DOGE subcommittee Chairwoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on Tuesday introduced a listening to addressing USA Fencing’s gender eligibility insurance policies that permit organic male transgender athletes to compete within the girls’s class.
The listening to is scheduled for Could 7.
The announcement comes weeks after girls’s fencer Stephanie Turner was punished for kneeling in protest of a trans competitor in a broadly publicized incident.
Turner has been invited to the listening to together with Damien Lehfeldt, board chair of USA Fencing, to testify.
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“Ladies’s sports activities are for ladies solely. Radical leftists pushing to let organic males compete towards girls are destroying honest competitors and placing feminine athletes in bodily hazard. Stephanie Turner had the braveness to name out this madness, and she or he’s a hero to girls throughout America,” Greene mentioned within the announcement.
“USA Fencing have to be held accountable for demeaning girls and denying them of the prospect to reach their very own sport. It’s out of compliance with President Trump’s government order and it shouldn’t be acknowledged because the Nationwide Governing Physique for fencing if it continues to defy the legislation.”
Training Secretary Linda McMahon introduced Friday a newly shaped Title IX investigations staff shall be probing the incident involving Turner and trans competitor Redmond Sullivan.
USA Fencing beforehand offered a press release to Fox Information Digital saying it is going to cooperate with the investigation.
Fencer Stephanie Turner kneels in entrance of a USA Fencing official. (Courtesy of ICONS)
“USA Fencing will reply and cooperate to any inquiry as required by legislation,” the assertion mentioned.
The incident involving Turner shortly drew nationwide consideration after a video of her taking a knee to protest Sullivan went viral. The footage ignited widespread consciousness and backlash towards USA Fencing’s gender eligibility insurance policies.
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Turner instructed Fox Information Digital she determined to take a knee the evening earlier than the occasion when she checked the competitors swimming pools and noticed she can be competing towards Sullivan.
“I noticed that I used to be going to be in a pool with Redmond, and from there I mentioned, ‘OK, let’s do it. I’ll take the knee,'” Turner mentioned. “I knew what I needed to do as a result of USA Fencing had not been listening to girls’s objections relating to [its gender eligibility policy].”
USA Fencing beforehand offered a press release to Fox Information Digital addressing the incident.
“USA Fencing enacted our present transgender and nonbinary athlete coverage in 2023. The coverage was designed to increase entry to the game of fencing and create inclusive, secure areas. The coverage is predicated on the precept that everybody ought to have the flexibility to take part in sports activities and was based mostly upon the analysis out there of the day,” the assertion mentioned.
A USA Fencing spokesperson additionally instructed Fox Information Digital Turner was not penalized for her stance towards trans inclusion. She was penalized for refusing to compete.
“Within the case of Stephanie Turner, her disqualification was not associated to any private assertion however was merely the direct results of her determination to say no to fence an eligible opponent, which the FIE guidelines clearly prohibit,” the spokesperson mentioned.
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USA Fencing then addressed the controversy with a public assertion Thursday, defending its trans-inclusion insurance policies.
“USA Fencing stays dedicated to fostering an inclusive, respectful group for everybody in our sport. We consider within the precept of making secure communities the place all athletes, and group members, have a spot,” the assertion mentioned.
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“Whereas we perceive there are a selection of views, USA Fencing will proceed to have interaction in respectful, research-based dialogue and evaluate as coverage evolves within the Olympic and Paralympic motion in addition to home legislation. Hate speech of any type will not be acceptable — on-line or in individual. Let’s hold the dialog respectful and the strip welcoming to all.”
The group first enacted its present trans-inclusion coverage in 2023. It permits transgender athletes to compete within the girls’s class at each the junior and senior stage after finishing one calendar 12 months of testosterone suppression therapy. Proof of compliant hormone remedy have to be offered previous to competitors, however the group has taken even additional steps to prioritize its trans opponents.
In November 2022, it introduced a coverage to offer desire when choosing host cities for nationwide tournaments to states with out legal guidelines that “hurt members of LGBTQ communities” and states that don’t “have legal guidelines undermining the reproductive well being of girls.”
That coverage went into impact in the course of the 2023 season, the identical 12 months it modified its gender coverage. It later launched a checklist of states that it meant to “keep away from the place doable” and the states that it flat out wouldn’t permit internet hosting main occasions.
In December, the nonprofit Honest Fencing Group penned an open letter to USA Fencing board members, urging the reevaluation of its stance on a number of points, together with transgender inclusion.
Simply days later, nevertheless, board members voted towards a number of motions to approve an all-female activity pressure to re-evaluate and revise the present transgender coverage, in an 8-3 vote. Now, after siding towards girls fencers looking for safety from trans inclusion, USA Fencing finds itself with a worldwide controversy after Turner’s viral protest.
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