I have been watching the transgender athletics controversy with growing interest and alarm.
The question is whether men who identify as women can compete against women in swimming, track, and other sports. As biological males, these transgendered athletes have natural advantages over biological females. Even if they do lower their testosterone levels, they still have the mechanical advantages of longer limbs, the advantages of larger lungs and hearts, and the advantages of greater muscle mass gained from going through male puberty. Many, perhaps most, people feel that allowing these men to compete against women would destroy women’s sports.
And now the debate has come to Roanoke College, our local college that I thought I would like to attend. Roanoke College wanted to have a man join the women’s swim team. The transgendered athlete in question (who has remained anonymous), competed on the men’s swim team in 2021. After taking a break in 2022, he decided to join the women’s swim team this year. And the college supported him. Roanoke College ignored the private objections and concerns raised by the women’s swim team and their parents.
Last week, for the first time ever, ten women had the courage to publicly object. In a press conference they explained the impact this policy would have on their sport. I could only imagine the anxiety they would suffer from having to share a locker room with a man. Because, as we should all know, it would make any normal person nervous if a person of the opposite sex were watching you in the locker room. You would feel excruciatingly uneasy as he just stood there (maybe naked himself) watching you change clothes.
I myself am a biological female and a swimmer. And I am against having any males on any girls’ or women’s swim team. Allowing them on any women’s sports team simply because they “identify” as female is criminally insane. This should stop completely.
And I’m not the only one who thinks this way. The Roanoke College Women’s swim team are protecting all women athletes. Their protest signs say “equality isn’t a game” and “save women’s sports.” And they were joined by Riley Gaines, who was forced to deal with a similar situation with transgendered swimmer Lia Thompson. In today’s society, regular people are forced to fight for these simple things because of forced “diversity.” This could not have happened twenty years ago.
College-bound students like myself are thinking twice about choosing Roanoke College. Although the Women’s swim team is clearly bold and courageous, they are apparently oppressed by a feckless and indifferent college administration. No woman in her right mind would join a swim team where she had to compete against men and to change clothes with mentally unwell men.
In summary, this practice will destroy women’s sports as a whole if this continues. Biological males will enter women’s locker rooms, invading their privacy and leaving them feeling unsafe. Not only will transgendered individuals cause havoc on women’s swim teams, but they’ll also infiltrate all other women’s sports, competing unfairly against women and being praised for it as well.
–Millie Nave is a college-bound, homeschooling tenth grader who swims competitively. She lives in Roanoke.