Protesters are calling on President Biden to protect women’s sports in Washington on June 23.
Photo: Michaal Nigro / Zuma Press
Bernice Sandler, the “godmother of Title IX,” said the legislation she helped write was “the most important step for gender equality since the 19th Amendment gave us the right to vote.” Title IX turned 50 this week and hasn’t aged well.
Title IX prohibits discrimination “under any educational program or activity that receives federal financial assistance.” Buried in the 1972 education amendments, the provision was dubbed by ESPN as the “37 words that changed everything” for women’s sports. Initially it was a welcome, which opened doors to unthinkable scholarships and lucrative careers before his passing. However, the departure of gender ideology threatens to undo this progress.
Take the now infamous photo of the victorious Lia Thomas rising above the female competitors in the NCAA Division I swimming championship. It looked like a gas light when the U.S. Postal Service released Title IX commemorative stamps shortly after, one of which shows a swimmer with a cap and glasses.
How did women’s sport get to this point? It began more than a decade ago, when schools and sports bodies began to reverse the original intent of Title IX. As far as sports are concerned, Title IX was not intended to be blind to sex. It addressed the lack of equipment and funding, a thumbs up for girls and women for the purpose of equalizing opportunities.
This approach worked. In the four decades since Title IX became law, ESPN notes that female participation in sports has grown more than tenfold, while male participation has only grown 22%. Title IX brought about a flourishing of women’s sport. American girls could admire inspiring women like Florence Griffith Joyner and Venus and Serena Williams. Millions of dollars have been awarded in sports scholarships for girls who before 1972 would not have played beyond high school.
When schools, sports associations, and the courts began to read Title IX as blind to sex, discrimination on the basis of sex came to mean that it was inadmissible to observe any distinction between the sexes. In 2011, a boy named Will Higgins broke a state 50-yard freestyle girls ’swimming record with a time that would not have qualified him to compete against his own sex. The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association confirmed the victory, arguing, as the Boston Globe said, that “there is no impediment for boys to compete in girls’ swimming teams because state law requires equal access. in sports for both sexes “.
The so-called gender neutrality paved the way for gender ideology to take this principle to the extreme. The Supreme Court threw gasoline on the fire with its 2020 rulings in Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Bostock v. Clayton County that diluted the legal meaning of sex to include sexual orientation and gender identity. What such a broad, and therefore meaningless, definition of “sex” actually seems to be the fate of free-fall women’s sports.
By the end of 2021, 37 states have tried to enact protections to preserve different spaces for women’s sports, and polls have found that most Americans believe women’s sports should be restricted to biological women. But for now, girls with dreams of athletic greatness are in limbo, wondering if a kid at the finish line will erase a lifetime of hard work.
On the extraordinary impact of Title IX on women’s sports, Sandler said, “We had no idea how bad the situation was, we didn’t even use the word sex discrimination back then, and we certainly had no sense of the revolution we were about to make. Unfortunately, the revolution seems to have brought female athletes to where they started.
Mrs. McGuire is the author of “Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female.”
Wonder Land: With athletes retreating against awakened agendas in basketball, swimming, and football, the computer project may be running out. Images: AP / AFP / Getty Images Composition: Mark Kelly
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