NCAA to deny championships to states that regulate transgenders in women's sport
The NCAA said Thursday it 'unequivocally supports' participation of transgender athletes in women's college sports
Arizona’s Aari McDonald drives past Connecticut guard Paige Bueckers in the 2021 NCAA women’s basketball championships. (Photo: Pierre de Leon/Arizona Republic)
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is ging full Fascist “woke.”
The organization declared Monday that it will refuse to host championship games for college basketball in any state which has passed laws banning transgender athletes or requiring them to play on teams in accordance with their biological sex.
The move comes as several states have either passed or are in the process of considering the outright banning or otherwise regulating transgender athletes from sports in public schools and colleges. Female athletes at all levels are concerned, and some are taking legal action, in the interest of protecting women’s and girls’ sports from unfair advantages enjoyed by biological males.
In a Monday statement from its board of governors, the nonprofit organization’s stated that it “firmly and unequivocally” wants the inclusion of transgender athletes in women’s college sports. The NCAA is intent on allowing biological males who “identify” as females to participate according to their gender identity.
The NCAA will only host games and tournaments in “locations where hosts can commit to providing an environment that is safe, healthy and free of discrimination,” the statement continues, Republican-led states such as Mississippi and Arkansas will most likely be excluded. Mississippi became the first state to ban transgender athletes from girls’ sports in March. Arkansas, though the governor vetoed the bill, also banned biological male athletes from competing in women’s sports when the legislature overroad Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s decision.
A commitment to this policy, however, may leave the NCAA with slim options as over 30 states are considering legislation that would protect women’s and girls’ sports from competition against biological males.
Its Monday statement pointed to the NCAA’s own policy, adopted in 2010, to address the argument most commonly employed by those opposing transgender participation. That obviously is that biological men have advantages in strength and agility over biological women.
“Our approach — which requires testosterone suppression treatment for transgender women to compete in women’s sports — embraces the evolving science on this issue and is anchored in participation policies of both the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee,” the statement said. “Inclusion and fairness can coexist for all student-athletes, including transgender athletes, at all levels of sport.”
The NCAA position that biological males who want to “identify” as females and compete in women’s sports in and of itself denies its position that “all student-athletes” be treated with dignity and respect. The organization’s newest statement completely disrespects biological female athletes. (Photo: ACV File)
The NCAA continued by stating that its desire is that all student-athletes be treated with dignity and respect. The question, therefore, naturally arises as to how the organization manages to show respect to the its biologically female athletes who are, despite the NCAA’s contetion, at a distinct disadvantage when competing against biological males.
The reason? Testosterone suppression, using the drug spironolactone, does not work for over three-quarters of biological males who want to compete as females. According to results of a new single-center, cross-sectional study published in March 2018, the treatment helped only one-qaurter of the test subjects achieve testosterone levels considered within the usual female range.
A goal of transgender medical intervention for many transgender individuals is to align physical appearance with gender identity. The strategy for transgender women includes medication and/or surgery to decrease testosterone levels to the female range. Most biological males who want to identify as women depend on medical treatment alone to lower their testosterone levels, and in the United States, spironolactone is the primary adjunctive antiandrogen used for this purpose.
Hormone therapy in so-called transgender adults is considered safe, however, the efficacy of treatment for testosterone suppression with medical treatment alone has not been evaluated. This study aimed to assess testosterone suppression using a regimen of spironolactone and estrogens. Obviously, for most, it does not achieve the levels that would make them fit within the range of actual biological females.
What does that mean for competition with actual women?
Recently, the Journal of Medical Ethics published a study that directly counters an anti-science narrative that liberal elites have been pushing for years: That is, transgender men — sometimes called “transwomen” — and biological women are exactly the same. They most definitely are not.
The study found these biological males could retain their muscle mass through training and that because of muscle memory, their mass and strength could be “rebuilt” through training, even with the lowered testosterone levels they do manage to achieve. It also found that giving opposite-sex hormones to transgender people post-puberty did not alter the athletic-enhancing effects of testosterone on the male body.
Even those biological males who can effectively reduce testosterone to “acceptable” levels mimicking female levels of the hormone can nonetheless retain muscle strength and muscle memory by training in ways that do not benefit their female counterparts at all. (Lydia Smith/Jackson (MS) Free Press)
Essentially, this study concludes that men who “transition” by taking testosterone suppressants can rejuvenate whatever muscle mass, strength, and power they may lose initially through proper training. It is training that will never benefit biological females in the same fashion. This would render transgender hormones useless in regard to “leveling the playing field” in athletics between biological males and females.
Thus, forcing biological women to compete against transgender men gives the men an unjust competitive advantage. Obviously, that is not the narrative the Fascist Left wants the general public to know.
This study concluded that transgender athletes born male have an intolerable or overwhelming advantage over biological women in athletic competition. The paper stated healthy male test subjects “did not lose significant muscle mass (or power)” when their testosterone levels were suppressed below the International Olympic Committee guidelines for transgender athletes of 10nmol/L.
The bottom line is, the NCAA is lying about the ability of biological males to repress their physical advantage over females against whom they compete. They are taking a position regarding placement of championships in all sports that will utlimately eliminate 75 percent of the country from consideration for those events.
Is that really a position the NCAA wants to stand behind?
Probably. And that means the eventual death of college sports. Especially given it is not the only ludicrous Fascist position the NCAA is going to tout.
This same board is also scheduled to discuss state legislative activity on voting laws at its Friday meeting. Monday’s statement on transgender athletes was succeeded by a statement on voting rights.
“While voting integrity is essential to the election process,” the statement said in part, “an equal and fair opportunity for all Americans to vote cannot be diminished in any way, and we wholeheartedly support efforts to assist all in exercising this fundamental right.”
Seems the NCAA is intent on alienating 80 percent of the American public, which through multiple polls and on both sides of the political spectrum has spoken solidly against biological male athletes competing with women and for election security.
Like the Fascist Left with which the NCAA aligns, that is not going to play well in Peoria. Or most anywhere else.