Why I Sponsored the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act

We have spent unspecified funds, through the years, searching for intelligent life on other planets. Sometimes, I wonder how much intelligent life we have here on earth. The simplest things have been twisted and turned so much, it’s hard to recognize common sense rules.

This was an especially busy week in Raleigh. The Senate received the House budget and began our work, which is quite an onerous task. In addition, lots of important bills were up for debate. I had several of my sponsored bills making their way through the committee process. 

The bill that drew the most attention was SB 631, Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. It’s a strange world when we even need to discuss whether men can play on Women’s Sports teams. But we must.

In North Carolina, there are transgender women who are now playing on women’s sports teams. (A transgender woman is a biological male.) As a result, one young woman has been severely injured during a volleyball match. 

This young woman spoke before our committee this week and explained what happened. A ball was hit so hard, by a transgender athlete, that she was knocked unconscious, suffered a severe concussion, and still suffers from her injuries, months later. She explained that she still suffers with vision issues, numbness of her right side, cognitive issues and several other problems. 

Biological males have distinct advantages over women in most sports. Those who consider themselves female (transgender women) are, in almost all cases, bigger, stronger, have more muscle mass, larger hearts, and more lung capacity. This gives them distinct advantages over female athletes.

Opponents have tried to make this bill about everything except the real issue. This bill is to protect women’s sports. Pure and simple. The opposition has tried to make it an attack on transgender kids. It is not. They have also tried to claim that it’s setting kids up for “panty peeking”, meaning an examination for proof of gender. They are called “sports physicals” and have been going on since we began organized sports. 

Title IX was signed into law in 1972 by President Nixon. The purpose of Title IX was explicitly to protect women’s sports and give the same opportunity to women that men had been enjoying. Title IX gave women the opportunity to win scholarships, to become professional athletes, and win endorsements. It is unfair to set women back fifty years in the athletic arena. This bill prevents that from happening.

I have mentioned Lia Thomas in the past. Lia is a transgender student at the University of Pennsylvania who swam on the mens’ team for 3 years. Lia then identified as a woman and started swimming on the women’s team, ranking 554th as a male swimmer in the 22 meter freestyle, but winning handily on the women’s circuit.

Olympic swimmer Riley Gaines came and spoke before our committee. She told of swimming against Lia Thomas and they ended up tied. The trophy was given to Thomas on the podium for photo ops. Does that seem fair? Absolutely not.

Riley also talked about swimming six hours every day through school. She swam three hours in the morning and three more hours after school to prepare for her swim contests. She put in a tremendous amount of hard work through many years in order to train and be the best that she could be. She still only tied with a male who ranked 554th among his male peers.

Imagine being a female athlete and knowing that no matter how hard you worked and how much time you put into honing your skills, you would likely never win. That is the picture we are looking at if we allow males to compete against females.

We had a coach speak at our committee also. She has coached for many years. She said, as a coach, she gets paid to win. If coaches can recruit males to play on their teams, who are stronger and better athletes, that’s what they will do to win.

Doesn’t it seem that any form of intelligent life could figure this out and this conversation wouldn’t be necessary. Perhaps we do need to find a more intelligent life somewhere else.