Girls Sports

NCAA and San Jose State ‘Transgender’ Volleyball Player Usurp Women’s Rights

Boise State forfeited the semifinal game of the 2024 Mountain West Women’s Volleyball Championship tournament rather than play San Jose State, which had a “transgender” volleyball player on its team.

The school’s courageous stand for women-only sports and private spaces demonstrates the high cost of the NCAA’s “Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy,” which allows participation in sports based on an athlete’s “gender identity.”

The policy threatens women’s accomplishments and rights, but the Boise team is part of a growing backlash against transgender ideology that claims a man can become a woman through clothing and makeup, drugs, hormones and surgeries. Or just by proclaiming it so.

Boise teammates and sisters Kiersten and Katelyn Van Kirk explained the decision to Fox News’ sports outlet OutKick, with Katelyn saying:

And in the end, I guess we all had to come to terms with the idea that this is bigger than ourselves and a championship has to be given up for this fight [to protect women’s sports] to actually keep going.

Boise State forfeited twice to SJSU during the regular season. Southern Utah, the University of Wyoming and Utah State also withdrew from games with the Spartans due to the presence of Blaire Fleming, who was born male but attempts to live as a woman.

Nine players filed a lawsuit to block Fleming from playing in the tournament, but Denver Judge S. Kato Crews ruled against them.

SJSU went on to lose to Colorado State for the championship in four sets.

But the tournament highlights harms when males are allowed to play women’s  sports, including:

  • Girls and women lose scholarships and positions on teams. Fleming received a full scholarship that should have gone to a woman.
  • After working for years to achieve athletic success, 717 female athletes have lost more than 1,055 competitions and 518 medals to boys and men, reports the website SheWon.org. SJSU’s inclusion of a male brought losses to dozens of women throughout the season and in the championship tournament.
  • Male athletes endanger women athletes. A Title IX complaint from SJSU Associate Head Coach Melissa Batie-Smoose said, “Even defenders on Fleming’s own team, concerned for their safety, now sometimes turn away during practice matches when Fleming is winding up for a kill – a fear response … virtually unheard of in women’s volleyball.”
  • Teachers and coaches have been fired for not kowtowing to transgender policies and ideology. Batie-Smoose was suspended from her coaching position after filing her complaint in defense of the women she coached.
  • Athletes and teams have been banned from competition for opposing males in girls and women’s sports.
  • When males enter female-only restrooms, locker rooms, showers and lodging rooms, girls and women lose their privacy and are unwillingly exposed to male bodies. SJSU’s co-captain Brooke Slusser was forced to share rooms with Fleming – without being told her teammate was male. 

In addition to these harms, women who speak out against transgender policies are often targeted by transgender-identified activists and their allies. Slusser was threatened after she spoke out against Fleming’s presence on the team, leading to a police presence and metal detectors at a Spartan game against Colorado.

Thankfully, there is a growing backlash against men in women’s sports and private spaces.  A 2023 Gallup poll showed that 69% of Americans believe transgender athletes “should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender’ – an increase from 62% in 2021.

Along with refusing to compete against males, women are also fighting back with lawsuits. Swimmer and women’s rights activist Riley Gaines, along with more than a dozen other female athletes, sued the NCAA in May 2024 over its policy that permits men to compete against them and use female locker rooms.

Earlier this month, the Van Kirks and ten other women sued the Mountain West Conference for violating their Title IX and First Amendment rights.

The forfeiture was painful for the Boise State women. But Kiersten explained its importance, as the team fights for women athletes across the nation. She told OutKick:

It’s just disheartening and heartbreaking that it had to come to this. But I know that we are all working towards future generations being able to have a safe place for female athletes to compete and putting that above ourselves, which is a really hard thing to do because obviously our goal was to win a championship. And I think that it’s extremely unfair and really terrible that it had to come to that.

The Daily Citizen applauds these women for their courageous, costly stance. We too want future generations of girls and women to have access to female-only sports, privacy and safety.  

Related articles and resources:

Counseling Consultation & Referrals

Transgender Resources

Canadian Powerlifter Faces Two-Year Ban for Protesting Males in Her Sport

Four Women’s Volleyball Teams Forfeit – Won’t Play Team with a Man

San Jose Coach Suspended for Filing Discrimination Complaint Against Transgender Player

#SaveGirlsSports – New Campaign Launched by Family Policy AllianceCanadian Powerlifter Faces Two-Year Ban for Protesting Males in Her Sport

Image from Getty.

