I’ve never been an athlete. My only experience with organized sports was a brief stint on my high school’s walk-on girls soccer team, and once they decided to make everyone formally try out, I was cut, fair and square. I sucked.
But the opportunity to play on a team like that was made possible by a little policy called Title IX, a federal statute that prohibits sex discrimination in education.
Title IX is the reason so many sports teams for girls exist. Before Title IX, female athletic programs were sparse and underfunded compared to their male counterparts. Title IX mandated that schools provide equal resources and opportunities, including scholarships, to both sexes. It’s why a friend of mine, who did make the cut in high school, ended up going to Ohio State on a full-ride to play soccer. It’s we’ve been able to watch as U.S. female athletes, including Michigan’s own Abby Tamer, dominate in the Olympics.
Title IX made sure we were given the same opportunities as boys to compete and succeed in a league of our own. So why are Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and her party trying to take those opportunities away?
Slotkin was one of hundreds of congressional Democrats who voted last month to support the Biden administration’s rewrite of Title IX, which redefines “sex” to include so-called “gender identity.” The rewrite requires publicly funded schools to grant students access to the sports team, restroom, and locker room that corresponds with their “gender identity” rather than their sex.
The reason this is a direct threat to women’s athletics and private spaces is because ours are the only teams and spaces legitimately at risk. Ever hear of a trans-identified female trying out for the men’s high-school football team? That would go just about as well as my soccer team try-out. But there are plenty of examples of trans males earning a spot on a women’s sports team and then dominating the competition.
At the University of Michigan, for example, a 31-year-old biological male named Alicia Paans was given a spot on the women’s water polo team in 2023 and 2024. Paans scored several goals in the games leading up to the Women’s National Collegiate Club Championship, both of which ended up being blowout wins for Michigan.
If you were a Wolverine fan, Paans’s presence was a great thing. But if you were one of the female teammates forced to share a locker room with the male, or if you were one of the opposing female players forced to compete against someone you physically could not beat, it wasn’t all that great.
There’s also the reality that women have far greater physical vulnerabilities than men. Just ask Paula Scanlan, a former swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania and sexual assault survivor who was forced to relive her trauma by undressing in front of biological male Lia Thomas in the girls’ locker room repeatedly; or 17-year-old Payton McNabb, who was left with brain damage and paralysis on her right side after a biological male hit her in the face with a volleyball traveling 70 mph; or the female field hockey player at a Massachusetts high school who had her teeth knocked out by a biological male, after he sent a ball flying at her face.
Slotkin apparently doesn’t care about these girls’ safety. She not only voted against a Republican-introduced bill to roll back the Biden administration’s rewrite of Title IX, she also co-sponsored the Equality Act, a far-reaching bill that would have codified “gender identity” and prohibited Americans from citing their religious beliefs in objection to it.
If she’s elected as Michigan’s next senator, we should expect more of this from her, and young women throughout the state will suffer as a result.
But don’t take it from me, the non-athlete. Take it from the young Michigan female athletes who attended a recent roundtable with Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), Slotkin’s opponent for Michigan’s open Senate seat.
“If there were a man competing, my best would not have been enough. No matter how hard, how much I put into it,” said Maddie Krappman, a senior track athlete at Everest Collegiate in Clarkston who recently won a league title in the 400-meter dash. “It could never be enough. We really need to protect women.”
This is just common sense, as anyone whose mind hasn’t been warped by progressivism well knows. Men are physically bigger, taller, stronger, and faster than the vast majority of women. That’s why Democrats such as Slotkin never confront the concerns of female athletes head-on, instead hiding behind clichés about transgender rights and alleged harassment and blah blah blah.
Predicting this kind of response from Slotkin, Rogers used the roundtable event to clarify his position. “And you’ll get that, ‘Oh this is about, you know, condemning the LGBTQ community.’ It’s not any of that,” he said. “It’s about fairness. It’s about Title IX.”
Sure enough, asked about the event later, Slotkin spokesman Antoine Givens accused Rogers of spreading “division and hate—no hope anywhere to be seen.”
Well, if standing up for girls’ rights to fair and safe competition is divisive and hateful, then mark me down as one of the bigots.
Kaylee McGhee White is the Restoring America editor for the Washington Examiner, a Tony Blankley fellow for the Steamboat Institute, and a senior fellow for the Independent Women’s Forum. She grew up in Detroit and graduated from Hillsdale College. Follow her on X at @KayleeDMcGhee.
