By M.H. Cavanaugh
Christian Action League
March 31, 2021
Save Women’s Sports – it’s a simple name for a straightforward bill filed in the North Carolina House last week that aims to keep the playing field level for female athletes by ensuring that they aren’t forced to compete with biological males.
Introduced by primary sponsor Rep. Mark Brody (R-Union) during a press conference, the bill would require North Carolina middle schools, high schools and universities to define teams as male/men’s/boys’, female/women’s/girls’ or co-ed and would ensure that players compete on the appropriate team based on biology.
“The bill creates a bright-line definition as to who qualifies to participate in women’s sports by using the only definitive, provable and medically accurate definition available to science now,” Brody said, defining females as those with two X chromosomes and males with XY.
The measure, very similar to legislation filed in 29 other states, has become necessary since President Biden in January signed an executive order that effectively redefined Title IX, insisting that it prohibit discrimination based on gender, not sex, and further opening the door for boys and men to identify as female and thereby gain a competitive advantage.
“This bill proactively addresses not what may happen, but when it will happen. I do not want to wait until biological females are pushed out of female sports, records broken, scholarships lost and benefits of excelling diminished,” Brody said. “This bill is about fairness and allowing girls like my granddaughter to have a level playing field. Girls deserve equal opportunities in sports.”
Beth Stelzer, an amateur power-lifter and the founder of the grassroots organization Save Women’s Sports, told the press conference crowd that the bill is about facts, not feelings, and that it enforces Title IX’s true intentions, fairness on the basis of sex. She said she realized she needed to speak out after gender activists demanding that a biological man be allowed to compete against women jeopardized one of her power-lifting competitions with a disruptive protest.
“If we allow men into women’s sports, we will have men’s sports and co-ed sports but women’s sports will fade away,” Stelzer said. She wears red and blue when she speaks on the matter to show that it is a non-partisan issue.
According to a recent Women’s Liberation Front poll, more than two thirds of American voters think boys and men who say they identify as transgender should not be allowed to compete in girls’ and women’s athletics.
Further, Stelzer described multiple scientific studies that have borne out the fact that no matter how hard they train, women are at a disadvantage in virtually every sport when competing against men. She cited the case of well-known North Carolina power-lifter Jennifer Thompson, who trained for two decades to become a record-breaking champion only to have her teen-age son lift the same amount of weight after just two years of training.
Also speaking in support of the bill was Charlie Rae, a writer from Raleigh who has excelled in taekwondo, swimming and other sports.
“Imagine a situation at a university here in North Carolina. There are two teams, one for women and one for men. But the university switches its policy to allow men onto women’s teams. One day you realize that every single person on either team is male, but on the team made for women they are all males who claim to be females. No one at that university would be able to use Title IX to assert that discrimination was taking place,” Rae said. She said that as a child she suffered from gender dysphoria, and that being able to excel in sports can help young girls deal with their issues and develop into strong women.
HB 358 – Save Women’s Sports Act itself points out a number of differences between the sexes as evidence as to why competition should remain sex-segregated: Men generally have denser, stronger bones, tendons, and ligaments, larger hearts, greater lung volume per body mass, a higher red blood cell count, and higher hemoglobin.
They also have higher natural levels of testosterone, which affects traits such as hemoglobin levels, body fat content, the storage and use of carbohydrates, and the development of Type-2 muscle fibers, all of which result in men being able to generate higher speed and power during physical activity, the bill notes. Further, the benefits that natural testosterone provides to male athletes are not diminished through the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones often taken by boys claiming to be girls.
The Save Women’s Sports Act has been referred to the House Judiciary 1 and Education Committees. In addition to Brody, other primary sponsors of the bill include Pat McElraft (R-Carteret), Diane Wheatley (R-Cumberland) and Jimmy Dixon (R-Duplin).