Female athletes and advocates told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that lawmakers can no longer straddle the fence on male participation in women’s sports. Their message was blunt: pick a side.
Kim Jones, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, testified that protecting girls’ sports and accommodating men and boys who identify as women in those same spaces are mutually exclusive goals.
“You can protect the boy who wants to take a spot on a girls’ team, or you can protect the girl for whom the spot was designated,” Jones said. “You can protect women’s sports to celebrate female athletes and recognize women as champions, or you can use women’s sports as a place to compare women to less talented males and to teach women that men must be prioritized.”
“We can’t do both. We must make a choice,” she added.
Carly Smolak, a former professional soccer player, testified that lawmakers who won’t act are already failing the next generation of girls.
“We are failing young female athletes by forcing girls to choose between playing co-ed sports or not playing,” Smolak said. “The message to young girls is that boys can be better female athletes.”
At a press conference following the hearing, NCAA softball player Kendall Kotzmacher described what it’s like to train a lifetime for a sport only to watch that work disappear against a biological male competitor.
“Knowing that we were playing a man is a feeling that you can’t explain to another person,” Kotzmacher said. “Showing up, seeing a male on the field for something you’ve worked your whole life for and knowing there is nothing you can do about it, is unimaginable.”
A high school volleyball player also spoke at the press conference, recalling the moment she learned a transgender student would be using the girls’ changing area.
“All of us girls do our normal things. We get undressed, unconsciously trusting our friends next to us,” she said. “It feels as if our protection was just stripped away from us. And they don’t care.”
Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn said Democrat lawmakers did not show up to the hearing.
