UN urged to address transgender violence against women following Title IX revision

EXCLUSIVE — The Independent Council on Women’s Sports filed a brief to the United Nations in the wake of the Biden administration’s Title IX overhaul, detailing both the physical and psychological anguish girls will be forced into when competing against men in sports.

In a letter submitted to Reem Alsalem, the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, the group, known as ICONS, asked that males being allowed to “invade” female sports be considered violence against women.

The letter, obtained exclusively by the Washington Examiner, was written in light of the Biden administration’s rewrite of Title IX to include claimed gender identities in the definition of “sex” as it pertains to civil rights, where critics say the changes effectively ban private, sex-specific spaces like restrooms and locker rooms. The rules are set to go into effect Aug. 1.

“Title IX was a federal law written to protect women and the Biden administration has now turned it into a law that protects men at the expense of women,” ICONS co-founders Marshi Smith and Kim Jones told the Washington Examiner. “With the stroke of a pen, Biden has reversed Congressional intention and turned Title IX into blatant call to subjugate women and girls.”

Alsalem, who was appointed to the position in 2021 by the U.N. Human Rights Council, slammed the Biden administration’s Title IX “redefinition of ‘sex,’” noting the new rule will allow more abuse of women, in an April 29 release.

“The erroneous redefinition of ‘sex’ through these implementing regulations constitutes a grave setback that will increase the vulnerability of the majority of women and girls to incursions into their privacy, including voyeurism, sexual harassment and physical and sexual attacks, by effectively removing single sex spaces,” she said, calling on organizations and individuals to provide input to build a report about violence against female athletes.

In the ICONS letter, Smith and Jones argue that allowing men to “self-identify” into women’s sports is “credibly characterized as ‘violence’” because “norms of eligibility are violated and the risk of injuries to athletes of a given category are knowingly elevated.”

In 2020, World Rugby issued a rule barring men from competing against women after determining that “the presence of even one man on the pitch raises the risk of serious injury to head, neck and back by at least thirty percent,” the letter states. Smith and Jones further pointed to American mixed martial arts fighter Fallon Fox, a biological male who has broken the skulls of two female competitors.

“For this, Fox has been heralded as one of the ‘bravest athletes in history,’” the ICONS founders wrote.

Some athletic associations have attempted workarounds for setting the bar to allow male athletes to compete in women’s sports. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, or NCAA, the largest collegiate sports association in America, has instituted a “sport-by-sport” model for setting maximum chemically altered testosterone levels allowed for males to compete against women.

USA Boxing published a new policy at the start of the year allowing men to fight women so long as the male had undergone “sex reassignment” surgery, maintains identifying as a female, and the continuous monitoring of chemically altered testosterone levels.

Smith and Jones, however, say using “acceptable” testosterone levels as the litmus test is “arbitrary and meaningless.”

“We know that male advantage can never be undone,” they wrote. “But even if it could, a man that has diminished his athletic ability through manipulation of his hormone levels is not a woman. The erasure of women as a sex class must be stopped.”

The ICONS letter also pointed to the inconsistency between the laws in 25 states that bar males from competing against women and the NCAA policy that allows it. Smith and Jones say the contrast will bring a scenario where male athletes will take opportunities from females in states that still allow them to compete, and force females from those states to “flee … seeking schools and athletic associations that will protect their rights.”

They said it is already happening, noting Blaire Fleming, born Brayden, a male NCAA Division 1 volleyball player from South Carolina, which bars males in women’s sports, moving to transgender-permissive California to compete.

“He jumped higher and hit harder than any woman on the court. There was no other female athlete on the court that day that could compare with Blaire’s athleticism. He also had very narrow hips. I took notice of how he was dressed with a longer shirt in the front as well,” the mother of a female competitor anonymously told Reduxx, which broke the story. “He was basically unstoppable at times. He was jumping so high that I was concerned our blockers could not defend against such a fast-moving hit.”

The NCAA is at the center of lawsuits from athletes over allowing men to compete against women, which is exacerbated by the new Title IX rules that break down women and girls’ private spaces, and is expected to be further solidified by sports-specific rules coming down later this year.

“It is shameful that the Biden Administration has proposed Title IX regulations guaranteed to increase violence and abuse against women,” Bill Bock, a lawyer representing 16 athletes suing the NCAA, told the Washington Examiner. “As the UN Special Rapporteur has pointed out, the Biden Administration’s nonsensical proposed rules ignore biological reality, discriminate against women on the basis of sex, violate United States treaty and human rights obligations, and diminish U.S. credibility around the world by seeking to federalize discrimination against women here at home.”

The issue is not isolated to college sports, however, and the ICONS letter to Alsalem notes the spread of male athletes in girls’ sports at the high school level.

In Massachusetts, a girls basketball team was forced to forfeit after a female-identifying male kept injuring girls on the other team “basically, all game,” according to to the forfeiting school’s athletic director, Kyle Pelczar. Similarly, a male volleyball player in North Carolina spiked the ball so hard into the face of a high school girl, Payton McNabb, that she suffered a concussion and chronic neural impairment.

The harm caused by allowing men to compete in women’s sports does not stop at physical injuries, the ICONS letter states.

“The psychological trauma experienced by female athletes as they struggle to accommodate aggressive males in their sports and private spaces is equally unsettling,” Smith and Jones wrote. They pointed to former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male, who forced himself into the female locker rooms.

“My teammates and I were forced to undress in the presence of Lia, a 6-foot-4 tall biological male, fully intact with male genitalia 18 times per week,” Paula Scanlan, a former teammate of Thomas’s and sexual assault survivor, recalled in testimony to Congress. ICONS noted that women who had a problem with undressing in front of Thomas or competing against Thomas were silenced.

“The women were silenced and told to ignore their instinctive fear and discomfort. They were emotionally blackmailed and told that the feelings and well-being of a man were more important than their own,” the letter states. “That his life depended on their concession. When we tell our girls that they are more valuable as tools of affirmation, as shields of protection for men, this is dangerous.”

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The U.N. report is set to be presented in the October 2024 General Assembly session.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the Department of Education for comment.