The issue of trans athletes in sports has been in the news for some time. From swimmer William ('Lia') Thomas to Olympic boxer Imane Khelif to San Jose State University volleyball player Brayden ('Blaire') Fleming there have been very high profile cases of men using women's sports for personal achievement and gain.
The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) is another women's sports organization that is facing backlash from its own members over the inclusion of men, simply on the basis those men identify as women.
Nearly 300 of those women have sent letters to the LPGA expressing concerns about allowing men to compete against women.
More than 275 female golfers have sent detailed letters to the LPGA voicing concerns about transgender golfers being allowed to compete against women.
— Mark Harris (@itismarkharris) October 21, 2024
Nevertheless, trans golfer Hailey Davidson will begin second stage of LPGA Q-School this week.
READ: https://t.co/XW3brenNuI pic.twitter.com/ljxAfBn9FC
A total of 194 players will be competing in this week's LPGA Qualifying Series in hopes of punching their ticket into December's final stage of qualifying school (Q-School) to earn an opportunity to earn an LPGA card. Among the nearly 200-person field is transgender golfer Hailey Davidson, whose inclusion may align with LPGA's current gender policy, but not with the vast majority of fellow competitors.
Davidson advanced through the pre-qualifying stage of Q-School in August after finishing in a tie for 42nd and was allowed to do so despite more than 275 female players voicing their concerns over a biological male competing in women's golf.
As the Independent Women's Forum shared with OutKick, over 275 female golfers sent a letter to the LPGA, United States Golf Association (USGA), and the International Golf Federation (IGF) on August 19, three days before the opening round of the pre-qualifying stage of Q-School.
Those letters clearly fell on deaf ears with the LPGA allowing Davidson to compete and advance in pre-qualifying, taking an opportunity away from a biological female in the tournament field.
There are a couple of salient points I want to discuss here.
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First and foremost, the fact that a woman lost a tournament spot to a man. It doesn't matter to me if Davidson underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2021, he's nothing more than Lord Varys with a nine iron. A woman is now unable to compete -- after years of practice and training, including the costs and time the dedication to a sport require -- she has to sit out while a man competes.
There's also the physical advantages. Men have a 30% advantage in driving the ball, giving Davidson an unfair advantage over his female competitors. This is why men who 'become' women and compete in women's sports hold many records and -- to date -- have stolen nearly 1,000 medals from women.
The other point is this: there are now hundreds of women athletes across various sports (volleyball, swimming, golf) who have told the organizing bodies that this is unfair, unjust, and intolerable. Several women in the Mountain West Conference, including Fleming's fellow SJSU volleyball teammates, have filed suit over the issue.
One of the LPGA golfers, Olivia Schmidt, also talked to Outkick about the ongoing battle with the LPGA and said the same thing (emphasis added):
'We need the LPGA to make a change,' Schmidt said in an Independent Women's Forum (IWF) video titled ‘Time: Keep Women’s Golf Female.' 'The bottom line is we can fight this all we want, but the true change comes from the LPGA. They are the only ones with the power to stop it. It’s up to them to protect us.'
'I think that when you have a big organization that only protects one person compared to 400 or so others, that says a lot about who they are and how they handle themselves. They’re protecting the few, not the many. I’m just praying that [the policy] gets changed, and I’m praying that we can find a way to kind of find some common ground in that and hopefully for the next generation of golfers.'
She's exactly right. In what world is it fair or sensible to not only undermine the will of hundreds of women but the opportunities of those women for the sake of one person? Why does the culture at large have to be held prisoner for the sake of a delusional, often violent, minority that demands we conform our reality to meet their twisted one?
Why do thousands of women -- including myself -- have to be made uncomfortable in our locker rooms and bathrooms for the sake of a vocal minority? I was a member of Planet Fitness. Was. When the trans insanity took over, I went to a gym with a policy that would protect me.
What happened at Planet Fitness is almost, almost, trivial compared to other issues. In the U.K., 'trans' police officers (men) are now allowed to strip-search females they detain and female nurses working for the National Health Service are not only forced to change in front of men, but punished for speaking out about it. We can only assume any woman who objected to being strip-searched would face prison time for bigotry under the U.K.'s Orwellian hate-speech laws.
This is state-sanctioned sexual harassment.
In Minnesota, female prisoners say the Tim Walz-governed state's trans policy creates a 'climate of terror' for them, something echoed in testimony from female prisoners before a GOP House Judiciary Committee. These women were housed with abusers, denied parole for speaking out, and even raped.
This, too, is done with the blessing of the government, who have decided that delusional men take precedent over women.
The Left's message to females in all of this, whether an athlete or an inmate, is clear: take one for the team, sister!
They do not care how many women are discomforted, denied opportunities, harassed, threatened, punished or raped. For reasons that I will never understand, they have decided trans rights are the hill they are going to die on, and they'll crush any number of us to achieve that victory. They'll even risk losing more elections because of it (becasue it's not just the majority of female athletes who oppose this nonsense).
Party of women, indeed.
This is what the Left always does -- be it in politics or in governing bodies like the LPGA: they talk about democracy and the will of the majority right up until the moment they don't like the will of the majority.
Remember Prop. 8 in California? It passed by a margin of 52.24% to 47.76% back in 2008. The majority of voters in California -- hardly a red state -- voted in favor of traditional marriage.
That wasn't good enough for the Left. They undermined the will of the voters and took the issue to SCOTUS, arguing the rights of the minority trumped the will of the majority.
They're playing the exact same game with the trans issue. They're telling women -- the women they so desperately want to vote for them -- we don't matter. Our opinion doesn't matter. Our safety doesn't matter. Our privacy and dignity do not matter. We are expected to shut up, sit down, and let a couple of men run roughshod over us because those men merely think that they are women.
