The Women's Sports Foundation Has Severely Damaged Women's Sports
One of the most influential female sports organizations in the U.S., the Women's Sports Foundation, pushed the unpopular and damaging notion of male participation in female sports. It still does.
A recent New York Times / Ipsos survey found that 79% of Americans agree that males who identify as female should not be allowed to play in female athletics.
So it is puzzling why one of the most influential voices for women in sports, the Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF), has for years advocated for the “right” of male-to-female transgender athletes to play in female sports.
At some point, one might have expected the WSF to reconsider what many believe is its outrageous abdication of women’s rights, but that has not occurred.
The WSF’s website says one of its policy goals is to “[a]dvocate for support for enforcement of the protections offered to transgender youth participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.”
Advocates of males in female sports often justify their position by arguing that it would “exclude” males who identify as female if they could not play on female teams. This was never true. Males always had the option of playing on male teams, or on open teams that anyone can join. But even if it was true, one might expect the WSF to be more concerned about girls and women than males.
What about fairness for girls and women? There can no longer be any serious dispute that males have greater absolute strength than females due to factors like larger muscle mass and skeletal structure. Don’t girls and women deserve a level playing field?
The WSF was founded in 1974 by tennis player Billie Jean King to “advance the lives of girls and women” through sports. How does the loss of recognition and athletic scholarships to males who “identify” as female advance the lives of girls and women? Does the humiliation of losing to males who are physiologically stronger build character? What about being forced to share a locker room with males?
‘Consistent With Their Gender Identity’
The WSF wielded significant influence during the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden with respect to the adoption of a policy of allowing men to play in women’s sports. Instead of being a badly needed countervailing force in support of women’s rights, the WSF chose to support what is essentially a male rights theory - that males who “identify” as women are entitled to women’s rights and opportunities, and to enter women’s private spaces
On June 23, 2022, the WSF and the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) spearheaded a letter signed by 48 “women’s rights and gender justice advocates” to implore Biden to adopt a new Title IX athletics rule to “clarify that Title IX preempts any state law or policy that bans transgender, non-binary, and intersex students from playing sports on their ability to play sports consistent with their gender identity…”
The WSF also filed amicus briefs in support of lawsuits filed by LGBTQ+ organizations (ex. Lambda Legal) to permit males who identify as female to participate in female sports.
For years, female athletes lost championships to mediocre male athletes who, after identifying as female, suddenly become world-class. For example, “Sadie” Schreiner, a trans (male) track and field athlete at the Rochester Institute of Technology, played on the men’s team without distinction, but broke records after identifying as female and joining the women’s team. And when women complained, they met with accusations of transphobia.
Biden ultimately did propose a new Title IX rule that allowed males to play in female sports, but it was halted in 26 states following a wave of Republican legal challenges, and it was eventually struck down by a federal court judge.
Many observers think the issue of males in female sports was a reason that Biden lost the presidential election to GOP President Donald J. Trump in 2024.
Upon taking office, Trump issued an executive order opposing male participation in female sports and threatened to rescind federal funding from educational programs that “deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy.”
Why?
It is no coincidence that many of the individuals who are in the leadership of the WSF are avowed proponents of males in female sports. Though, they would say males who identify as female are in fact female.
WSF founder Billie Jean King has supported males in female sports since the 1970s, arguing that inclusion of transgender athletes strengthens women’s sports. She has stepped down from a day-to-day role at the WSF, but still exerts influence.
Several members of the WSF Board of Trustees are vocal supporters of trans inclusion in women’s sports. These board members include:
Val Ackerman, Commissioner of the BIG EAST Conference and founding President of the Women’s National Basketball Association. The WNBA supported ‘Transgender Day of Visibility’ last month, and Ackerman is a long-time and vocal champion of trans inclusion in female sports;
Stacey Allaster, United States Tennis Association’s Chief Executive of Professional Tennis (which supports transgender inclusion in female sports);
Alexander Popov, Partner and Head of Private Credit of Carlyle Group, a global investment firm that recently jointly acquired the National Women’s Soccer League’s Seattle Reign FC, which has a policy allowing trans to compete in accordance with their gender identity.
Earlier this year, Danette Leighton, who earned a whopping $546,200 as the CEO of the WSF in 2023, announced the appointment to the board of two young female athletes, Rachel Garcia, an Olympic silver medalist and the most decorated softball pitcher in NCAA history, and Gabby Thomas, a sprinter and five-time Olympic medalist in track & field.
