The fight for fairness in women’s sports is far from over, advocates say

President Donald Trump’s executive order on protecting female-only athletic opportunities from biological men has had significant implications for institutions bound by Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any educational programming or activity that receives federal funding.

Those on the front lines of the culture war, however, say the fight for fairness in women’s sports is far from over.

Former elite gymnast Jennifer Sey, who created the pro-woman clothing company XX-XY Athletics in hopes of inspiring other female athletes to bring about cultural change, indicated there is more work to be done.

Sey told the Washington Examiner that though Trump’s executive order has “placed this issue at the center of the cultural conversation,” in some ways, it ignited further pushback and polarization.

This year alone, there have been 60 instances of biological boys winning high school track events meant for female competitors, Sey said.

Blue states, meanwhile, are bucking the federal directive. Earlier this month, the Trump administration stopped federal funds from flowing to Maine because of Gov. Janet Mills’s (D-ME) refusal to comply with the mandate.

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“States like Maine are out of touch with biological reality and with the American people and they are going to lose,” Sey said. “But for now, they aren’t stopping.”

She pointed to a New York Times poll that found most Americans (79%) oppose allowing men to infiltrate female-only sports. Part of the problem, Sey said, is that this majority stays silent for fear of backlash so it seems like public opinion is not on their side.

Once others rise up, “the tide will turn,” Sey said. “But as of now, the tyrannical minority is scaring people into silence.”

After Maine became ground zero in the battle over sex-separated sports, the American Parents Coalition commissioned a survey in the state which saw strong opposition among residents to the statewide transgender policies. Roughly 63% of respondents said school sports participation should be based on biological sex, and approximately 66% agreed it’s “only fair to restrict women’s sports to biological women.”

“The polling only further proves what we and the American people know: boys don’t belong in girls’ sports,” Alleigh Marré, executive director of the American Parents Coalition, said in a statement shared with the Washington Examiner.

Seeing a shift at the highest levels of government has given student athletes and parents the confidence to speak up, Marré said.

Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president of Defending Education, said she too thinks sentiments have distinctly changed since Trump took the oath of office and “made one of his first acts the recognition of a two-sex policy throughout all of American governance.”

On the other hand, she suspects this social reckoning may, in turn, animate the other side.

“As the mother of a college athlete,” Perry said, “my hope is that college and high school administrators are encouraged to hold fast the line on biological sex, despite what will no doubt be a redoubling of efforts from the vocal, small, and well-funded pro-trans lobby.”

Such pushback still persists in the U.K. where the Supreme Court there just backed the biological definition of a woman, ruling that women, as seen by the law, must be biologically female.

“We’ve seen in the last week or so numerous individuals and groups misrepresenting the U.K. Supreme Court ruling and stating their intention to ignore it or flout it,” two-time British Olympian Mara Yamauchi, a member of the Sex Matters advisory group, said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.

Yamauchi, who once was Britain’s second-fastest female marathon runner of all time, praised the Supreme Court decision as “a very positive step in the right direction in the U.K.”

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However, she said there is “an awfully long” road ahead to culturally changing the sports world. Emphasizing the difference between policy and practice, Yamauchi said even if some sports return to single-sex policies, problems might prevail with enforcement and implementation.

“The fight continues,” Yamauchi said.

Yamauchi applauded the work of American women’s sports advocates like Riley Gaines, who is also an XX-XY Athletics brand ambassador, adding, “I hope that more people in the U.S. open their eyes and wake up to this issue, because women and girls of all ages, of all abilities, deserve fair and safe sports throughout their lives.”

Sey said she started XX-XY Athletics because she believes “brands influence the culture.” Publicly wearing messaging such as “Save Women’s Sports” and “Real Women Rock” on apparel could help spark much-needed dialogue and challenge the current narrative, Sey explained.

Sey, who saw an opening in the market for a brand that speaks out on behalf of females everywhere, noted that no other athletic label is doing what XX-XY Athletics sets out to accomplish.

“The major brands all pretend to stand up for female athletes,” Sey said, “but either treat them with astonishing disregard as Nike does or just ignore this issue entirely.”

Asked if she’s seen a tonal shift at all in the sports industry, Sey replied, “Not to the degree I would like.”

“Slowly but surely” progress is being made on this front, she stated. Sey, like Yamauchi, similarly said “we have a long way to go.” She cited the lack of currently competing Olympic, Division 1, or elite-level athletes joining the chorus of voices.

Sey said she has spoken with many athletes and coaches who agree with her but are too afraid they will lose endorsement deals, clients, or their community for taking a stand.

