Opinion: Males in girls sports/vote yes on Initiative IL26 638

🎧 Sarah Mittelman: IL26 638 and Girls Sports Fairness

Legislative candidate Sarah Mittelman will be voting yes on IL26 638 because ‘girls deserve the opportunity to compete, to win and to succeed on a fair playing field’

Sarah Mittelman, candidate
49th Legislative District

People often ask me where I stand on transgender participation in girls sports. It is a difficult issue because there are real children and real families involved, and I do not think any of them deserve cruelty or contempt. I believe every person has the right to live authentically and to become the fullest version of themselves. Transgender people deserve dignity, kindness and opportunity. I am not anti trans.

Sarah Mittelman

But difficult does not mean unclear. Biological males should not compete in girls sports. I believe that completely, and I do not think that position is inconsistent with treating transgender people with dignity.

One of the greatest civil rights accomplishments of the last fifty years was Title IX. Democrats were central to its passage, with bipartisan support, and generations of women benefited because our country finally acknowledged something very simple. Girls and women deserved the same opportunity to participate, compete, succeed and win.

We created a female athletic category for a reason. After puberty, there are real biological differences between males and females that matter in athletic competition. Male puberty produces, on average, greater muscle mass, strength and power, higher hemoglobin, larger hearts and lungs, and greater aerobic capacity. The American College of Sports Medicine reports performance differences of roughly 10 to 30 percent in sports that rely on endurance or muscular power. That is not politics. It is biology.

And this is where I find myself genuinely baffled by how we got here.

The same political movement that fought so hard to create opportunities for women and girls now seems willing to make some of those opportunities negotiable. Somewhere along the way, embracing the rights of one group came to mean that girls were expected to surrender some of their own opportunities to compete, to make a team, to win, to stand on a podium, and to succeed.

Why?

Why should the advancement of one person’s rights require another person to give something up? Women’s opportunities should not become the currency we use to pay for someone else’s inclusion.

What surprises me even more is how quiet so many Democrats have become about something that once would have been understood as a basic question of women’s equality. When did acknowledging the biological differences between males and females become something people were afraid to say out loud? When did women become afraid of being called intolerant simply for defending a category that was created because those differences are real?

Sometimes I wonder whether people have simply been guilted into silence. Because the underlying reality has not changed. Male and female bodies are different. Those differences matter in competitive athletics. Saying that should not require an apology.

I also think compassion matters enormously here. There are parents all over this country who have sat beside a struggling child and told them everything was going to be okay, and then spent years doing everything within their power to make that true. Those parents love their children. I do not doubt that for a second. Their children deserve opportunity, participation, belonging and people rooting for them.

But so do our daughters.

I want opportunities for every child. I believe we should work much harder to figure out how to provide meaningful athletic opportunities for transgender students. But inclusion should not mean asking girls to surrender the fairness of their own competition. We should be capable of caring about both.

That is also why people should understand what IL26 638 actually does. It concerns K through 12 interscholastic athletic competitions designated for female students and requires the female competitive category to be based on biological sex. It does not dictate someone’s pronouns. It does not prevent anyone from identifying as transgender. It does not regulate medical treatment. It draws a boundary around the female athletic category.

I spent most of my life as a Democrat, and I remain grateful for the generations of Democrats who fought for women to have equal opportunity. That history is precisely why I struggle to understand where the party has gone on this issue.

Women once had to fight to have biological sex recognized because ignoring it denied us opportunity. Now women are being told that recognizing biological sex is itself discriminatory.

What changed?

What changed about female physiology? What changed about the purpose of girls sports? What do our daughters gain by removing the very boundary that created a fair place for them to compete?

We do not have to choose between dignity for transgender people and fairness for girls. We can respect people. We can support families. We can find opportunities for every child. And we can still acknowledge the simple biological reality that made Title IX and female athletics necessary in the first place.

I will be voting yes on IL26 638 because girls deserve the opportunity to compete, to win and to succeed on a fair playing field. Their rights matter too.

Legislative candidate Sarah Mittelman will be voting yes on IL26 638 because ‘girls deserve the opportunity to compete, to win and to succeed on a fair playing field’

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