Joe Biden’s First Day Began the End of Girls’ Sports

An executive order rigs competition by requiring that biological boys be allowed to compete against girls.

Amid Inauguration Day talk of shattered glass ceilings, on Wednesday President Biden delivered a body blow to the rights of women and girls: the Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation. On day one, Mr. Biden placed all girls’ sports and women’s safe spaces in the crosshairs of the administrative state.
The order declares: “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the rest room, the locker room, or school sports. . . . All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.” The order purports to direct administrative agencies to begin promulgating regulations that would enforce the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision Bostock v. Clayton County. In fact, it goes much further.



















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In Bostock, the justices held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited an employer from firing an employee on the basis of homosexuality or “transgender status.” Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for a 6-3 majority, took pains to clarify that the decision was limited to employment and had no bearing on “sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes”—all regulated under Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments. “Under Title VII, too,” the majority added, “we do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.”
The Biden executive order is far more ambitious. Any school that receives federal funding—including nearly every public high school—must either allow biological boys who self-identify as girls onto girls’ sports teams or face administrative action from the Education Department. If this policy were to be broadly adopted in anticipation of the regulations that are no doubt on the way, what would this mean for girls’ and women’s sports?
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“Finished. Done,” Olympic track-and-field coach Linda Blade told me. “The leadership skills, all the benefits society gets from letting girls have their protected category so that competition can be fair, all the advances of women’s rights—that’s going to be diminished.” Ms. Blade noted that parents of teen girls are generally uninterested in watching their daughters demoralized by the blatant unfairness of a rigged competition.
I say rigged because in contests of strength and speed, the athletic chasm between the sexes, which opens at puberty, is both permanent and unbridgeable. Once male puberty is complete, testosterone suppression doesn’t undo the biological advantages men possess: larger hearts, lungs and bones, greater bone density, more-oxygenated blood, more fast-twitch muscle fiber and vastly greater muscle mass.
It should be no surprise, then, that the two trans-identified biological males permitted to compete in Connecticut state track finals against girls—neither of whom was a top sprinter as a boy—consistently claimed top spots competing as girls. They eliminated girls from advancement to regional championships, scouting and scholarship opportunities and trophies, and they set records no girl may ever equal.
How big is this performance gap? To take one example cited by the Connecticut female runners in their complaint against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, the fastest female sprinter in the world is American runner Allyson Felix, a woman with more gold medals than Usain Bolt. Her lifetime best for the 400-meter run is 49.26 seconds. Based on 2018 data, nearly 300 high-school boys in the U.S. alone could beat it.
Even if allowing biological boys to join girls’ teams means girls can’t win, isn’t it still worth trying out for the team? Actually, no—even in sports that involve no contact and little injury risk, like running or tennis. It isn’t merely the trophies and scholarships and opportunities at stake. It isn’t even all the benefits sports have so long provided to young women—in self-esteem and health and camaraderie with friends. It isn’t merely that girls who participate in sports tend to earn better grades, that so many female Fortune 500 executives were athletes, or that sports force teen girls out of their own heads, where they might otherwise sit and stew to their detriment.
It’s the profound and glaring injustice of it: the spectacular records and achievements that Jackie Joyner, Althea Gibson and Wilma Rudolph would never have achieved had the world pitted their bodies against men.
Yet here we are. Decades of women’s achievement and opportunity rolled back by executive fiat. Battered women’s shelters, women’s jails and other safe spaces that receive federal funding and constitute “dwellings” under the Fair Housing Act may be next. Women’s rights turn out to be cheap and up for grabs. Who will voice objection?
Certainly not those caught up in the “historic” moment of the first female vice president. Hillary Clinton swooned on Twitter : “It delights me to think that what feels historical and amazing to us today—a woman sworn in to the vice presidency—will seem normal, obvious, ‘of course’ to Kamala’s grand-nieces as they grow up.” If only this je ne sais quoi weren’t accompanied by a far more material theft of female opportunity.

An interesting take on one of Bidens EO's that seems to have garnered somewhat less attention than it possibly should have.
Whilst Shrier more looks at it from the angle of the abolition of womens sports, with another good piece being from the NY Post on the axe fall for feminism. To add to those two takes though, it seems somewhat troubling that a girl who objects to a biological male being allowed in the changing rooms with them (a particularly sensitive subject given the age and general teen angst) is now in danger of not only the hackneyed charge of being a so called 'bigot' but now has a presidential ukase silencing perfectly valid objections.

What strikes me though is the touch of irony in all of this. With the generally accepted principle of someones personal rights ending when they start to infringe upon others (one usually used to support LGBT rights) however seeing that be poohpoohed when used in the opposite direction is, if nothing else, certainly a unique take on logic.
Equally though, as Shrier points out, the fact that battered womens shelters and other similar institutions are going to be legally bludgeoned into allowing people of the male sex in seems particularly crass. Thats not to say transgendered people dont find themselves in such positions as needing to use the facilities of these shelters but given many of the women in there might well have very well grounded feers of seeing men allowed in, well. It is certainly interesting to see where the line of rights is being drawn and who the losers and the winners are.
























https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-first-day-began-the-end-of-girls-sports-11611341066
https://nypost.com/2021/01/22/bidens-trans-order-undoes-decades-of-feminist-progress/

Strange that you only quote the entirely predictable, hysterical, straw man outrage of the right, while ignoring the equally, if not more numerous articles welcoming and supporting his Executive Order. Bit of a theme developing in your "whaddaya think of this!" threads, TBH.

