A group of GOP lawmakers asked the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which governs student athletics at the college level, to change their “student-athlete participation policy to require that only students assigned female at birth participate in women’s sports” in a letter on Tuesday.
“Amid the Biden-Harris administration’s unprecedented assault on Title IX, we write to urge the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to update your student-athlete participation policy to require that only biologically female students participate in women’s sports,” the lawmakers wrote to NCAA President Charlie Baker.
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Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Tommy Tuberville (R-AK), Katie Britt (R-AL), and Joni Ernst (R-IA) signed the letter.
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Earlier this year, hundreds of current and former collegiate, professional, and Olympic athletes told the NCAA that they should not ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports. Power couple Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe signed the letter supporting transgender athletes.
“We implore you, the NCAA’s highest governing body and members of an organization focused on supporting the wellbeing of not just athletes but sport itself, to focus on the long-documented needs of NCAA athletes of all genders,” the letter from the pro-trans athletes reads.
The Republican lawmakers’ letter argues that men have an advantage in sports over women, despite how they policy they’re advocating has nothing to do with men. The letter says that “Males have inherent athletic advantages over females due to their anatomy and biology—including through having larger hearts, higher red blood count, greater lung capacity, longer endurance, larger muscle mass, differences in bone density and geometry, and lower body fat.”
“Consistently, when adult males’ athletic performance is contrasted with adult females’ athletic performance in sports relying on endurance, muscle strength, speed, and power, males dominate, outperforming females by 10 to 30 percent,” it continues.
This is not the complete truth. Dr. Brad Anawalt, a professor of medicine and an endocrinologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said there is a negligible difference in power, speed, and strength between boys and girls pre-puberty, in an article from CBC. The alleged differences appear once hormone therapy has started, but even then, there hasn’t been enough research to show whether or not trans women have an advantage.
Anawalt said that generally, “a trans woman has muscle mass and strength that is somewhere between that of a cisgender woman and a cisgender man, on average.”
Moreover, research that actually looks into trans women in sports has found that sometimes trans women are at a physical disadvantage compared to cis women and that trans women’s sports abilities are very different from cis men’s.
The Human Rights Campaign opposes banning trans athletes from sports. “There are many very real challenges that face transgender youth, including mistreatment in schools, family rejection, threats of physical violence, and other discrimination,” it said.
“Anti-trans sports bans risk further marginalizing young people who already face tremendous challenges in school. Proponents of these bans suggest that trans athletes are pretending to be trans in order to do well at sports — ignoring entirely the incredible stigma trans youth face.”
The NCAA said in a statement to The Hill, “College sports are the premier stage for women’s sports in America, and the NCAA will continue to promote Title IX, make unprecedented investments in women’s sports, and ensure fair competition for all student-athletes in all NCAA championships.”
