COMMENTARY: Do Nevada leaders stand with women?
Fifty-two years ago, Title IX of The Education Amendments of 1972 changed the landscape of women’s sports in America. Whereas it was previously uncommon for women to compete, much less to have their own teams (or the funding to make women’s teams possible), Title IX provided protection against discrimination “on the basis of sex” within any educational program receiving government funding. Including school sports teams.
And yet both of us have been discriminated against within collegiate sports, on the basis of our sex — denied trophies, titles and the blessing of an all-female experience — because a male was allowed to compete as a woman.
Like Linnea’s testimony before Utah lawmakers in 2021, and others have written about, there is an important distinction between “sex” and “gender identity.” Because it’s proven that males have an innate and irreversible advantage over females in sports, preserving women’s sports depends on keeping teams sex-based.
But the protections of Title IX that many of us have taken for granted may have just ground to a halt. In April, the Biden-Harris Department of Education proposed a new rewrite of Title IX; and despite 150,000 public comments, many of which opposed it, the rules went into effect on Aug. 1.
The more than 1,500 pages of regulations gut the protections women have come to count on from Title IX, in part because under them, distinguishing women as a legal category is itself considered an impermissible act of “discrimination.” Instead, treating a male as the male he is constitutes “harm” in the bureaucracy’s account of federal law.
Men and women are not interchangeable, and pretending that they are threatens women’s hard-fought opportunities, privacy, and even safety. Allowing men to swim on the women’s team means girls will miss out on awards and scholarships they’ve worked for years toward; allowing them to enter the women’s boxing ring may leave female competitors seriously injured or worse.
Given that more than 70 percent of Americans believe that only women should be allowed on women’s sports teams, more than half of states have policies that protect female sports. Nevada is not one of them. We need more leaders who support female-only sports and spaces and acknowledge the differences between the two sexes.
Independent Women’s Voice recently created the Riley Gaines Stand With Women Scorecard to help the American people see who on the ballot stands with women — and who doesn’t. The scorecard gives every candidate an opportunity to declare they will “support legislation that preserves female opportunities and private spaces” when in office. Senate candidate Sam Brown and House candidates Drew Johnson and Mark Amodei were the only Nevada candidates to pledge to stand with women and are Riley Gaines-Approved. The integrity of women’s sports and spaces is at stake. Do you know where your leaders stand?
Riley Gaines is an ambassador with Independent Women’s Voice (iwv.org) and a former 12-time All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky. Linnea Saltz is an advocate in defending women’s single-sex spaces and professional in political consulting. She is a resident of Nevada.