Several female athletes have turned to activism to shed light on the competitive disadvantage they experience when competing against biologically born males who identify as female and compete in women's sports.
The Equality Act allows these transgender women to do so, but at the cost of actual women losing in their team sports. Now, female athletes who have lost to biological males identifying as females are blowing the whistle to earn back an "equal playing field" in women's sports.
The Christian Post reported that one of the voices speaking out out against the Equality Act and its implications on women's sports is Linnea Saltz, an aspiring lobbyist and former student of Southern Utah University, where she participated in track competitions.
She recounted how she joined the track team and made varsity in her first year. She and her track team later competed against a trans-identified student from the University of Montana and subsequently lost. Saltz even admitted to seeing the Montana coach telling the transgender female athlete to "slow down during the race as they were winning by a pretty large margin."
Upset about her team's loss, Saltz took to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Gender Inclusion Handbook, which she said has "a lot of ambiguity in the sense that it didn't seem as if there was a real strict protocol in terms of how these kinds of athletes would be able to compete within the NCAA."
Dissatisfied with what she found, Saltz reached out to the NCAA to request to update their policy regarding transgender female athletes. They responded by telling her "the rules are as they are and that isn't going to change."
The NCAA's handbook puts into paper their belief that "any strength and endurance advantages a transgender woman arguably may have as a result of her prior testosterone levels dissipate after about one year of estrogen or testosterone-suppression therapy."
However, a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in July 2020 suggests that the "current treatment period [of 12 months] may be to short to remove competitive advantage of transgender athletes."
Another study, published in the same Journal in December, reveals that trans women are able to retain a "12% advantage" over biological women in running tests even after taken testosterone-suppression treatments for two years.
According to NBC News, the Equality Act is supported by the Women's Sports Foundation, which claims that the Republicans are pushing a narrative on transgender athletes that distract from the more important issues such as pay inequity and the harassment and abuse of female athletes.
However, what Equality Act proponents don't realize is that the Equality Act is robbing biologically born women of opportunity to make their lives better through sports. Sports teams who do win in competitions are given prizes such as financial assistance, scholarships, sponsorships, and more.
These sports programs help marginalized female students to make a better life for themselves and their families. Allowing transgender girls to compete and take place female athletes in a competitive disadvantage and hinder them from achieving their personal goals.
Save Women's Sports' Beth Stelzer, who is also an amateur powerlifter, is also speaking out against the Equality Act, saying that it "erases what a woman is."
"[The Equality Act] erases the definition of womanhood and allows anyone to claim our spaces-that's on the sports teams, that's in restrooms, that's in crisis shelters, hospital wards," Stelzer argued, as per CP. The female athlete has traveled across the country to testify against proposed legislation that allow participation of transgender women in women's sports and advocating against such measures.
"We're going to keep the pressure on and we won't back down," Stelzer promised.
