The Biden administration is waging war on Title IX and, in response, a group of female athletes, coaches, and sports advocates have spent the month of June touring the country to sound the alarm.
Title IX has long served to protect girls’ and women’s education and sports opportunities. The 1972 federal education amendment requires there be equal opportunities for men and women in schools across the country, but President Joe Biden is working to undo those protections by unilaterally rewriting Title IX.
“The Biden administration has decided they want sex to be equivalent to gender identity; meaning, anyone that identifies as a woman, aka men, can take female opportunities,” former collegiate swimmer Paula Scanlan says.
Scanlan was forced to compete with a male athlete who identifies as a woman on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team. Now, she is speaking out against Biden’s attempted changes to Title IX because, by redefining sex in Title IX to include gender identity, Biden is swinging the door wide open for girls and women to be relegated to the sidelines in their own sports.
Scanlan says she thought it was a prank when a male swimmer, William Thomas, announced in the fall of 2019 that he would be competing on the female team the following season.
“I thought that someone was going to come out with a camera crew and say, ‘Pranked you! We’re starting a new prank TV show,’” Scanlan said, explaining that a male competing on the women’s team just sounded “so unreal.” But it was real, and soon Scanlan and the other University of Pennsylvania female swimmers were sharing a locker room with Thomas, who now goes by the name Lia Thomas.
After she graduated, and after watching Thomas take medals and opportunities from female athletes, Scanlan joined other defenders of women’s sports, among them Riley Gaines, and began speaking out about her experience.
Scanlan is one of the many female athletes who have participated in the Independent Women’s Forum Take Back Title IX Summer Bus Tour to inform Americans of the Biden administration’s bid to change Title IX, which not only threatens women’s sports, but throws open restrooms, locker rooms, and dormitories.
Scanlan and Kim Russell, the former head women’s lacrosse coach at Oberlin College, join the “Problematic Women” podcast to discuss the fight to keep women’s sports female only.
Listen to the podcast below:
