(The Center Square) – As states have and Congress now moves to protect women’s sports, Wednesday’s second day of the NCAA Convention in Nashville will include a demonstration hosted by the Independent Women’s Forum.
The IWF calls for an end to the NCAA’s Transgender Student-Athlete Participation Policy and for new rules that prohibit male athletes in women’s collegiate sports.
“The demonstration is to bring light to transgenders in women’s sports,” Sia Li’iLi’i told The Center Square. She was senior co-captain of the University of Nevada volleyball team and among those participating.
“Right now,” she said, “we’re facing having them in our locker rooms, having them compete in women’s divisions. Our purpose is to demonstrate that it’s not right and that women’s sports should be for women only.”
The demonstrators hope the NCAA will change its policies to protect women athletes, Li’iLi’i said.
Her team last October forfeited a match against San Jose State, the program from the Mountain West Conference that garnered considerable national attention due to participation by Blair Fleming. Participation by Fleming, a male saying gender identity is female and allowed to play, resulted in seven match forfeits.
Since the season ended, seven of Fleming’s teammates have hit the transfer portal.
In late December, NCAA President Charlie Baker told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee there are fewer than 10 “transgender athletes” currently in college sports out of a total of 510,000 total athletes.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act which requires education programs and activities receiving federal funds via Title IX to prohibit men from competing in women’s sports.
This week’s convention agenda has little to no expectation of an action being taken by the NCAA with regard to changing its policy. Two major lawsuits are pending involving the governing body.
“Men are men, women are women, and men cannot become women,” Speaker Mike Johnon wrote on social media. “It’s just that simple.”
Without those protections, women’s sports will eventually be destroyed said Li’iLi’i, a product of Halawa, Hawai’i.
“Men are bigger, faster and stronger,” she said. “If coaches want to win, they will recruit bigger, stronger, faster athletes. What’s stopping a coach from recruiting a whole team of biological males?”
The nonprofit group Human Rights Campaign said participation in sports can help transgender students.
“Transgender youth experience all kinds of mistreatment because of their gender identity including bullying in schools, family rejection, threats of physical violence, and other discrimination,” the group said in a statement. “Sports participation can help overcome some of this vulnerability.”
The group cited a study it conducted with the University of Connecticut which found that high school transgender and non-binary student-athletes had better grades, less depression and felt safer at schools that non-athletes.
