🎧 Initiative 638: Should WA Protect Girls’ Sports?
Title IX built girls sports; Gender ideology is tearing them down
Nancy Churchill
Dangerous Rhetoric
Two teenage girls showed up at a Seattle Storm game wearing simple shirts from XX-XY Athletics. The shirts stood for a simple idea: girls’ sports should remain for girls. Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton saw them and lost it. She cursed the girls out, called them “f*cking insane,” and left one of them in tears. Other fans piled on. The WNBA later fined and suspended Keaton for five home games. Storm leadership issued an apology.
Nancy Churchill
Sophie Cunningham, the Indiana Fever player the girls came to support, answered the next day. She praised the girls for standing up. She called Keaton’s outburst “truly embarrassing.” Then Cunningham added a simple truth: There is room for everyone without erasing biological reality.
That incident in Seattle wasn’t really about basketball. It was about whether girls still get to keep the spaces, the records, and the chances Title IX gave them fifty years ago.
- What Title IX Actually Delivered
In 1972, Title IX banned sex discrimination in schools that take federal money. Its biggest success showed up in sports. Before the law, roughly 300,000 girls and women played high school and college sports. Female athletes got about 2 percent of the athletic budgets. Scholarships for women barely existed.
Forty years later more than three million girls were competing in high school sports. By 2016, one in five American girls played. Participation jumped by a factor of ten. That growth did more than fill teams. It built confidence. Self-esteem. Resilience.
Girls who play sports tend to get better grades, finish high school at higher rates, and show lower rates of depression and unintended pregnancy. They develop a stronger body image and the habit of sticking with hard things. Successful female athletes become living proof that girls can excel.
Those gains did not happen by accident. The law recognized a basic fact: Males and females are different. Separate categories created a fair field so girls could compete, win, and grow.
- When Fairness Disappears, Girls Leave
That fair field is under attack now. When males who identify as female are allowed onto girls’ teams, the advantages of male puberty do not disappear. Greater muscle mass, bone density, and strength stay. In contact sports like basketball and volleyball, those differences raise real injury risk. Even in non-contact events the edge is obvious. A girl who should have started ends up on the bench—or cut. A girl who trained for years watches a male-bodied athlete take the podium.
Discouragement builds over time. Why keep training if the race isn’t fair? Why risk getting hurt? Why stay if the category meant for you no longer belongs to you? Participation drops. The benefits Title IX delivered start to fade. Everything gained since 1972 is at risk if we fail to keep women’s sports 100 percent female.
According to HeCheated.org, Washington ranks near the top for documented cases of male-bodied athletes competing in girls’ high school sports. Twenty-seven other states already protect the female category by requiring competition based on biological sex. Washington still does not.
- The Ballot Measure That Can Fix It
This November voters can change that. Initiative 638, backed by Let’s Go Washington, would require middle school and high school sports to be organized by biological sex. Male students would no longer be allowed on girls’ teams no matter how they identify. The measure does not ban anyone from athletics. It simply puts the category back the way Title IX intended.
Some critics have crudely suggested that this would require “panty checks.” That is a straw-man argument. A simple cheek swab can determine biological sex. No invasive exams are needed. Athletes already get an annual sports physical, so the verification could easily be handled at the doctor’s office.
Let’s Go Washington said it clearly: no one is claiming sports are only for some people. Girls should not have to give up their spaces because boys want to take them. Girls’ rights are not expendable.
Those two teenagers in the XX-XY shirts already understood this. They didn’t go looking for a fight. They just refused to pretend biology is optional. For that they got cursed at by a team owner who should have known better.
- Stand With the Girls
Jennifer Sey founded XX-XY Athletics. She is a former elite gymnast who started competing right after Title IX passed. She says she benefited from the law and will not watch its gains disappear without a fight. Every girl deserves the physical, emotional, and psychological growth that sports provide.
In a recent newsletter Sey answered critics who call it cruel to keep males out of girls’ sports. “Does anyone care about how cruel it has been to force girls to change in front of boys, lose to boys in their own sports, or be pushed off the podium while being told to smile and celebrate the boy who beat them? Sey wrote. “No. I know the answer is no.”
Out here in rural Washington we still know the difference between a fair contest and a stacked one. We know it’s both dishonest and unfair to let the naturally stronger claim the prizes meant for the smaller and less powerful. No one wins when we refuse to tell the truth and fail to create fair opportunities for our students.
Maybe it’s because we live closer to the land, but we also understand basic biology. You will never get milk from a bull or eggs from a rooster. On the ranch and at the rodeo, male and female are real categories. Keeping them is just common sense if you want honest competition.
This November common sense is on the ballot. Initiative 638 is straightforward. It asks whether Washington will join the 27 states that already protect girls’ sports, or whether we continue to pretend allowing male advantage is somehow inclusion.
The teenage girls in those shirts already answered. Sophie Cunningham answered. Riley Gaines, Jennifer Sey and other elite athletes have all answered. Title IX should stand.
Now it’s our turn. Vote YES on Initiative 638 on your November ballot. Stand up for Title IX and for the female athletes who just ask that the playing field be fair.
Nancy Churchill is a writer, educator, and conservative activist in rural eastern Washington state. She chairs the Ferry County Republican Party and advocates for effective citizen influence through Influencing Olympia Effectively. She may be reached at DangerousRhetoric@pm.me. The opinions expressed in Dangerous Rhetoric are her own. Dangerous Rhetoric is available on Substack and X.
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