight against critical race theory.
Is it fair for a grown man that identifies as a woman to compete in collegiate swimming and basically dominate the female field?
That controversial question is being asked all over America, now that an athlete from the otherwise obscure UPenn swim program has single-handedly brought transgender sports participation into the national discussion.
Lia Thomas, formerly known as biological male Will Thomas, just won the 200- and 500-yard freestyle events at the Ivy League women’s championship. Thomas crushed the competition and is now competing at the NCAA national championships this week in Georgia.
This biological male, now identifying as a female, has technically followed all the rules set out by the NCAA and in the process has unmasked a massive problem coming to a head in America.
That being said, for you moms and dads with daughters that compete in any youth sport: How would you feel if a boy or man were allowed to compete with your child, and they lose every game, meet and match as a result? What if your daughter worked hard her entire life, earning a college scholarship, only to have it snatched away by a young man competing in her sport?
Beyond fairness, is the issue of safety and security. Do you want that man in the same locker room as your daughter?
While this issue may seem isolated, it will impact millions of young people over the next few years unless our policies change to address this issue. Politicians and community leaders must use common sense as their guide, not progressive political correctness.
Sports have a positive impact on the lives of young people. My life is no exception. Tagged early as an under-talented junior athlete, I learned the lessons of hard work and perseverance which enabled me to compete in the Olympics at age 30.
Prior to Title IX passing, girls' and women’s sports were not highly developed in America. But as NCAA revenue sports grew in the 1980s and 1990s, so did the number of women’s scholarships in an effort to comply with the law. That’s a great thing. We must continue in this spirit of encouraging young women to participate in athletics.
Positive results flourished almost immediately once the playing field was leveled and fair: Youth sports flourished in direct response and correlating to NCAA scholarships.
The youth sports system in America has become nearly entirely predicated on these scholarships. The reason for this is simple: parents make decisions for their time and money based on the perceived benefit and return from sports participation. Sports that have the potential for a child to earn a scholarship give parents a reason to invest beyond recreational participation.
Take as an example the sports of Judo and Wrestling. While remarkably similar in athletic requirements, cost, and facility requirements Judo has under 10,000 participants in the U.S. while wrestling boasts around 30 times that. The difference?
College scholarships create demand that causes high schools to participate. High school teams drive interest in club teams, and an ecosystem thrives. Recently, multiple schools introduced women’s scholarships for wrestling, and we can expect to see an explosion of girls now participating in the sport. The reverse is also true. Sports like men's gymnastics that lose college scholarships see a near-immediate diminishment in youth participation.
This shows that sports scholarships don’t just impact the people who receive them, they have a multiplier effect and increase overall participation in their respective sports. Roughly speaking, while a single athlete gets a scholarship, approximately 100-500 kids participated at some level in the hunt for that scholarship. While those kids didn’t earn the college money, they learned teamwork, perseverance, accountability, and discipline in the process.
How would you feel if a boy or man were allowed to compete with your child, and they lose every game, meet and match as a result?
Understanding that scholarships drive our youth sports programs, we can now truly see the danger of the current NCAA policies on transgender athletes. Biological males have inherent and unmitigated advantages in sports over biological females. This is simply a fact of nature. If we deny this reality, the impacts are catastrophic.
Imagine a scenario where biological men are allowed to compete for women’s scholarships using their biological advantage in sports. At first, it will impact a few women and then a few hundred. But within 5-10 years, parents may systematically divest their daughters from sports without the incentivization of scholarships.
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The financial and time sacrifice that parents currently make for their daughters will no longer be justified in a world with diminished opportunity for treasured scholarships. Girls will be relegated to technical activities and the arts where their biology is no longer a disadvantage relative to biological males.
Title IX was rightfully put in place to protect women and their opportunities in sports and other areas. If we do not acknowledge the biological difference between males and females and use that as the standard for Title IX compliance, America will regress into a state where sports are just for boys and not for girls. This is the exact opposite direction that our great nation should be taking. We are better than this.
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If, as a society, we want our girls to have the same opportunities as the boys, we must defend their rights based on their biology.
Women fought so hard for decades to ensure equality in sports, especially at the collegiate level. Those great gains will be gone almost immediately if men continue to compete and therefore dominate, and ultimately destroy women’s sports.