{"id":1527507,"date":"2022-06-24T08:05:56","date_gmt":"2022-06-24T12:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1527507"},"modified":"2022-06-24T08:06:42","modified_gmt":"2022-06-24T12:06:42","slug":"the-tide-is-finally-turning-towards-fairness-in-womens-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-tide-is-finally-turning-towards-fairness-in-womens-sports\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tide Is Finally Turning Towards Fairness In Women\u2019s Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-tide-is-finally-turning-towards-fairness-in-womens-sports%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1527507&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>MORGANTOWN, W. V. \u2014 When I moved to this college town in the summer of 1975 as a 10-year-old Muslim immigrant girl from India, I found my stride doing something very simple: tackling the rolling hills outside our home on Cottonwood Street.<\/p>\n<p>Each day, I logged my mile \u2013 running the same route, down Cottonwood, down Headlee, up Pineview, up Cottonwood \u2013 as religiously as I did my prayers. I subscribed to Runner\u2019s World magazine and Boston Marathon winner Bill Rodgers became my hero. Every morning, I\u2019d meditate upon the image of then-Bruce Jenner to put a kick in my step. Running 10ks and competing in cross country and girls\u2019 track in middle school and high school made me a lifelong athlete.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, girls and women in sports have come under attack as a result of an aggressive, well-funded campaign to allow boys and men who identify as girls and women to compete in female sports, in the name of transgender rights. University of Pennsylvania swimmer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/college\/2022\/03\/03\/lia-thomas-penn-swimmer-transgender-woman-daily-cover\">Lia Thomas<\/a>, a male who competed in men\u2019s swimming then last year started swimming on the women\u2019s team after identifying as female, has most notoriously dominated women\u2019s swimming after the NAACP allowed Thomas to compete in women\u2019s swimming.<\/p>\n<p>Too often, athletes, parents, and sports organizations who disagree with males in women\u2019s sports have cowered or stayed silent in the face of this controversy because shaming naysayers as \u201ctransphobic\u201d is a tactic of activists on this issue, just as \u201cracist\u201d and \u201cIslamophobic\u201d are weaponized to silence people on issues of race and religion.<\/p>\n<p>But that is now finally changing. Earlier this week, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) voted to approve a new policy restricting most transgender athletes from competing in elite women\u2019s aquatic competitions. Then on Wednesday, the International Rugby League <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2022\/jun\/21\/international-rugby-league-joins-swimming-in-barring-transgender-women-from-competing\">ruled <\/a>that transgender athletes cannot compete in women\u2019s sports,<\/p>\n<p>A mother in Australia, Katherine Deves, expressed relief, writing on Twitter: \u201cI am relieved and delighted my daughter\u2019s sport is now safe and fair at [the] elite level.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"35UC9BApfO0t2GyHLrqh4TecMWX8NFDwSj7JKnQusxbIdZkom1Eg\"><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Rugby League the next international sports federation preserving the integrity of the female category! Men banned from playing on the women\u2019s team.<\/p>\n<p>I am relieved and delighted my daughter\u2019s sport is now safe and fair at elite level. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/0YySTJlzrZ\">https:\/\/t.co\/0YySTJlzrZ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Katherine Deves (@deves_katherine) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/deves_katherine\/status\/1539061557417480192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 21, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>On Thursday, the 50th anniversary of signing Title IX into law, a diverse team of athletes stood under the banner, <a href=\"https:\/\/ourbodiesoursports.com\">\u201cOur Bodies, Our Sports,\u201d<\/a> at Freedom Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue, blocks from the White House, to stand together for protecting girls and women\u2019s sports for \u2013 guess what \u2013 girls and women. The rally was supported by the Independent Women\u2019s Network, where I\u2019m a senior fellow in the practice of journalism and a parent advocate.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/IMG_7806-1024x768-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-274509\" width=\"765\" height=\"574\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/IMG_7806-1024x768-1.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/IMG_7806-300x225-1.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/IMG_7806-768x576-1.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/IMG_7806-1536x1152-1.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/IMG_7806-2048x1536-1.jpeg 2048w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>After much reflection, as a classic liberal and feminist, I am proud to have stood with the athletes and advocates speaking up for girls and women in sports. This is not just an issue any longer of conservatives. <\/p>\n<p>Included among the advocates were lesbian rights activist Lauren Levey and women\u2019s rights advocate Amanda Houdeschell, a leader at the Women\u2019s Liberation Front, known as WoLF. I\u2019ve created a Who\u2019s Who on my <a href=\"https:\/\/asrainvestigates.substack.com\/p\/whos-who-defending-womens-and-girls\">Substack<\/a>. These athletes are champions in their sports and now they are trailblazers in public policy. They include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gainers Barker, who competed against the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Lia Thomas. The NAACP mailed her an award after she tied Thomas in a race.