“It’s hard but we have to do it anyway,” Sey said. “The truth matters too much not to.”

Sey highlighted what happened when one competitive female runner recently spoke up.

Natalie Daniels, a new mother and five-time marathon champion, was speaking out against Boston Marathon officials allowing men to enter the female division when the woke running community canceled her.

Six months postpartum, she was training rigorously to run the Boston Marathon, her 18th marathon to date, last Monday.

In the lead-up to Boston, after Daniels voiced concerns about it not being a fair playing field, she was harassed online by pro-transgender activists.

Daniels then received a call from her coach telling her not to wear the team singlet on Marathon Monday. So she decided to ditch her track club’s uniform and sport XX-XY Athletics wear instead. In response, her own teammates allegedly leaked her location and suggested ways to track her whereabouts.

Daniels also caught the ire of U.S. Olympian Nikki Hiltz, a biological woman who identifies as both “non-binary” and “transgender.”

Hiltz, who competed in the women’s category at the 2024 Paris Olympics, rejects being boxed into “the gender binary” since she sometimes feels male, except on race day. During the U.S. track and field Olympic team trials, Hiltz won the women’s 1500-meter final with a record-setting time of 3 minutes, 55 seconds. However, she did not come close to the men’s minimum qualifying time, 3:40.

In an Instagram video reacting to Daniels’s concerns, Hiltz defended Boston Marathon’s transgender athletes policy permitting men to compete as women in the prestigious race.

“Are you gonna win the woman’s division or take prize money? I don’t think so,” Hiltz said of Daniels. “So I don’t understand what you’re upset about? Like, are you mad because instead of 900th, you’re gonna take 901st because a trans woman maybe beats you?”

In the caption, Hiltz said transgender-identifying runners “earned their spot on that start line just like everyone else!!”

Entrance into the Boston Marathon, the oldest of its kind in the country and one of the most competitive, is widely sought after, and coveted spots are limited. Given its prestige, Boston’s field size is set at around only 30,000 entrants, about 20,000 less than that of the Chicago and New York marathons.

Qualifying times depend on gender and age group. There’s a 30-minute difference between the finishing times of the two sexes, which takes into account a number of physiological advantages men have over women. For examples, men tend to have more muscle mass, a larger store of fast-twitch muscle fibers, and a higher VO2 max, or the maximum rate of oxygen intake.

However, anyone is able to self-identify and enter as either gender regardless of biological sex. And now, Boston offers a separate grouping for “non-binary” runners, which also lowers the bar for biological men who can register under this classification; its cut-off times match the women’s identically.

Because of these regulations, or lack thereof, all three gender-based classes could be won by biological men. In the two years since Boston introduced the “non-binary” option, both winners were biological men. A man won it again this year, besting the runner-up by nearly five minutes.

57-year-old Riya Suising Young, born Robert, was one of the transgender-identifying runners who qualified for the women’s field. “Yay!” Young had celebrated on Facebook, noting, “I barely made it in this time.”

In fact, Young was not nearly fast enough to qualify by traditional standards; the only reason Young got in was due to the mixed-sex rules. Young’s 4-hour, 1-minute qualifying time narrowly cleared the women’s (ages 55 – 59) threshold of 4:05 but was 26 minutes short on the men’s side, where the performance standard was set at 3 hours and 35 minutes. Sporting his signature “sexy” bee costume, Young went on to finish the Boston Marathon with a much slower pace, according to the race results.

Since 2009, he has reportedly run with the “woman” designation in roughly 338 races and medaled more than 140 times, taking top podium spots from many females in years past and sometimes pocketing cash prizes.

As for Daniels, the young mother who just gave birth a few months ago ended up finishing the Boston Marathon in 2:50.

“She ran for herself. For her son. For the women who were edged out of competition by males who qualified as women,” Sey said.

Post-race, Daniels was kicked out of her running club for “hate speech,” although prior to her removal, she was presented with an ultimatum: apologize and never talk about this incident again. Daniels did not back down.

“I spoke out — not because it’s easy, but because it’s right. It can’t just be me. Women need to be bolder than they’ve been,” Daniels said in a statement shared by XX-XY Athletics.

“I compete to move the needle for all women,” she added. “Allowing men to displace women in the results tells every woman — from elites to the final finisher — that she doesn’t matter. Fairness matters. Women deserve better.”

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XX-XY Athletics has since offered to sponsor a new club team, “Team Women,” should Daniels start one. She is taking up the offer, the company announced.

“Here’s to more Natalies coming,” XX-XY Athletics said. “This is a movement, not a moment.”