Paula Scanlan, a former teammate of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, spoke out Monday after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it is “dangerous” to raise concerns about men competing in women’s sports.
Jean-Pierre accused EWTN White House correspondent Owen Jensen of asking an “irresponsible” question when he raised parents’ concerns about their daughters’ safety while competing against males.
“So look, what you’re alluding to is basically saying that transgender kids are dangerous. It sounds like that’s what you’re saying,” Jean-Pierre replied during the June 13 press briefing. “That is dangerous, that is a dangerous thing to say, that essentially transgender kids we’re talking about are dangerous. And so that’s something that I have to call out. That is irresponsible.”
Scanlan opposes allowing men in women’s sports and is planning to travel to Washington, D.C., to defend Title IX. President Joe Biden’s administration has disclosed its plans to alter Title IX to force women’s teams to include biological men.
“I think what’s dangerous is having biological men in women’s spaces,” Scanlan said Monday on Fox News. “If you haven’t seen with Peyton McNabb, if you haven’t heard about Loudoun County, Virginia, and the bathrooms in high school. I think that’s dangerous and even if it’s a small numbers which she’s trying to suggest, it doesn’t make it any less dangerous for women.”
McNabb, a high school volleyball player, was injured when a male player spiked a ball in her face during a match in September. She suffered from a concussion that led to impaired vision, anxiety, depression, partial paralysis and constant headaches. In Loudon County, a teenage boy wearing a skirt was found guilty of raping a female student in the girl’s bathroom in May 2021.
Female athletes have decried having to compete against males identifying as women in sports, complaining they have consistently dominated the competition and made female players fear for their own safety. Women athletes have also suffered injuries while competing against males. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Lia Thomas’ Opponent Explains Her Support For Rand Paul, Details Experience Against Transgender Swimmer)
Three players on a high school rugby team were also injured after being slammed by a male competitor in April 2022, the Washington Examiner reported.
In February, several female athletes came out in support of a Republican-led bill that intends to amend Title IX to prohibit men from competing against women in sports. The bill, called the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, defines biological sex as “based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
Riley Gaines, another swimmer who competed against Thomas, told Fox News in February that Thomas was allowed in the women’s locker room and exposed his “male genitalia” to the girls.