<\/li>\n<li>Skateboarder Taylor Silverman has lost prize money due to being forced to compete against a transgender skateboarder.<\/li>\n<li>Southern Utah University cross-country runner Madisan Debos, who wrote earlier this year: \u201cWhat I signed up for was running against similarly advantaged competitors \u2014 other women. What I have experienced, and seen repeated across the nation, is a different story, and it\u2019s why I\u2019m speaking out.\u201d<\/li>\n<li>West Virginia University State University soccer player Lainey Armistead, who has advocated for my home state\u2019s \u201cFairness in Women\u2019s Sports Act.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Former Democratic Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, an original sponsor of the Protect Women\u2019s Sports Act, says protecting girls\u2019 and women\u2019s sports is a \u201cfeminist issue that should be supported by anyone of either party who wants to increase opportunities for women and girls.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Activists and politicians have just gone too far in laying claim to women\u2019s and girls\u2019 sports. I say this as someone who has faced death threats <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/repeal-islams-scarlet-letter-sex-laws\/2016\/06\/15\/3db58cc6-3268-11e6-8758-d58e76e11b12_story.html\">advocating for the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender people<\/a> in Muslim countries, where in too many nations a person having anything but heterosexual sex within a marriage can be a crime punishable by death.<\/p>\n<p>Long before I was a journalist or \u201csenior\u201d anything anywhere, I was just a girl running the Coliseum track in Morgantown. Athletics \u2013 specifically girls\u2019 athletics \u2013 empowered me as a Muslim girl in West Virginia.<\/p>\n<p>I still remember, as if it were yesterday, the call I got from a classmate named Jane, inviting me to join a relay team for our track meet at Suncrest Junior High School. As I passed the baton to Lynda McCroskey, I felt strong and empowered.<\/p>\n<p>A cousin came one day and saw me running in shorts, and he told my father, \u201cThat is <em>haram<\/em> for her to show her legs.\u201d <em>Haram<\/em> is the Arabic word for \u201cillegal.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Indeed, too often, girls in my religiously conservative Muslim communities aren\u2019t allowed to bicycle or run as we near puberty for fear of breaking our hymen, or \u201cmaidenheads,\u201d and \u201closing our virginity.\u201d What\u2019s more, our movement, the sun on our bare arms, or the wind in our hair can be deemed \u201charam.\u201d In Pakistan, women have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2006\/0130\/p01s03-wosc.html\">defied threats<\/a> to run a road race.<\/p>\n<p>My father, a firm believer in girls\u2019 and women\u2019s rights, ignored my cousin\u2019s complaint. I continued running and competing against girls my age.<\/p>\n<p>At Morgantown High School, I had to run against boys in cross country because it was 1978 when I was a high school freshman. My classmate, Kaye, and I didn\u2019t have enough girls to make a girls\u2019 team. I still remember a boy hobbling as if his knee was in pain right before I was about to pass him.<\/p>\n<p>As hard as we trained, Kaye and I were only fast enough to qualify for the boys\u2019 junior varsity team. It would take us four years on junior varsity to qualify to \u201cletter\u201d and get the much-coveted letterman\u2019s jacket as a Morgantown High Mohican. <\/p>\n<p>The cartilage in my right knee wore thin by my junior year when \u201cBig Al,\u201d the trainer, had me popping daily ibuprofen for the pain. I couldn\u2019t run cross-country my senior year, alas, and never got my varsity letter. What I did get was a priceless, lifelong devotion to athletics.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s with much meditation that I now say we have to keep girls\u2019 and women\u2019s sports for those born female. As parent advocate Harry Jackson, a lacrosse and football referee and former Olympic-level athlete, suggests: sports federations can create open categories in which athletes born male and self-identifying as a female can compete. Or sports authorities can find some other solution. But having males compete with girls and women isn\u2019t the answer.<\/p>\n<p>My younger self is an empowered woman today because of what running the Coliseum track with girls as Jane and Kaye allowed me. As we find solutions to support transgender athletes, we should allow the same destiny for all young girls.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Asra Nomani is a senior contributor at The Federalist. A former Wall Street Journal reporter, Nomani writes a regular newsletter, <a href=\"https:\/\/asrainvestigates.substack.com\/\">Asra Investigates<\/a>, with breaking news and analysis on the frontlines of culture and politics. She is cofounder of the Coalition for TJ, a grassroots parent group, and the Pearl Project, an investigative reporting initiative.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MORGANTOWN, W. V. \u2014 When I moved to this college town in the summer of 1975 as a 10-year-old Muslim immigrant girl from India, I found my stride doing something<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":723,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1527507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/723"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1527507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1527507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1527507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1527507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}