Anyone who has actually read the EO, or understands what it says, shouldn't have any issue with it. The EO doesn't say anything new. It merely reinforces existing laws and Supreme Court rulings and obliges federal departments to act on them.
The only news here is that the reactionary right is getting its underwear betangled over LGBTQ issues - and that's hardly "news".

So you object to me posting a link but not posting a counter one at the same time? What kind of rubbish is that?

Or do you not know how making a post on here works ? As to the rest of it, i get that people daring to think differently from you triggers you mightily but unless you actually have a point to make regarding the article (and not simply whining about those mean 'right wing bigots').. pipe down with your inane and hoary trolling.

Where did I object?
I was merely noting the bias of your sources. Incidentally, two of Trump's favourite newspapers. Coincidence?

You made some bizarre comment that one cant make a thread without including the entire list of sources both for and against.

As to you trying to implicitly slander the author as a biased, trumpist bigot,

well, if nothing else it shows that you're more than a touch biassed yourself

if all you can do is ignore what she wrote and attack her/her employer because of someone who may or may not read said publication. For someone who goes off on one about falacies you're sure racking up a count yourself.

You seem to have moved on from being merely a troll to a conspiracy theorist. Impressive.

Either way, do you have any comment on the article (although i doubt you've actually read it) or are you merely enraged that someone has written something that doesnt agree with your chosen ideology on the matter?

Now, that is a straw man!


You really do like that word, don't you.
Anyway, I never mentioned the authors of either piece, merely noted the established bias of the source.

Of course I'm a bit biased. Everyone is. The key is to acknowledge it and try to balance it. You should maybe have a go?

Forget the fact that you only cited Trump's two favourite papers. It was a mere aside. It does not have any bearing on the argument against the particular EO in question. An argument that I have yet to see. So far there have only been unsupported claims that it "erases women" of enforces a "glass ceiling".
As I said (and you ignored), this EO does nothing new. It basically just says, "Hey Jack, there are laws covering this, how about we actually apply them?"

Lost me there.

The article bases its objections on the flawed reasoning that trans-women are not women. They are, and they cannot be discriminated against simply because some reactionary conservatives don't like the idea.

As to the rest of it, i get that people daring to think differently from you triggers you mightily but unless you actually have a point to make regarding the article (and not simply whining about those mean 'right wing bigots').. pipe down with your inane and hoary trolling.

They did: "Anyone who has actually read the EO, or understands what it says, shouldn't have any issue with it. The EO doesn't say anything new. It merely reinforces existing laws and Supreme Court rulings and obliges federal departments to act on them.".

Not really, he (and you) have simply parroted the line that the EO apparently does nothing which is, aside from being dubious, is not really a comment relating to the article itself. You two having made no actual comment on any of the, well, comments Shirer herself made.
Not a surprise from him, given he has limited his commenting to either calling the author a crypto far right trump supporting bigot or some other form of pithy yet hollow comment. You, on the other hand, usually have something to say on such matters or did you not read the article either?

Both articles talk about the affect that the EO will have. If the EO doesn't actually have that affect then mentioning this is certainly relevant to both articles.

I read the NYP article in full and the WSJ article up to the point of the pay wall. Both of them just came across as hyperbolic and doomsaying. They've both treated this as though women's rights no longer exist at all, which is simply wrong.

In what way do they say women’s right no longer exist? As opposed to being demeaned - kind of hard to argue with that. Although she elucidates the point in far greater depth in her book on the matter.
As to hyperbolic, how so? If you take the view of some of these activists and there’s no such thing as gender anymore (de facto at any rate, if you can just change it with a click of the fingers that being the result) then how can there be any woman’s achievements? That’s of course ignoring the women who are promptly abused with that ridiculous terms ‘terf’.

Except of course that men or trans individuals encroaching on women's sport and outcompeting them isn't happening in any meaningful way and has never been happening.

Except of course that men or trans individuals encroaching on women's sport and outcompeting them isn't happening in any meaningful way and has never been happening.

People are getting outraged over a problem that doesn't exist.

If you want to understand why Trump was so successful at convincing people of his post-truth reality, you merely need to look at this.

Except of course that men or trans individuals encroaching on women's sport and outcompeting them isn't happening in any meaningful way and has never been happening.

People are getting outraged over a problem that doesn't exist.

If you want to understand why Trump was so successful at convincing people of his post-truth reality, you merely need to look at this.

Except of course that men or trans individuals encroaching on women's sport and outcompeting them isn't happening in any meaningful way and has never been happening.

People are getting outraged over a problem that doesn't exist.

If you want to understand why Trump was so successful at convincing people of his post-truth reality, you merely need to look at this.

To the 1st bit, are you saying that something is only a problem if it happens on a grand scale? Given that this argument is usually used on the other shoe, in defence of gay rights, and such, it seems odd to then say what you just said.

If the argument is that women's sport is doomed then the frequency of the problem certainly matters.