Five days into his term as president, Joe Biden signed an executive order banning “discrimination” on the basis of gender identity in a host of arenas, including women’s sports. This particular directive isn’t exactly going over well, according to a new Harvard/Harris poll.
The poll asked Americans if they approve or disapprove of Biden’s executive order to “require schools to let biological boys who identify as girls to participate in girls sports, and vice versa.” More than half (55 percent) of respondents said they disapproved, while less than half (45 percent) said they approved of the policy. Yet only 20 percent said they “strongly” approved, while 39 percent said they “strongly” disapproved.
As PJ Media’s Stacey Lennox noted, this poll suggests Biden is not enjoying a “honeymoon” period among American voters. She also cited a recent Rasmussen poll finding that only 32 percent of Americans support allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports and vice versa, while a majority (54 percent) oppose Biden’s policy.
Americans are right to oppose Biden’s order, especially when it comes to women’s sports.
Despite the loud insistence of the transgender movement, Americans grasp the basic concept that it is unfair for males to be able to compete against females.
Scientific journals have confirmed the obvious: males have biological advantages over females that cannot be erased simply by identifying as female. Due to their XY chromosomes, males experience more testosterone from the womb onward, even if they take experimental drugs to “block” puberty or to feminize their bodies.
Last year, female high school athletes filed a Title IX lawsuit challenging rules that allowed biological males who identify as female to compete in their sports leagues, denying them of first- and second-place finishes. The lawsuit listed 8 broad physiological athletic advantages males enjoy over girls and women after the onset of puberty, including larger lungs, larger hearts, an increased number of muscle fibers and muscle mass, higher myoglobin within muscle fibers (enabling faster transfer of oxygen to those muscles), larger and longer bones, increased mineral density in bones, and height.
Due to these long recognized advantages, sporting events have long had different standards for boys and girls to accommodate the athletic striving of biological females. For example, women’s volleyball nets are 7 inches lower, the weight of high school shot put for boys is 36 percent heavier, the hurdle is 6 inches higher for boys, etc.
Duke Law School professor Doriane Lambelet Coleman warned that if women’s sports must admit biological men, “the very best women in the world would lose to literally thousands of boys and men, including thousands who would be considered second-tier.”
Policies that allow males who identify as transgender to compete against female athletes erase fairness in women’s sports, a long-fought feminist priority with which most Americans instinctively agree. Men’s and women’s sports are separate for a reason, and even when transgender policies are well-intentioned, they essentially destroy the barrier between the sexes, and prevent fair competition.
This isn’t just a matter of pride. This kind of policy can translate into opportunities lost, scholarships denied, and college plans ruined. The stakes are intensely personal.
“I’ve really felt defeated,” then-high school senior Chelsea Mitchell, the fastest biological girl in Connecticut who nonetheless lost four state championships to male competitors who identified as female, told PJ Media last year. “There really isn’t much more I can do than just run my race every time. Every race I’ve ever run against the biological males, I’ve lost. It’s definitely very defeating. It makes you wonder why you’re continuing to run.”
Biden’s executive order will stand for now, but Republicans have spearheaded legislation to protect women’s sports in Georgia (H.B. 276), Missouri (H.B. 1077), Ohio (H.B. 61), Tennessee (H.B. 3), Texas (H.B. 1458), and Utah (H.B. 302). The Montana House passed the “Save Women’s Sports Act” (H.B. 112) in January and the Mississippi Senate recently passed the “Mississippi Fairness Act” (S.B. 2536).
Naturally, Biden isn’t alone in championing the destruction of women’s sports. Every single Democrat in the House of Representatives voted for H.R. 5, the Orwellian “Equality Act,” which would also destroy women’s sports.
Americans know the Democrats’ position on this is horribly wrong, and they should hold Democrats accountable in 2022.
Tyler O’Neil is the author of Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Follow him on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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