I wondered about the views of Garcia and Thomas with respect to males in women’s sports. Would Thomas even be a decorated sprinter if she had been forced to compete against males like “Sadie” Schreiner from the University of Rochester? I emailed Garcia and Thomas but, at the time of publication, there was no response.
I also inquired about whether the WSF has had any second thoughts about the wisdom of its policy of advocating for males in women’s sports, given the public’s almost uniform rejection of the concept. Again, no response.
It is possible the WSF hopes the issue will just disappear, and it can proceed as if nothing of consequence occurred. Or maybe the WSF is playing the long game and hoping that at the conclusion of Trump’s four-year term, the next president will be more amenable to males in female sports.
Damage To Girls / Women
In any case, the WSF’s advocacy of males in women’s sports has contributed to terrible damage suffered by female athletes in recent years. The damage was completely avoidable and unnecessary. Trans could always have played on male teams, just like male homosexuals.
In reality, the WSF campaign may be about something more consequential than women’s sports. It appears the WSF was attempting to persuade society that males who identify as women are magically transformed into real women, like the puppet Pinocchio became a real boy at Geppetto’s workshop.
I became aware of the serious damage being done when I read about several female high school runners in Connecticut. Beginning in 2017, they were forced to compete against two trans identifying males who broke 17 girls’ track meet records and took 15 women’s state track championships.
Their lives were not advanced by males in female sports.
The girls filed a federal lawsuit against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, challenging its policy to allow male high school students to participate in female athletics. The girls argued this violates Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in education. The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge in 2021.
The girls appealed to the US. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, based in New York City. The appeal was dismissed in 2022 by a three-judge panel composed of two judges appointed by former Democratic Pres. Barack Obama and Beth Robinson, an appointee of Pres. Biden, who was the first openly lesbian judge to serve on any circuit court. The panel said “girls who are cisgender” lack standing because they cannot show a “likelihood” they will be “injured in the future.”
In 2023, the lawsuit was revived when the Second Circuit, sitting en banc or as a whole, held the girls had legal standing because they sufficiently alleged injuries, including lost athletic opportunities and recognition.
The lawsuit is still pending.
The female athletes have graduated from high school and college. One can only imagine the anguish they endured as young people who were treated so unfairly. As high school students, they got up early in the morning to run, hoping to achieve recognition and possibly a college scholarship. Then they experienced years of disappointment as politically charged federal judges ruled unfairly.
The only saving grace is that one day, they may become parents of girls, who will benefit from their ordeal.
Now grown women, the plaintiffs are represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a non-profit legal organization. The case is Soule v. Connecticut Association of Schools.
I don’t know if you’ve ever watched “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” but the way it addressed social issues could be biting and brilliant. There was an episode when two of the guys were volunteering at a youth program. (It might’ve been community service - I can’t remember.) They were picking the teams for basketball. One guy, Mac, would pick a kid. Then Dennis would pick a Black kid. Mac picked another kid. Then Dennis picked a Black kid. Finally Mac got frustrated and Dennis looked at him like daring him to go ahead and say it. So Mac said, “I know what you’re doing, sir, and it will not stand!”
I think about that scene when I think about transgenders and sport. It’s obviously wrong in a way that words can’t quite… well, put into words.
I don’t say that lightly. I was a college student-athlete. I majored in sports marketing. I wrote a number of papers advocating Title IX rights. (Also Title VIII, but that’s for another time.) My wife was a student-athlete as are all of our kids. And that would include our trans kid. So I think I/we are qualified to speak about this subject.
When our kid transitioned, they waited until AFTER their college career was over. Why? Because they believed that to do otherwise would’ve been ethically wrong. So when they transitioned, it was their life, their choice, and that was that. Was I happy? I wouldn’t say that. But I could never love them any less.
They would express - and have expressed - the same sentiments held by you and I: transgenderism holds no place in student athletics. It’s a conscious act that’s easily definable and ethically intolerable. It distorts the civil rights of women that they’ve fought for generations to recognize and they’re already still fighting to protect. It robs them of that progress. It robs them of the promise of inalienable rights that define us as Americans. It’s an injustice and I wish our justice system would see that.