August 5, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – An LGBT sports blog has published without consent the names of hundreds of female athletes who wrote the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) Board of Governors to resist pressure from LGBT activists to dilute women’s sports with the inclusion of gender-confused biological males.
On July 29, the group Save Women’s Sports (SWS) sent a letter to the board on behalf of more than 300 female athletes, arguing against calls to boycott Idaho over the state’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. The law forbids “transgender females” – males who “identify” as female – from competing against actual females in school athletic events, with disputes over a student’s gender settled by physical and genetic examination.
The NCAA has previously come out against the Idaho law, and said the Board of Governors would discuss the matter in August.
“Each one of us has benefitted (sic) personally, and many of us professionally, from a fair and level playing field,” the SWS letter says. “We have achieved striking success in the sports we love, and we are committed to preserving the same equality of opportunity for future female athletes.”
“We strongly believe that everyone should have the opportunity to compete, but true athletic parity for women demands that women’s sports be protected for biological females,” it continues. “Protecting the integrity of women’s sports has, for decades, played an integral role in remedying past discrimination against women and empowering them to achieve their full athletic potential.”
Over the weekend, the LGBT sports blog Outsports (which is part of the far-left Vox Media network) published the names of all 309 women who signed the letter. Most of the names had not previously been made public, as many were “afraid of the backlash that they might get on social media of being labeled a transphobe or a hater,” The Federalist noted.
“Martina Navratilova and her co-signers could not hide from us,” declared the site’s managing editor, Dawn Ennis, who justified identifying them on the grounds that “those who stand in favor of discrimination ought to be held accountable.”
“It is disgraceful that Outsports and other like-minded extremist activist groups are bullying and harassing women simply for standing up for fairness in the sports they love,” Save Women’s Sports responded in a statement. “Rather than engaging in peaceful dialogue, Outsports is on a witch hunt to silence women for respectfully advocating for fair competition. We at Save Women’s Sports, along with hundreds of female athletes, choose dialogue over doxing and we reject these bullying tactics from fringe, petty, and disreputable organizations.”
Ennis scoffed at the idea that publishing the names could lead to harassment or violence against her opponents, citing “significantly greater incidents of violent attacks on trans people, and murders. compared to the number of threats that cisgender opponents of trans inclusion have claimed and reported.”
Yet the rise of left-wing “cancel culture” across academia, corporate America, and social media is a well-known phenomenon, leading to a recent survey's finding that every ideological group but “strong liberals” currently feels unfree to speak their mind for fear of societal reprisals, such as LGBT activists’ frequent campaigns to stigmatize traditional views on sexuality and gender as bigoted.
Additionally, the persistent “transgender murder epidemic” is not reflected in national population and crime statistics, which show that the alleged trans murder rate of 1.8 per 100,000 is lower than the overall murder rate of 4.9 per 100,000. Additionally, the actual trans murder rate is likely even lower, as it’s derived from a Human Rights Campaign (HRC) list of “anti-trans” murders that admits there were no suspects in at least two of the cases (meaning the motive is unconfirmed) and is vague about the details of several others.
As for the substance of the trans-athlete debate, the Journal of Medical Ethics published a paper last June finding that “healthy young men (do) not lose significant muscle mass (or power) when their circulating testosterone levels were reduced to (below International Olympic Committee guidelines) for 20 weeks,” and “indirect effects of testosterone” on factors such as bone structure, lung volume, and heart size “will not be altered by hormone therapy”; therefore “the advantage to transwomen (men) afforded by the (International Olympic Committee) guidelines is an intolerable unfairness.”