Why female athletes are coming to Washington – Washington Examiner

As a female athlete, I know that my most precious resource is my time. I started swimming at a young age. By age 8, I was swimming competitively, and by late middle school, I was devoting at least 20 hours per week to swimming. I gave up countless Christmas holidays, weekends, and social events to work toward my goal of swimming at the Division I level. My experience is not uncommon or unique. All female athletes have made sacrifices, like I have, in order to be the best at their sport.

So why are so many serious female athletes winding our way around the country on a bus right now to be a part of the Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition? Why are we using our scarce and valuable time this way? Why are we asking people to join us in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for a rally to Take Back Title IX?

For a couple of years now, the media have occasionally shared stories about men entering and winning women’s athletic competitions. You may have heard about runners in Connecticut, a woman’s fractured skull during a MMA fight, Lia Thomas facing Riley Gaines in the swimming pool. Yet these high-profile examples are just the tip of an already large and growing iceberg. According to SheWon.org, male athletes have entered hundreds of competitions across the country meant for women and taken spots on teams, medals and honors on award podiums, and even scholarships meant for female athletes.

Yet this already bad situation is about to get worse. The Biden administration has just rewritten Title IX, a law that was supposed to ensure that women have equal opportunity in education including athletics, to equate sex with “gender identity.” Basically, the new Title IX will require schools and athletic competitions to allow any athlete to opt into a competition that matches his or her self-proclaimed gender identity. So the best male athlete from last year can switch to competing in the women’s races this year if he wants to.

Claiming that somehow this “inclusion” of men doesn’t threaten female athletes is ridiculous. You don’t need to dig up scientific studies, though there are plenty providing this point. Just check out the world records for women’s and men’s competitions in every sport. You’ll see that men are consistently faster and stronger than women. That’s why there are women’s teams and men’s teams in the first place: If there weren’t, women simply wouldn’t win and often wouldn’t even make the team.

We can’t let the Biden administration’s Title IX rewrite destroy women’s sports. I hear terrible stories of young girls who are coming up in their sports who are questioning whether they should bother playing at all since they expect that they will have to play against boys and those boys will invariably beat them and may even physically injure them far more seriously than any female competitor would.

That makes me furious. It makes me mad enough that I gave up time to travel the nation and to speak out. This isn’t about being anti-transgender or anti-anyone. It’s about being pro-woman and pro-reality.

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I want men who identify as women to be treated with respect. Yet those men should also respect the perspective of women who have different bodies and aptitudes. We don’t get flooded with testosterone during puberty. We get breasts and our periods, which can make competitions harder, not easier. It’s not fair to women to disregard this unchangeable reality of our bodies. Women and girls deserve a level playing field and sports of our own.

I’m joining the Our Bodies, Our Sports Take Back Title IX summer bus tour because I know that, right now, what we are fighting for is bigger than any single competition. We are fighting for the future of women’s sports itself. I won’t stand by and watch as female athletes are pushed aside. And if you care about women and fairness, neither should you. Take a stand to defend women and take back Title IX.

Paula Scanlan is an ambassador with the Independent Women’s Forum and a former swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was a teammate of Lia Thomas.