Election Aftermath: Americans Aren’t Losing Their Rights

Citizens mourning the results of last week’s presidential election are taking to social media, filming and posting reactions including screaming, more intense screaming, “screaming into the abyss,” crying, proclaiming “devastation,” head shaving, name calling, threats of violence and mental breakdowns.

The videos reflect some Americans’ sincere and anguished belief that the coming administration will take away American freedoms — up to and including reinstating slavery. But neither President-elect Trump’s proposed policies nor his campaign rhetoric suggest any American rights are in danger.

Let’s break it down.

Rumors about Mr. Trump taking away women’s rights have to do with abortion. Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly asserted the President-elect would enforce a national abortion ban “with or without Congress.”

Ironically, the President-elect’s position on abortion has either frustrated or disappointed many pro-life advocates. He opposes late-term abortion and staunchly supports states’ rights to determine their own abortion policy. In October, he claimed he would veto any national abortion ban to protect states’ rights.

These facts did little to dampen the panic surrounding Trump’s supposed “war on women.” In a dire video warning about America’s Trumpian future, comedian Kathy Griffen claimed, “If your son gets a girl pregnant and they’re both fifteen, then you, of course, will force that they marry and keep having as many Duggars as possible.”

“I’m not being hyperbolic,” Griffen doubled down. “I’m not being dramatic.”

The author believes Griffen is, in fact, being hyperbolic and dramatic.

Trump and his allies have never supported, or even floated, marriage contracts or child quotas. Griffen’s predictions are wild extrapolations of a faulty set of facts — and all too representative of the kinds of narratives popping up online and in person.

One high school teacher vented her distress to her students, warning them,

[The Trump administration] is talking about deporting people. If you’re from Central America, they want to deport you. If you’re from South America, they want to deport you. He’s talking about deporting black people back to Africa.

Deportation is part of the Trump administration’s goal to beef-up border security. From fiscal years 2021 to 2024, Customs and Border Patrol agents encountered more than six million illegal immigrants, a 59% increase from the more than two million encountered from fiscal years 2016 to 2019.

A significant number of these arrivals have had criminal records or ties to gangs and terrorist organizations. At least 435,000 of these bad actors have been released into the U.S. to await immigration trial, according to the Department of Homeland Security. In some cases, repeat offenders have been allowed to kill American citizens, including Laken Riley, Lizbeth Medina, Rachel Morin, Jocelyn Nungaray and Kayla Hamilton.

Mr. Trump and his border czar nominee, Tom Homan, say finding and deporting these violent offenders will be priority one, something a teacher of vulnerable students should be excited about. As for deporting black people back to Africa — suffice to say it’s never been part of Trump’s platform.

Also not a part of Trump’s platform? Taking away LGBT “rights” or endorsing violence against LGBT-identified individuals.

The President-elect plans to reinforce some basic protections for biological women, namely restoring the integrity of Title IX and stopping men from participating in women’s sports. He further plans to stop forcing taxpayers to pay for transgender surgeries and keep schools from promoting gender ideology.

These policies are popular with most Americans for reasons the Daily Citizen frequently enumerates. Notably, however, they do not stop a person from being gender confused or pursuing transgender surgeries as an adult and on their own dime.

Neither do these policies incite violence against anyone. If anything, they are a repudiation of violence against women.

Still, on TikTok, one user forcefully opined, “It’s going to be hell on Earth once they strip away everyone’s rights that isn’t a straight, white, cis[gender] man.”

Post-election hysteria illustrates a deeply sad picture of Americans laboring under a lie. No American is losing their rights. Love him or hate him, the election of Donald Trump shouldn’t send anyone into an existential crisis.

Let’s keep it real, folks — and by that, I mean let’s get a grip on reality.

Additional Articles and Resources

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Illegal Immigrant Arrested in Murder of Maryland Mom

Debate Over Immigration Labels Obscures Seriousness of Laken Riley’s Death

Illegal Immigrant to Appear in Court for Death of Texas Teen, Illustrates Violent Trend

Fentanyl Overdoses Rise, Connection to Illegal Immigration

Taxpayers Will Fund Violent Inmate’s Transgender Surgery, Judge Rules

Back to School With Sexualized Lessons

Title IX Redefinition of ‘Sex’ Faces Defiance and a Flood of Lawsuits

Appeals Courts Affirm Rulings Stopping the DOE’s Rewrite of Tilte IX

Huge Title IX Win: Department of Education’s 2021 Interpretation Ruled ‘Unlawful’

Courts Defend Title IX from Department of Health and Human Services

Olympic Women’s Boxing Champ is Officially a Man

Imane Khelif, the reigning gold medalist in Olympic women’s boxing, is, in fact, a man, a medical report obtained by Reduxx confirms. The findings highlight the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) willful failure to protect the safety of female Olympians and the integrity of the Paris Games.  

