A group of current and former female college athletes delivered a petition to the NCAA calling for the end of biological males participating on their teams and in their competitions, Fox News reported.
The letter demanded that the NCAA”repeal all policies and rules that allow male athletes to take roster spots on women’s teams and/or compete in women’s events.”
Former Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who since her time out of the pool has been an outspoken critic of woke policies allowing for the inclusion of biological males – which both replaces biological females on rosters and often results in others losing spots on the winner’s podium – hand-delivered the statement to officials. In part, it demanded the NCAA ‘”take direct and immediate action to establish rules to keep women’s collegiate sports female.”
“Today, we intend to personally tell the NCAA to stop discriminating against female athletes by handing them a petition that we have garnered nearly 10,000 signatures on in just a couple of days,” Gaines said of the matter.
The letter continued:
“In the world of college sports, it is impossible to provide equal opportunities for both sexes (as required by Title IX) without female-only teams,” the letter reads. “Yet the NCAA implements and perpetuates a policy of allowing male athletes on women’s teams, even as sports governing bodies and federal courts increasingly reject these unjust and inequitable policies that exclude young women from their own teams.”
We hand delivered our petition to the NCAA with thousands of signatures outside of their Convention today. Add your name to the growing list: https://t.co/7KFfAQ83Sb https://t.co/YpmTsLkCny
— ICONS Women (@icons_women) January 12, 2023
Signers and supporters of the letter read it outloud at an NCAA conference being held in San Antonio, Texas and threatened legal action if changes were not made by the governing body of college athletics.
“The NCAA cannot pick and choose which laws to follow,” says Marshi Smith, an NCAA Champion and co-founder of ICONS. “They must protect female athletes from discrimination on the basis of sex, or expect we will be forced to take legal steps to compel them to do so.”
In addition to raising concerns over the participation of biological males on teams and in competitions, petitionaries also demanded that the NCAA disallow biological males from female lockerrooms, calling for “single-sex” accommodations.
A year ago, the NCAA revised its policy on transgender athletes amidst the domination of women’s swimming by athlete Lia Thomas, who had previously competed for three years on the men’s team as Will Thomas.
The NCAA was seen as skirting its responsibility; rather than issue a deciding rule, it instead allowed each individual sport to create and adopt its own policies.
Fox News wrote that USA Swimming, the governing body of collegiate swimming, eventually did update its policies, through the effects did not take effect in time to impact the finals in which Thomas participated.
USA Swimming updated its policy shortly after requiring transgender athletes who are competing at an elite level to have low levels of testosterone — half of what Thomas was allowed to compete with — for at least 36 months before being eligible, but the NCAA said weeks later that the Administrative Subcommittee of the Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports (CMAS) decided that it wouldn’t alter its testosterone guidance, stating that “implementing additional changes at this time could have unfair and potentially detrimental impacts on schools and student-athletes intending to compete in 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championships.”
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