As the 50th anniversary of Title IX arrives, a time for reflection is needed to realign America’s support for young women in competitive sports.
A half century ago, Second Wave feminists stood for the advancement and protection of female athletes. They believed it was important to support young women in their sports careers from high school to college, to perhaps even the Olympics.
Feminists at the time saw girls lacking even the most basic sports equipment in schools, diagnostic equipment for injured female athletes, and girls’ locker rooms.
Those facilities paled in comparison to those of their male counterparts.
They believed America could do better for our daughters.
So did Republicans.
It was none other than President Richard M. Nixon who signed Title IX protections for young women into law, even though Republicans today get little credit for it.
Both Republicans and feminists at the time agreed that supporting girls’ dreams of competitive sports was an important thread in the fabric of American civil rights.
Today, feminists have gone far afield from their original belief.
Feminists today have completely sold out to the radical wing of the Democratic Party, pandering to the far-left power brokers who control the base and thereby, control the party.
Feminists today such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., are more concerned with the use of acronyms such as "Latinx" and "LGBTQIA+" than they are with actually helping girls advance in sports.
It’s almost as if they feel "time’s up" for girls to win.
And, it’s almost as if they feel that winning was altogether too American.
Instead of insisting that Title IX be upheld to the letter of the law, today’s feminists stand idly by as biologically-born-male, transgender athletes compete against biologically-born girls and snatch titles from young women, robbing them of future scholarships.
One example of course is University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who recently made headlines competing against young women. This past Spring, Thomas dove past her female colleagues to nab a National Collegiate Athletic Association championship.
What’s the harm in that, one might ask?
Let’s look at the numbers.
When Thomas competed against men, Thomas was ranked 554th. That’s right, 554th place.
Yet when she began competing with young women, she raced to the top of the leaderboard — placing first in the women’s freestyle competition at the NCAA championships.
That is a heckuva jump.
By competing against young women, Thomas also landed a key stepping stone to scholarship money. While the overall financial impact to young female athletes everywhere is yet to be determined (as the issue of transgender athletes in competitive sports is quite new), it's not unreasonable to suggest that it could be upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars in lost scholarship money for young women if biological males are allowed to compete against them.
The U.S. Department of Education awards $42 billion in scholarship money to students annually, and private sources award $7.4 billion in scholarships to students each year.
That’s a lot of cash flowing through the collegiate system, and where there is money there is always room for corruption.
Allowing biological men to decide they’d rather compete against young women after failing to advance in the men’s division is just one example of how women can be robbed.
This week, the International Swimming Federation (FINA) ruled that transgender athletes will be banned from competing against girls in elite sports unless they complete their transition before the age of 12.
It took an international body to stop the madness of America’s liberal left.
Thanks to the ruling, Thomas will have to stay on the starting blocks for a while, perhaps even for the rest of her collegiate career.
However, while Thomas is on ice, liberals and feminists continue to betray girls even younger while pushing things such as transgender bathrooms and locker rooms in public schools — where parents are increasingly concerned about their daughters’ safety.
A time of reckoning has come for today’s feminists: you must choose between young women in competitive sports, or the LGBTQ+/LatinX/radical, leftist lobby.
Unfortunately due to the demands of the latter, you cannot serve the interests of both.
Jennifer Kerns is the author of the forthcoming book, "The Real War on Women: Time’s Up for Radical Feminism and the Democrats’ Liberal, Progressive, Socialist Agenda," and is host of the new nationally-syndicated show, ''All-American Radio with Jennifer Kerns.'' Read Jennifer Kerns' Reports — More Here.