Some subjects are uncomfortable to discuss because even raising the question can bring accusations about a person’s motives. But discomfort cannot prevent a legitimate conversation about fairness, particularly when women’s athletics are involved.
Our position is straightforward: Competitive sports separated by sex should remain separated by sex.
Men’s sports should be for male athletes. Women’s sports should be for female athletes. There is room for coed competition, particularly in recreational athletics, but when championships, records, scholarships and roster positions are at stake, biological sex cannot become irrelevant.
That distinction is why women’s sports exist.
The issue has received renewed attention around the WNBA, whose collective bargaining agreement states that only women are eligible to play but does not further define eligibility according to gender identity or sex at birth. Former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White have announced intentions to enter the 2027 WNBA Draft while claiming to identify as women, an effort meant to highlight that ambiguity.
Their approach is provocative, but it raises a question athletic organizations should be able to answer clearly: What qualifies an athlete for the women’s division?
There should not be ambiguity.
Kanter Freedom stands nearly 7 feet tall and spent more than a decade competing in the NBA. The possibility that simply declaring a different gender identity could make such an athlete eligible for a women’s league illustrates why clear rules matter.
That does not mean transgender people should be ridiculed, mistreated or denied dignity. People deserve basic human respect regardless of how they identify. But respecting an individual does not require abandoning the biological distinction between males and females in competitive athletics.
Title IX transformed opportunities for female athletes, giving generations of girls and women opportunities that had too often been denied. Those opportunities deserve protection.
That becomes especially important in high school sports, where a roster position means playing time, a finish can determine advancement to a championship and athletic success can lead to recruiting opportunities or scholarships.
There are only so many opportunities available.
North Carolina has already drawn a line. State law requires interscholastic teams to be classified as male, female or coed and provides that teams designated for girls and women are not open to male students. That distinction should remain.
These rules are not statements about someone’s worth. They exist because physical differences can create competitive differences.
We should be capable of defending that principle without demeaning transgender people. At the same time, concern for inclusion cannot mean female athletes are forbidden from asking legitimate questions about fairness.
There is nothing hateful about acknowledging biological differences in a setting where strength, speed, size and other physical characteristics can influence competition. Nor is there anything sexist about protecting women’s sports.
In fact, the greater injustice would be telling generations of female athletes that the biological distinction upon which their competitive category was created suddenly does not matter.
Recreational leagues can provide coed competition, and athletic organizations can create mixed or open divisions. Inclusion and fair competition do not have to be opposing ideas.
Our genetic makeup is not an insult.
People deserve dignity, athletes deserve opportunities and female athletes deserve a protected competitive category of their own.
Women’s sports have come too far, and too many women fought too hard for equal athletic opportunities, for us to become afraid to defend the distinction that made those opportunities possible.
When competition begins, the standard should be clear: women’s competitive divisions are for female athletes, men’s competitive divisions are for male athletes, and mixed competition belongs in divisions created for it.
That isn’t exclusion for exclusion’s sake. It’s preserving the integrity of competition.