As women around the country continue to fight to protect their spaces, the NCAA announced this week it stands “unequivocally” with transgender athletes competing on the teams that correspond to the sexes with which they identify, meaning a trans-identified female, a biological male, should be free to compete alongside biological females.
The organization dismissed any concerns about biological males outperforming — based on immutable characteristics — biological females.
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“The NCAA board of governors firmly and unequivocally supports the opportunity for transgender student-athletes to compete in college sports,” the organization stated Monday. “This commitment is grounded in our values of inclusion and fair competition.”
It went on to assert, despite evidence to the contrary, that testosterone suppression in trans-identifed biological males levels the playing field with biological females who identify as such.
“The NCAA has a long-standing policy that provides a more inclusive path for transgender participation in college sports,” stated the NCAA. “Our approach — which requires testosterone suppression treatment for transgender women to compete in women’s sports — embraces the evolving science on this issue and is anchored in participation policies of both the International Olympic Committee and U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Inclusion and fairness can coexist for all student-athletes, including transgender athletes, at all levels of sport. Our clear expectation as the association’s top governing body is that all student-athletes will be treated with dignity and respect.”
“We are committed,” the organization added, “to ensuring that NCAA championships are open for all who earn the right to compete in them.”
The NCAA also announced it will only allow championships and conferences in states and localities “where hosts can commit to providing an environment that is safe, healthy, and free of discrimination,” meaning states that bar transgender athletes from competing on teams that do not correlate to their biological sexes will not be eligible to host NCAA games.
While the NCAA suggests it has science on its side, there is evidence to the contrary.
In December, a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that, even after taking hormones for two years to suppress their testosterone levels, transgender females — that is, biological males — retained a 12% advantage in running, a 10% advantages in push-ups, and a 6% advantage in sit-ups. The authors of the research suggested those numbers could be underestimations “because trans women will have a higher power output than [biological] women when performing an equivalent number of push-ups.”
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The scientists who conducted the analysis concluded the current Olympic guidelines grant trans-identified biological males an “unfair competitive advantage” over biological females.
Even still, the leftist American Civil Liberties Union stated in February it is “a myth” to believe sex “is binary, apparent at birth, and identifiable through singular biological characteristics.” The organization went on to assert it is a “fact” that “trans girls are girls.”
The ACLU praised the NCAA for its statement Monday.
This comes as Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, has vetoed legislation that would have blocked minors from undergoing sex-altering procedures and hormone therapies. He argued such a bill is “vast government overreach.”
Ultimately, Hutchinson’s veto was overridden by the state legislature. The bill will go into effect this summer.
The governor defended his position during an interview last week with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, who equated hormone therapies for minors with gender dysphoria to “chemical castration.”
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“The bill was over-broad,” Hutchinson claimed. “It was extreme. It went far beyond what you just said. And I made it clear that if this was about prohibiting procedures, sex reassignment surgery, absolutely, I would have signed that bill.”
“This is the first law in the nation that invokes the state in medical decisions, parents who consent to that, and the decision of the patient,” he continued. “And so this goes way too far and, in fact, it doesn’t even have a grandfather clause that those young people that are under hormonal treatments, they would have to be cut off from it.”
Hutchinson then appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, when he told host Jake Tapper that, though he is “a social conservative,” he believes Republicans “have to balance that with the important question, is this a fight the government needs to get in, or is this a role of the church, to is this — is this the restraint of government that we need to not only preach, but to practice as well?”
The governor argued to Tapper it is “a conservative position to say that’s not the role of the government” to bar hormone therapies and sex-altering procedures on minors.
“It is compassionate to say we care for all our young people,” Hutchinson added. “Whether they’re trans youth or otherwise, we care for them. And that’s the message of compassion and conservatism that we need to have as a party.”
If the GOP — and conservatives writ large — don’t embrace that philosophy, Hutchinson told the CNN anchor, it is destined to become “a narrow party that expresses ourselves in intolerant ways.”
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South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) has made headlines recently, too, for her efforts to ban trans-identified athletes in elementary and secondary school athletics in her state from competing on teams that do not correlate with their biological sexes.
She has also launched what she is hoping will become a coalition of states that can then take on organizations like the NCAA to ensure female athletes at the collegiate level are protected against biological males joining their teams.