Khelif entered the contest under a cloud of suspicion. The International Boxing Association (IBA) had disqualified him from women’s boxing a year earlier after two independent blood tests concluded he had XY chromosomes.

The IOC knew about these tests but declined to investigate or bar Khelif from competing. Instead, officials relied heavily on 2024 Olympic regulations identifying women solely by their female passports. Any questions about Khelif’s biology were quickly rebuffed or minimized.

“These boxers are entirely eligible,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams lectured, referring to Khelif and silver medalist Lu Yu-Ting, who also has XY chromosomes. “They are women on their passports. It’s not helpful to start stigmatizing like this. We all have a responsibility not to turn it into some kind of witch-hunt.”

IOC President Thomas Bach doubled down: “We are talking about women’s boxing. We have two boxers who were born as women, raised as women, who have passports as women and who have competed for many years as women. This is a clear definition of a woman.”

Bach later claimed, “There was never any doubt of [Khelif and Yu-Ting] being women.”

Bach is wrong on two counts. A woman is a human with XX chromosomes or, alternatively, a human designed to produce large gametes. Living as a woman or having a female passport does not make someone female.

The IBA blood tests also raised substantial doubts about Khelif’s biological sex. His opening bout against Italy’s Angela Carini only raised suspicions higher. If the IOC had investigated these claims, it might have discovered that Khelif had been diagnosed with a rare disorder of sexual development (DSD) in 2023 —one that absolutely excludes him from competing against women.  

In August 2023, expert endocrinologists Souymaya Fedala and Jacques Young determined Khelif had 5-Alpha-Reductase deficiency, a developmental disorder that only affects males.

Infants with 5-alpha produce too little dihydrotestosterone, which causes them to be born with ambiguous genitalia. Doctors often mistake babies with 5-alpha for girls. But, importantly, this disorder does not stop the production or effect of testosterone. A person with 5-alpha will go through male puberty —which is when most find out their true sex.

5-alpha is a terrible, disorienting disorder. It also categorically disqualifies sufferers from participating in female sports. Fedala and Young’s analysis found Khelif had XY chromosomes, normal male levels of testosterone and male reproductive organs. That means he has the same chromosomal and hormonal advantages all men have over women athletically, including heavier bones, bulkier musclers, broader shoulder and larger hearts and lungs.

Khelif and his coaches received this diagnosis more than a year before his Olympic debut. He and his team decided to compete anyway, indulging in a televised display of violence made more shocking by its intentionality.

The IOC had all the information they needed to stop Khelif from participating. The barest hint of an investigation would have revealed the larger report released by Reduxx — Khelif’s coach had already alluded to it publicly.

Instead, the IOC gave Khelif a gold medal.

The whole debacle represents an egregious failure of the organization’s mission to “encourage and support the promotion of ethics and good governance in sport … and to dedicate its efforts to ensuring that, in sport, the spirit of fair play prevails, and violence is banned.”

Marshi Smith, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sports, puts it this way as she spoke to Reduxx:

The IOC and the Algerian Olympic Committee are complicit in endorsing male violence against women under the guise of public entertainment on the world’s largest sport stage. They stood by as women were subjected to physical assault for spectacle, stripped of safety, fairness, and their lifetime achievements. All those involved must face swift and serious consequences.

Smith continues:

We urge leaders in sports and governments worldwide to condemn the IOC and demand a public commitment to ensuring fair and safe sports for women from this day forward. This must never be allowed to happen again.

First and foremost, the IOC must officially define what a woman is, rather than leaving it up to individual nations. Checking passports does nothing to determine a competitor’s biological advantage. IOC officials must find their courage to adhere to truth, instead of ideology.

On behalf of the female population, I hereby exhort the IOC to, well, grow a pair.

Additional Articles and Resources

Two Men Win Olympic Gold for Battering Women

Olympic-Sized Stupidity: It’s Wrong for Men to Fight Women

Olympic Privilege? Officials Protect Sports – But Only at the Highest Level

Male and Female Biology Matters

World Rugby Finds Men and Women are Different, Announces New Guidelines Protecting Elite Women Players

Women Golfers Protest LPGA Policy Allowing ‘Transgender’ Competitors

Two hundred seventy-five women golfers sent a letter to the Ladies Professional Golf Association, the International Golf Federation, and the United States Golf Association protesting policies allowing men to compete against women.

