Woke Culture Breaking Point: Boys who Identify as Girls Allowed to Compete in Girls Sports

A woman on Twitter recently asked “What was your woke-culture breaking point?” It’s a really interesting question, and the answers she received were outstanding.

My woke culture breaking point was being told that boys who identify as girls must be allowed to compete in girls sports, and even use the women’s locker rooms and bathrooms, as California authorized several years ago. Anyone daring to question this bit of insanity is immediately called “transphobic” and dispatched to the gulag.

In 2013, San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano pushed a bill through the Legislature to require a student to be permitted to use the male or female bathrooms and locker rooms in public schools, based on the student’s gender self-identification.

Lawmakers who supported the California “bathroom bill” AB 1266, claimed they were protecting civil rights by creating laws for transgender persons. However, the bathroom is usually a place where there is an expectation of privacy. So the question becomes: Whose civil rights are being protected and whose are being trampled?

Then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed AB 1266 despite knowing that Washington State had already passed such a law in 2006, and ran into big problems because of it. “Parents in Washington state became outraged last year (2005) when their young daughters, who participate in their local swim club, discovered a male sitting naked in the sauna ‘displaying male genitalia,’” the Christian News Net reported. However, police and school representatives of Evergreen State College alike said there wasn’t anything they could do about the situation because of state law.

That transgender “student” was 45 years old.

This issue is my woke culture breaking point because I was a direct beneficiary of Title IX, a federal civil rights law passed as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. Title IX law protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance. Title IX says:

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Title IX allowed women athletes the right to equal opportunity in sports in educational institutions that receive federal funds, from elementary schools to colleges and universities, because athletic programs are considered educational programs and activities. The penalty for non-compliance with Title IX is withdrawal of federal funds.

I was in elementary school when Title IX passed, and a student athlete throughout the 1970s. Girls entering school behind me enjoyed even more team and individual sports as the popularity only increased opportunities.

Flash forward to 2021 – President Joe Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office clearly setting up dangerous federal transgender protections:

“Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love. Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports. “

During his campaign, Biden also vowed to sign the  Equality Act, H.R.5, which would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as protected classes under federal civil rights law. But what it really would do is hurt female athletes by providing exceptional civil rights privileges to biological males who identify as women. “If it ­becomes federal law, such men would have a right to spend the night in battered-women’s shelters, disrobe in women’s locker rooms and compete on women’s sports teams — even at K-12 schools,” the New York Post reported.

There are 18 states which allowed transgender high school athletes to compete without restrictions in 2019, while 20 others either had no policies or handled each student on a case-by-case basic, according to Transathlete.com, a website that tracks high school policies for transgender athletes nationwide, the Post reported. Two athletes born “biologically male” have “taken 12 women’s state championship titles” previously held by nine different girls, in Connecticut.

“Three female high school runners in Connecticut have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block transgender athletes from participating in girls’ sports,” the Post reported last year. “The lawsuit, filed by the conservative nonprofit group Alliance Defending Freedom, claims that the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference policy allows ‘biological boys’ to beat them at track events and deprives them of possible scholarships.”

This is madness. Girls are now having to sue in federal court to protect rights they already have under Title IX. If this wasn’t about biological boys wanting to win at sports, and only about being transgender, we wouldn’t be having this debate. Why isn’t that being discussed on a national stage?

Author and writer for the Wall Street Journal Abigail Shrier testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week about the dangers of the Equality Act, explaining that the bill hinders equality instead of reinforcing it, the Federalist reported. “Instead of supporting the protections for biological sex outlined in Title IX and established by women such as the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Shrier said congressional proponents and supporters of the Equality Act are “concerned about the progressive groups that will call you a transphobe or a homophobe if you don’t do exactly as they say and abandon women and girls.”

Many ask why members of Congress are doing this, when they are ostensibly elected to represent constituents from their home states. There is no push from the states back home (other than maybe California) to promote the rights of transgender high school athletes above the rights of female athletes.

This is the woke culture on steroids – Democrats, media, government and corporate bureaucracy, clueless celebrities, and academia – in its quest to destroy American culture, heritage, and history.