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CV NEWS FEED // Over 3,000 current or former NCAA female athletes and coaches have sent letters and emails to the NCAA Board of Governors, calling for the Board to protect women’s sports and ban biological males from competing against women.
Conservative sports news outlet OutKick reported that the Board plans to meet on April 25 to discuss the issue of “transgender women” in women’s sports. The more than 3,000 petitions received by the Board were sent by the Our Bodies, Our Sports coalition, an organization of female athletes fighting to protect women’s collegiate sports.
In addition to those petitions, the Board has received over 78,000 other emails and letters in the last week calling for them to keep men out of women’s sports, OutKick reported.
The Board’s meeting comes just days after the Biden administration issued an unofficial final rule changing Title IX to be more inclusive to LGBT-identifying individuals.
Paula Scanlan, an Independent Women’s Forum Ambassador and former University of Pennsylvania swimmer, told OutKick that men competing in women’s sports is an injustice that the Board needs to stop.
“Unfortunately, instances of biological males competing in women’s sports are happening more and more frequently,” she said. “It may be easy to ignore the injustice when the athlete doesn’t command a trophy. But it is an injustice nonetheless, and I sincerely hope the members of the NCAA Board of Governors will put a stop to it.”
According to Our Bodies, Our Sports, “Male athletes have stolen over 924 trophies, medals, and titles from women and girls across 448 different competitions and over 30 different sports.”
Adriana McLamb, a spokeswoman for Independent Women’s Forum and former Division 1 volleyball player, told OutKick that the NCAA has destroyed an even playing field for women.
“The NCAA and members of the Board of Governors have let me and countless other female athletes—those that aspire to compete at the collegiate level, and current and former NCAA athletes—down. Women are losing the life-changing opportunities that myself and countless other females were afforded,” she said.
Former All-American swimmer and protecting women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines said that “The NCAA is prioritizing inclusion over safety and fairness.”
“Up until this point, the NCAA explicitly violated Title IX in its original intent by openly and actively discriminating against women on the basis of our sex as it pertains to opportunities, privacy in the area of undressing, and safety in our sports,” Gaines added.
Though the NAIA recently banned biological men from competing in women’s sports, the NCAA has been reluctant to issue a similar ban. The NCAA additionally has no policy on trans-identifying men using women’s locker rooms and lacks rules protecting women’s privacy and spaces.
