Lawyers, Athletes, Scientists, and Advocates Convene to Save Women’s Sports

By Dr. Devin Buckley, WoLF Board Member

From June 26th through 28th, I attended the first conference run by the nonpartisan Independent Council on Women’s Sports (ICONS) as a representative of WoLF in Las Vegas, Nevada.

ICONS CONFERENCE

The purpose of the conference was to keep women’s sports single-sex, despite growing pressure from advocates of gender ideology to replace sex categories in sport with categories based on gender identity. Powerful speakers, including outstanding athletes, scientists, lawyers, and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum all emphasized that including male athletes in women’s sports presents a threat to both fairness and safety for women. Notable speakers included tennis superstar Martina Navratilova and Olympic champions Inga Thompson, Benita Mosley, Donna De Varona, and Sue Walsh.

ICONS was co-founded by two former athletes Marshi Smith and Kim Jones. Jones has a daughter who swims in the Ivy League. Smith was inspired to create a conference after hearing from five-time Olympic coach Dennis Pursley, about how “his experience with the East Germans” led him to create a press conference.

As I drove to the Ahern Hotel, I was hesitant to answer when my Uber driver asked me what my plans in Vegas were. I braced for a possible confrontation when I explained that I was attending a conference on the importance of keeping women’s sports single-sex. My driver, a middle-aged man, politely listened to me talk and, once we arrived at the hotel, stepped out to personally shake my hand and thank me for the work I was doing for women. 

My experience paralleled that of Marshi Smith, who told the audience of ICONS that she had received many private gestures of support from attendees of the nearby National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) conference. Smith had stealthily obtained a table at NACDA. Smith also told attendees that ICONS was intentionally set to take place at the same time as NACDA at a nearby hotel.

The trick is not to get Americans to change their minds on this issue. Most of them privately agree. The trick is to get them to speak. 

Hopefully, with enough conferences like ICONS we can convince others to not be afraid to say what is obvious: that men are not women and that men in women’s sports is unfair. 

DAY 1

On the first day of the inaugural ICONS conference, Jones and Smith shared their personal narratives, which were followed by those of other female athletes.

Smith explained that

“I was asked by a teammate to write a collaborative letter on behalf of the University of Arizona swim team alumni for members of the team over generations to sign in protest of the guidelines that allowed a male swimmer to compete directly with females at the recent NCAA Swim Championships.”

Signatures came from “Olympic gold and silver medalists, NCAA Women of the Year, multiple NCAA champions, 6-time NCAA Coach of the Year, a 5-time Olympic Coach, and dozens of NCAA All-Americans” but “As of today, it has been 95 days since we sent this to the NCAA with no response whatsoever.”

Jones discussed how she witnessed “mothers in stands crumple over in tears and fathers who could not bear to watch” as Lia Thomas dominated women in swimming.

Jones recalled “Mandatory meetings asking young women to be silent and to clear their words with department leadership”; “handouts telling the ivy league swimmers to let the men in charge determine their fate and accept it without complaint,”; “messages and emails to seek counseling if a young woman doesn’t want to undress in front of a man [in the locker room]”; “announcements at every dual meet threatening compliance or being labeled hateful if you believe women should not have to compare their physical bodies next to males.”

“What we witnessed was the casual manner in which women can be tossed aside and silenced. Fair treatment in easy trade for power.”

Volleyball player Macy Petty explained how “In high school, I was forced to play my sport against a male athlete who chose to play on a women’s net…while being examined by college recruiters we had the ball slammed in our faces.”

Swimmer Riley Gaines explained how “On March 19th Thomas and I raced and touched the wall at the exact same time down to the hundredth but the NCAA handed the trophy to Thomas for “photo purposes,” promising to send her one in the mail.

Skateboarder Taylor Silverman explained how at a skateboarding competition

“The male competitor unsurprisingly took first place receiving 5,000 dollars along with a thousand for women’s best trick…I came in second place receiving 1,750 dollars and then I got a thousand in qualifiers…I knew that I should have been in first place had this been an exclusively female division…Someone was bumped off podium completely.” 

Sarah-Powers Barnhard, a former volleyball player who was inducted into the conference hall of fame, told a story about surviving “sexual abuse by my youth volleyball coach.”

“It was not an easy feat to fight him,” she said, “We did get him banned from USA volleyball and they let him back in in five years…When I learned about ICONS and what’s going on with the transgender athletes, I thought ‘this is abuse.’ This is also abuse.”

Day 2

Dozens of other athletes gave testimony across all days. Day two focused on science.

Among the scientific experts was Dr. Ross Tucker, who holds a Ph.D. in exercise physiology and is a research consultant for World Rugby. Dr. Tucker gave a lecture on the biology of male athletic advantage, insisting that “The biological differences between males and females are so large that unless we continue to defend the protection of a woman’s sports category, those who do not possess that advantage would basically disappear from sport. That’s what you’re fighting for.”

Tucker countered one of the most common arguments made in favor of including men in women’s sports: 

“There are very many women who outperform many men…what a lot of people will say is that many women outperform many men. Yes. So what? The problem is not point one. The problem is that at any matched level, many men outperform all women.”

Tucker argued that “categories facilitate inclusion” using the example of other non-controversial categories in sports: 

“The reason we have [weight] categories in boxing is because when we watch boxers…what we’re trying to reward is power, strength, endurance, agility, balance, coordination. We’re not trying to award size.”

“The existence of weight categories that protected smaller boxers enabled people to succeed who would not otherwise have done so. Now say that back but change weight to sex. That’s all we have to do. Age does the same thing.”

“Women’s sport serves its purpose” by “excluding the effects of androgens on the biology and performance. That’s what women's sport does.”