The LPGA hosts a qualifying series of tournaments, known as qualifying schools, where players compete for a tour card, giving them membership in next year’s tour. This membership allows them to compete in many events without having to compete to qualify.

This year, “transgender”-identified golfer Hailey Davidson is set to play against 245 women at the LPGA Qualifying Series, October 20-25, in Venice, Florida.

The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF), a conservative group that “celebrates women’s accomplishments and fights to expand women’s options and opportunities,” believes:

Men and women are equal, but we are not the same. Biological differences between the sexes are more than skin-deep, and profoundly shape our lives.
The law must recognize this reality in certain circumstances, such as in sex-segregated sports teams or prisons, or it risks placing women and girls in harmful or even dangerous situations. E]

Men and women are equal, but we are not the same. Biological differences between the sexes are more than skin-deep, and profoundly shape our lives.

The law must recognize this reality in certain circumstances, such as in sex-segregated sports teams or prisons, or it risks placing women and girls in harmful or even dangerous situations. 

IWF shared the golfers’ letter with Fox Corporation’s Outkick, a sports and culture website. The letter states:

We all know there can be no equal athletic opportunity for women without a separate female golf category. Yet, the Ladies Professional Golf Association continues to propagate a policy that allows male athletes to qualify, compete and win in women’s golf, even as several national and international governing bodies of sport and state legislatures increasingly reject these unjust and inequitable policies that harm female athletes.

The 275 female athletes who signed the letter oppose the LPGA’s Gender Policy, which seeks “to provide transgender athletes an avenue to membership and opportunity to participate in events, and in an effort to assure fair competition for all members and participants.”

The policy states:

Tournaments and membership are open only to female athletes, including transitioned female athletes.

“Transitioned female athletes” don’t exist, of course. Only men and women exist, and they cannot “transition” to the other sex.

Transgender-identified applicants must notify the LGPA Tour of their “gender reassignment from male to female after puberty” and “provide proof of gender.” The policy lists two requirements:

The applicant must have undergone gender reassignment surgery (i.e., a gonadectomy) prior to submitting an application for membership or entering the tournament; and
The applicant must have undergone, for at least one (1) year, appropriate hormonal therapy and maintained testosterone levels in a verifiable manner sufficient to minimize or negate gender-related advantages in sport competitions

But a male athlete who has gone through puberty, even if he has his testicles removed and is taking estrogen, still maintains most of the size, strength and performance advantages of a male athlete, as the letter to the LPGA explains:

The male advantage in driving the ball is estimated around a 30% performance advantage; this is an enormous difference in the context of sport. Anatomical differences between males and females affect clubhead speed and regulating consistency at ball contact.
Females have higher mean heart rates and encounter greater physiological demands while playing, especially at high altitudes. The anatomical differences are not removed with male testosterone suppression. There is no way to turn a male into a female. Being female is not equated to being male with a reduction in strength [our emphasis].

Outkick reports that the female golfers are asking the LPGA, the U.S. Golf Association, and the International Golf Federation to:

Repeal all policies and rules that allow male golfers to participate in women’s golf events” and “establish and enforce the right of female professional golfers to participate in women’s golf based on sex-eligibility must be limited to members of the female sex.

Allowing men to compete in women’s athletics is inherently unfair, as men take opportunities, scholarships, places on teams and victories from women. Women’s privacy and safety are also at risk when men play women’s sports.

The website SheWon.org lists hundreds of “female athletes who were displaced by males in women’s sporting events and other types of competitions expressly for women.”

So far, the site lists 717 female athletes who lost 1,055 “medals, scholarships or other opportunities,” in 522 competitions in 37 sports – everything from cycling to disc golf, skiing to track and field, and swimming to rowing. She Won shows the women who would have won – if men had been kept from competing against them.

Related articles and resources:

Addressing Gender Identity with Honesty and Compassion

Counseling Consultation & Referrals

No, It’s Not ‘Complicated’ to Keep Men Out of Women’s Sports

Riley Gaines and 15 Other Female Athletes Sue NCAA Over ‘Transgender Policy’

#SaveGirlsSports – New Campaign Launched by Family Policy Alliance

Shoving Girls Off the Podium: More Male Athletes Participating in Girls Sports

Third Court Halts DOE’s Title IX Rewrite, Girls’ Sports & Spaces Preserved

Transgender Resources

Image from Shutterstock.