() Wherever women’s sports activist Riley Gaines goes, fireworks are sure to follow.
The highlight of Tuesday’s Congressional hearing was an exchange between Gaines and Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., who in her opening remarks had accused those who disagreed with her at the hearing of being transphobic.
“Ranking Member Lee, if my testimony makes me transphobic, then I believe your opening monologue makes you a misogynist,” Gaines shot back in her opening remarks.
Rather than take the point gracefully that there might be two equal and opposing perspectives with conflicting interests in the debate, Lee then proceeded to interrupt the opening statement of Heritage Foundation legal scholar Sarah Perry in order to pursue a “point of order” against Gaines.
“Madame Chair, uh, excuse me, I move to have the gentlewoman’s words taken down,” Lee said in the middle of Perry’s statement without being formally recognized.
The committee briefly suspended, at which time Lee accused Gaines of “engaging in personalities.” However, upon further discussion with congressional staffers, Lee withdrew her point of order, recognizing that it was a losing battle.
During the hearing, critics of the growth of transgender athletes in women’s sports raised questions of fairness, safety, and privacy for female athletes in college and earlier who have been forced to compete against biological males.
“By allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports, we are placing our daughters in danger every time they step onto the field,” said Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., who chaired the hearing, pointing to the severe injuries suffered by some young women.
In some cases, those girls have had to share locker rooms, been injured by the transgender athlete, and lost out on the first-place finish to the biological male, who has a range of physical advantages from size to bone density to greater lung capacity and more.
Gaines, a former collegiate swimmer for the University of Kentucky, tied transgender athlete Lia Thomas at the NCAA championship and has since become an outspoken advocate for protecting women’s sports.
“Let me be perfectly clear,” she said at the hearing. “A school that knowingly allows a male athlete to take a spot on a women’s team or allows a male athlete to take the field in a women’s game is denying a female student athletic opportunity. And that is sex-based discrimination, and it violates Title IX…”
Gaines has called on female athletes to boycott the competition when a biological male is participating, but said coaches, families and more need to step up to help female athletes as well. She pointed to the serious, career-ending injuries biological males have caused for some female athletes.
Her testimony comes as a slew of new federal rules are emerging to force schools in particular to toe the line on liberal gender and sexuality ideology, such as transgender athletes, bathrooms and more, or risk losing their federal funding.
This push has been driven largely not by new laws out of Congress, but by new interpretations and regulations from federal agencies.
McClain blasted the Biden administration, saying it is “putting leftist policies ahead of women and girls.”
The new Biden administration push has broad application across schools, and not just for sports.
For instance, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a new interpretation of Title IX, the law preventing discrimination on the basis of sex, redefining “sex” to mean gender identity and sexual orientation.
This major change directly impacts the federal program providing free and reduced lunches for poor students at school. That means schools that refuse to allow transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice, for instance, could lose funding for school lunches. This has already begun, sparking at least two schools to sue the Biden administration.
This issue has become even more polarizing after high-profile cases of girls being attacked or injured by transgender students. One father in Loudoun County, Virginia, was arrested while protesting at a school board meeting after his daughter was sexually assaulted in the bathroom by a biological male identifying as a girl.
The Department of Education has proposed two rules likely coming next year using the same redefinition of sex that will require schools to comply with the liberal understanding of gender and sexuality or risk losing billions in federal funding for things like Pell grants, FAFSA, other grants and more. Specifically, students identifying as female would be allowed to play with the girls team.
Those rules, which were expected to already be finalized and may be combined into a single rule, have been delayed because of the pushback and concerns raised with the federal agency. Once they are finalized, though, schools that refuse to comply with allowing a range of transgender and sexuality requests could lose their funding.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