Ultimately, Tucker was optimistic about the future of women’s sports. He asserted that “Nobody disagrees that male advantage is large and that’s why we have women’s sport.”

Perhaps his optimism stems from the fact that his own organization World Rugby prioritized “safety and fairness” by issuing a policy barring males from playing women’s rugby. He also conceded losses and told the audience that “Over the weekend German football decided that simply identifying is sufficient.” 

The battle is far from over.

Day 3

Day Three focused on law and advocacy. I spoke in a morning panel about WoLF’s work.

My panel, which consisted of advocacy groups, was astonishing in its political diversity. Despite our many disagreements, all of us agreed that women’s right to privacy, safety, fairness, and speech must be protected.

In addition to Women’s Liberation Front (represented by me, Dr. Devin Buckley, PhD), participants included Women’s Declaration International (represented by Kara Dansky, JD), Concerned Women for America (represented by Doreen Denny, MPP), and Independent Women’s Forum (represented by Jennifer Braceras, JD).

Before I discussed WoLF’s work I gave a brief talk on the use of the term “gender,” emphasizing that second-wave feminists, like Kate Millet, advocated for the abolition of gender roles, whereas the gender identity movement today seeks to enshrine gender roles. 

I discussed the impact of circular and incoherent definitions of “gender” on law and policy, citing California’s SB 132 as an example. The law, which allows men in women’s prisons so long as they identify as women or non-binary, gives a list of identities that count as non-binary. One of them is “agender.”

That’s right. According to California law, “not gender is a gender” I said. A chuckle rippled through the audience.

I drew parallels between sports and women’s prisons in terms of gender identity’s violation of women’s privacy, safety, and speech in sports. 

I asked why it isn’t considered a hostile environment for Lia Thomas, who is a heterosexual man, to be allowed to enter a women’s locker room? I emphasized that this isn’t a he versus she situation. It’s a situation in which one man’s feelings and desires are arbitrarily preferred to those of many, many women: “This is he versus all of her.”

The entire talk can be viewed here on the ICONS YouTube Channel:

Finally, all panelists outlined the achievements and goals of our respective organizations, including our policy recommendations, amicus briefs, and lobbying efforts.

We were followed up by a panel of attorneys with experience in Title IX litigation.

Three-time Olympic gold medalist and old-school liberal Nancy Hogshead-Makar explained the detrimental changes made to Title IX by the Biden administration: 

“The administration would conflate sex with gender identity,” she said. There are “two really bad things that can come out of it. One is if sex discrimination equals gender identity discrimination somebody who identifies as being a woman can compete in the women’s category…you know how the NCAA has rules? There would be no rules.” Secondly, “a judge could not affirm formal sex segregation.”

Christiana Kiefer, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom, appeared with her client Chelsea Mitchell, one of the girls forced to run against males at a Connecticut high school. Kiefer said that

“for every single season they had been forced to compete against biological males and that was depriving them of opportunities. In Selena’s case, she lost the opportunity to advance to the next level of competition. Chelsea lost out on state championship titles. Not once, but four different times.”

After ADF filed a Title IX lawsuit, “We were instructed by the federal court to refer to these males as quote transgender females because he viewed it to be far more scientifically accurate.”

Chelsea said that she was at first afraid of filing a suit because it might affect her college admissions or ability to get a job. College administrators were “warning athletes that they won’t be able to get a job,” Chelsea said. 

Kiefer noted that elsewhere the ACLU has offered “deposition testimony” claiming that

“being a girl is about liking pink and it’s about unicorns and it’s about rainbows” and “Being a male is about, you know, maybe liking to wear tuxedos and quote ‘being able to be president of the united states.’”

Though she stood with a conservative organization, Kiefer sounded more like a feminist than today’s so-called left when she said “You can see here the sex stereotypes that are being propagated by this ideology.”

Both Kiefer and Hogshead-Makar emphasize the need for more litigation since many organizations are afraid of lawsuits from the ACLU, but not from female athletes.

CONCLUSION

The conference ended with statements from celebrity athletes including Martina Navratilova, Inga Thompson, and Benita Mosley, who discussed overcoming sexism in sports and the importance of sports to their self-esteem.

* * *

The only thing that astonished me more than the list of speakers has been the silence of the press. No major mainstream media outlet in the U.S. has covered it. This blog post, as well as a longer, detailed article I wrote for the magazine 4W, constitute some of the only coverage of this event.

I left the conference with a strange mixture of hope and despair. On the one hand, it seemed as though more and more sports organizations were issuing guidelines and policies barring men from women’s sports. Others were doubling down on self-ID. 

The very fact that such a conference was finally assembled was a good sign. Ross Tucker had even said that just five years ago, something like ICONS would not have even been possible.

Perhaps most importantly, I left with a deeper respect for female athletes. This isn’t to say I didn’t admire them before. I had not really given much thought to sports because I never played them at a serious level. After listening to the stories of female athletes forced to compete with men, I began realizing just how much sports matters and how much is being taken away from women and girls.

As Nancy Hogshead-Makar said, women’s sports is not some “frivolity.” Sports gives women and girls access to scholarships and networking opportunities traditionally reserved for men. Sports give women and girls community. I was moved by how many of the women at ICONS, including Jones and Smith, retained a special, almost sororal bond with those they had played sports with in college or high school. Above all, sports gave these women meaning. These athletes carried the joy of their profound achievements with them for their entire lives, even if their athletic career ended with college. By losing to men, women lose not only awards and scholarships, they lose their dignity and a sense of purpose. The only path to equality is to preserve category of sex, not gender, in women’s sports.

You can access all of the ICONS video coverage here.

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