What do progressives have against high school girls and college women?
For that matter, what do they have against high school boys and college men?
Let’s start with females and how a celebrated law meant to promote opportunities for girls and women has, thanks to progressives, been turned against them.
The law is Title IX.
It was passed over fifty years ago.
It’s only thirty-seven words. Here they are:
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 any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance[.]
As a quick aside, the bill was signed into law by a Republican President, Richard Nixon. He was all for it. So were most Americans.
For decades, there was little confusion about what those simple words meant: women get the same opportunities as men.
But today, those words are being twisted to mean something entirely different.
In 2016 the Obama-Biden Administration decided that the word “sex” in Title IX didn’t mean “sex” as in male and female. It meant “gender identity”—you know, transgender, genderqueer, non-binary, and all that.
Consider what this means. A woman is no longer a woman as defined by science and as defined by humanity since the beginning of time. A woman is now also a man who claims to be a woman. His male chromosomes, male brain, male hormones, male reproductive system, and male muscles and bones—none of these matter.
All that matters is that he says he is a woman.
Then he can compete with women in women’s sports, use the women’s locker room, and receive scholarships reserved for women.
To deny any of that was now sex discrimination and therefore violated Title IX.
I’m proud to say I put a stop to this nonsense while I was Secretary of Education, returning Title IX to its obvious meaning. But, President Biden, on the first day of his new administration reversed my policy and reinstated the policy of President Obama.
The Biden Administration is currently re-writing Title IX so that the original words “on the basis of sex” will be changed to “on the basis of gender identity.”
If this revision becomes law, it’s not hyperbole to say that the end of women’s sports is at hand.
Even the greatest women’s tennis player of all time, Serena Williams, admitted she had no chance of beating a top-ranked male player. Riley Gaines, a top college swimmer, lost to a low-ranked male swimmer Will Thomas after Thomas changed his name to Lia and declared himself to be a woman. What Gaines and her teammates were forced to endure— Thomas walking around in his birthday suit in the women’s locker room—only added insult to injury.
But new interpretations of Title IX are not only being used against women, they’re also being used against men.
And once again, we have to go back to the Obama-Biden Administration.
In 2011, it sought to address what it perceived to be a sexual assault problem on college campuses. Fair enough.
But rather than focusing on prevention, it decided to focus on punishment. The Administration used Title IX and its language about preventing discrimination against women as the basis for discriminating against men. They did this by requiring schools to assume that the accused in a sexual assault case—mostly men, but not always—was guilty until proven innocent.
That’s the very opposite of America’s “innocent until proven guilty” judicial standard and an obvious violation of due process, the bedrock of American justice. It’s in our Constitution—twice.
Students were accused and convicted of sexual assault by their schools without a fair chance to defend themselves. They had no opportunity to confront their accuser who, presumed a victim, was shielded by school authorities who didn’t want to add to her trauma. Being falsely accused of sexual assault is terrible. The damage to one’s reputation is immediate and sometimes permanent. But not being able to defend yourself, not being able to confront your accuser is even worse.
At the same time, victims of sexual assault were seeing their cases ultimately thrown out of court because their school had blatantly violated the due process rights of the accused.
Again, while I was Secretary of Education, we fixed this. We issued a regulation affirming that we must both protect victims of sexual assault and ensure due process rights are protected.
And again, the Biden Administration moved swiftly to undo what we had done, returning to the “guilty until proven innocent” approach.
It’s unfair, it’s unjust, and it’s un-American.
For half a century, Title IX promoted and protected the rights of both men and women.
If the progressives have their way, that will no longer be the case.
A good law is about to become a very bad one—unless Congress, the courts, or the voters say no.
I’m Betsy DeVos for Prager University.
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