Aside from Donald Trump winning the presidency, the 2024 election showed us that the public isn’t buying into transgender ideology the way the radical left has. The Trump campaign went all-in and used the issue in campaign ads to show just how out of touch Democrats are on this issue. Apparently, Democrats haven’t figured out that they embrace this insane ideology at their own peril.
On Tuesday, NCAA President Charlie Baker testified in a Senate hearing about the issue of transgender-identifying males playing women’s sports, and Sen. Dick Durbin, (D-Ill.), ignited a firestorm.
“How many athletes are there in the United States in NCAA schools?” Durbin asked Baker.
“510,000,” Baker told him.
“How many transgender athletes are you aware of?” Durbin followed up.
“Less than ten,” Baker replied.
Later, Durbin dismissively posted on X about the controversy that male athletes playing women’s sport cause:
510,000 NCAA athletes. Ten or fewer transgender NCAA athletes nationwide.
— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) December 17, 2024
Let’s focus on ways to actually improve women’s sports. https://t.co/7BKT16dntT
Excuse me?
The message Durbin seems to send is clear: cheating is acceptable as long as it’s happening on a small scale. This disregard for fairness sacrifices the integrity of women’s sports and the well-being of female athletes for the sake of political posturing.
While 10 out of 510,000 may seem like a small percentage, the impact of allowing biological men to compete on women’s teams is anything but minor. Pretending that these men are women strips real female athletes of opportunities, titles, and awards they’ve worked tirelessly to achieve.
Take Riley Gaines, for example. At the 2022 NCAA Women’s Championships, she tied with Will “Lia” Thomas in the 200 freestyle final, but she did not receive the trophy because officials prioritized Thomas, a biological male. This isn’t an isolated incident. Across high school and college sports, male athletes who couldn’t excel in men’s competition went on to dominate women’s sports, stealing trophies and scholarships from hardworking girls who dedicated their lives to earning those achievements.
Is it okay to steal opportunities from real women just because there are only a handful of them who lose out to men?
Durbin is hardly the first person to use the small number of transgender-identifying males playing women's sports as a reason to dismiss the controversy of the practice. Proponents of pro-transgender policies use this statistic to downplay concerns, but numbers alone don’t address the core issue: fairness. Even one biological male competing in women’s sports has the potential to tip the scales, and that's one too many.
Of course, the issue is even bigger than that.
Male athletes competing in women’s sports don’t just steal opportunities from real women; they impact hundreds of women by creating discomfort and safety concerns in private single-sex facilities. Why should women lose their privacy and dignity?
What Durbin and others fail to understand is that Title IX was established to ensure women have a fair and level playing field — not to prioritize the feelings of a few at the expense of the majority. Allowing policies that undermine this principle doesn’t “improve opportunities for women”; it erases them. Every time a biological male competes against women, it chips away at the fairness and integrity that Title IX was designed to protect. Leaders must stop caving to political pressure and start standing up for the rights of female athletes before this irreparably damages the foundation of women’s sports.
Why doesn't the radical left get this? Will it ever learn?