Viewpoint: The NAIA Takes a Stand

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?? In his 1973 hit “Turn the Page”, Bob Seger has these lyrics: “Well, you walk into a restaurant strung out from the road and you feel the eyes upon you as you’re shaking off the cold. You pretend it doesn’t bother you, but you just want to explode.”

?? ?“Most times you can’t hear them talk, other times you can, all the same old cliches ‘Is that a woman or a man?’ And you always seem outnumbered, you don’t dare make a stand.”

?? The message, of course, is about a long haired, rock artist whose sexuality is questioned because he is sporting long hair.

?? ?I believe it was my dad who made the statement during the Beatles invasion of America, “They don’t sound too bad if you don’t have to look at them.”

?? If it was only so simple now. Instead, we have to decipher who is male, who is female, who is an animal, who is a plant, which bathroom they will use. And, who will stay that way for more than a day at a time.

?? ?The Council of Presidents for the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) have taken a stand to determine which athletes can play women’s sports and which athletes can play men’s sports. They have decided that if you were assigned as a female at birth, you will be eligible to compete in women’s sports.

?? Stop the presses! What? If you’re born a girl, you can play women’s sports and if you were born a boy, even if you’d like to be a girl, you can’t? Preposterous! That makes too much sense. That is a sane pronouncement. Hopefully, the NCAA and other sports ruling bodies will follow suit.

?? A number of states have already restricted boys from playing girls sports. But to see a national college governing body take a stand according to assigned sex at birth is a big deal.

?? It is difficult to even figure out how many people are affected by this decision. The Center for Disease Control, an appropriate agency to be tracking this, estimate in a 2019 study that 1.8% of high school students are transgender and that fewer than 15% of all transgender boys and transgender girls play sports.

?? I’d say all of the numbers are exaggerated.

?? ?A 2022 survey found that between 0.5% and 1.6% of U.S. adults identify as transgender. Another survey conducted from 2017 to 2020 estimated 1.4% of teenagers and 1.3% of 18- to 24- year-olds were transgender, compared with 0.5% of adults.

?? ?The Williams Institute says 1.4 million adults identify as transgender in the United States. About 0.5% of adults ages 18-24 and 0.3% of adults 65 and older identify as transgender.

??Unlike the NAIA, in January 2022 the NCAA mirrored the approach of the International Olympic Committee. Rather than issuing a blanket ruling, it determined the governing body for each individual sport has the authority to determine the rules for participation. They did not determine the definition of spineless, jellyfish in that blanket ruling either.

?? ?Currently, Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, Mississippi, West Virginia and Tennessee have some kind of legislation in place to help everyone decipher who can play what sport. That leaves 40 states who have some work to do.

?? ?When Title IX was passed, making it possible for women’s athletics to have separate but equal facilities and opportunities, it further stated that, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under an education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

?? It was a positive step. Now, strangely, many of the same people who lobbied for Title IX are trying to destroy it by wanting men to be able to participate in women’s athletics. Even if they are very confused men they are still men. Hopefully more National organizations will follow the NAIA.