Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has just peeled the scab off of the wound the Transgender community had suffered when he signed into law a bill banning Transgendered men from competing in women’s sports, and has now taken aim at the NCAA for allowing Transgendered women to compete against actual women.
Gov. DeSantis has just introduced a proclamation recognizing college swimmer Emma Weyant as the “best female swimmer in the 500-yard freestyle” and not Lia Thomas, the male swimmer who actually won the race at the NCAA national championships.
While highlighting the signed Transgender sports law, Gov. DeSantis, dressed-down the NCAA for making the “efforts to destroy women’s athletics” by attempting to “undermine the integrity “of the competition and they're crowning somebody else, the woman's champion.”
“Now the NCAA is basically taking efforts to destroy women's athletics. They're trying to undermine the integrity of the competition and they're crowning somebody else, the woman's champion,” said DeSantis.
Some of the largest proponents of the Transgender community in the Florida Legislature have openly expressed their distaste for DeSantis’s proclamation, even though they have in the past support women’s rights and championed equality for women with men in all aspects of life, including equal pay and in sports.
Rep. Anna Eskamani, arguably the most prominent feminist in the State Legislature, took issue with DeSantis proclamation, accusing him of using his position as governor to “attack trans people.”
“People literally can’t afford their rent in Florida but this is what our Governor uses his publicly paid position to do — attack trans people & continue to find ways to divide us,” tweeted Rep. Eskamani.
A new study by the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests that “transgender women” still hold a big advantage over their female counterparts even after enduring a year of hormone therapy.
Here is the entire proclamation:
“Last year we signed a bill to ensure fairness in women's athletics. We thought it was very important that young girls and women athletes in the state of Florida had the ability to work hard to realize their dreams and to compete fairly, whether it's in swimming, whether it's in track and field, you name it. And that's something that was really meaningful to a lot of people in Florida, particularly people like me who are, are parents of young girls. So that's something that was really important. And we're glad we did that.
If you look at what the NCAA has done, by allowing basically men to compete in women's athletics. In this case, the swimming you had, the number one woman who finished was from Sarasota. she won the silver medal. She's been an absolute superstar, her whole career. She trains, I mean, to compete at that level is very, very difficult. And you don't just roll out of bed and do it. That takes grit, that takes determination. And she's been an absolute superstar and she had the fastest time, of any woman in college athletics. Now the NCAA is basically taking efforts to destroy women's athletics. They're trying to undermine the integrity of the competition and they're crowning somebody else, the woman's champion and we think that's wrong. And so this is a Floridian who I think deserves to be recognized.
We’re doing a proclamation, saying that Emma is the best female swimmer in the 500 freestyle because she earned that and we need to stop allowing or organizations like the NCAA to perpetuate frauds on the public. And that's exactly what they're doing. They are putting ideology ahead of opportunity for women athletes. I think that there's just some people that are afraid to speak out, and say what they're doing, but that is what they're doing. And so in Florida, we're gonna be very clear when they try to do things like that, when they try to undermine the integrity of competition, when they try to counteract the ability of women to realize their dreams, we are gonna speak out about that. So we'll be issuing that proclamation just because, you know, as somebody that was such a great athlete in Florida has now moved on to the University of Virginia. You know, we need to honor that appropriately. And if the NCAA was willing to actually ensure the integrity of women's competition, she would've been crowned national champion.”
