Protecting Title IX’s Life-Giving Legislation

Last updated on: July 23, 2026 at 10:34 am by Melanie Springer Mock

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Protecting Title IX’s Life-Giving Legislation 2026-07-22T19:47:03-07:00 Melanie Springer Mock

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It’s not hyperbolic to say that Title IX, and the opportunities to play sports, saved my life. Continues to save me, I should say, as the practices I learned in high school and college sports have sustained me well into late middle-age, especially in terms of my mental health. I imagine millions of other women might say the same.

And yet, a new paper by the far-right Heritage Foundation suggests women’s sports is only a tool of feminist engineering, carrying women away from their natural feminine graces and toward “female aggression and competitiveness.” The answer, according to The Heritage Foundation, is to roll back Title IX protections, the very legislation that gave me (and millions of others) the life-giving opportunity to become athletes, compete at high levels, and discover and celebrate our strength.

Turns out, those folks who have been insisting that rules banning transgender athletes from competition were simply meant to “protect women’s sports” don’t really want women to participate in sports, either. As I’ve written over and over again, discriminatory rules intended to erase transgender women will ultimately hurt cis-gendered women, too.

The Heritage Foundation Lies

The entire Heritage Foundation report relies on sexist tropes about women’s gentility and softness, built through disproven biological essentialist notions about what women are born to do, and how they are born to act. The author suggests women are not fit to be fit, at least not in a “cut” masculine way. The “ultimate aim” of the feminist agenda, the writer notes, was to make “a new kind of woman who would be more independent and even dominant and less deferential and less oriented toward motherhood and traditional female graces.”

Less deferential to the patriarchy? Less willing to be defined by traditional ideals about femininity? Given more leeway to become who God uniquely created each person to be? Well, yeah. That’s the feminist agenda. That’s what my feminist heroes, including Christian feminist Letha Dawson Scanzoni, have been saying for several generations now. (Though the idea that feminists hate motherhood is a fallacy, something I also wrote about years ago.)

The entire report opens with a lie about the 2024 Olympics, where Iman Khelif of Tunisia defeated a Taiwanese boxer for gold. Both women were born female and live as women; they are not transgender, though their short hair and “less feminine appearance”(whatever that means!) led to accusations that they were male. The Heritage Foundation’s report starts with this: “In 2024, a Tunisian man defeated a Chinese woman for the Olympic women’s boxing gold medal. The spectacle of a biological male pummeling a female athlete shocked many and led to renewed calls to keep men out of women’s sports.” The disinformation in this opening reflects the writer’s lack of credibility. Or should, at least.

While The Heritage Foundation report doesn’t directly say that women’s uteruses will fall out if they run too far (a claim that kept women from competing in marathons until the late 1960s), it does suggest that too much exercise leads to higher infertility rates. As Mother Jones reports, “Women who exercise ‘too much’ may indeed have a harder time getting pregnant, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists—but some research suggests those effects are mitigated as long as they eat enough. Anyway, it’s not altogether clear that getting pregnant is a priority for the school-age athletes Yenor is writing about.”

Protecting Men, Of Course

Fundamentally, The Heritage Foundation Title IX protections have presumably hurt opportunities for male athletes, given that Title IX legislates proportionality in women’s and men’s sports—that there needs to be equal opportunity for girls and boys, women and men, in educational institutions. At the college where I teach, the introduction of football, with rosters over 100 men, meant that women’s sports needed to be added, including a women’s lacrosse team, which has had astounding success at my university. This has been a net positive, bringing more men to campus, and also more opportunities for women.

This parity is problematic, according to The Heritage Foundation, because it “favors a male-normed “elite” and competitive vision of women’s sports at the expense of broader, more feminine-friendly offerings.” Title IX needs to be rewritten, the report argues, so that other women’s sports count as parity—sports that are softer, gentler, and more recreationally-oriented rather than competitive. They offer examples: “cheerleading, dance, yoga, hiking clubs, recreational intramurals, and other athletic opportunities more aligned with average female interests and tendencies.” Women don’t actually want to be challenged by competitive sports, the report suggests, and should be allowed to explore friendship and fun in activities more suited to what they really want, which is community.

While I love a good yoga class, this assertion filled me with rage. The report fails to (or chooses not to?) interrogate why women might be more interested in less competitive sports: Because of a misogynist society that constantly tells us, from girlhood, that being too strong, too powerful, makes us too manly. Because we are told, from girlhood, that being too competitive goes against feminine nature. Because we are reminded, from girlhood, that our male peers will always, always, always be better at us when it comes to sports, and so we should cede the playing field, quite literally, to them.

The Power of Title IX

It might be easy to dismiss The Heritage Foundation report as preposterous, and to insist that Title IX will not be rolled back, limiting athletic opportunities for women. After all, women in sports have gained in massive popularity over the last decade, and it would be hard to imagine a reverse of those gains. In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, people willfully ignored the extreme goals of The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and Donald Trump denied knowing anything about The Heritage Foundation’s intentions. But, by June 2026 over half of Project 2025’s goals had been implemented by the Trump administration, including an end to diversity initiatives and the dismantling of civil service protections. It’s not beyond the pale to think that Title IX will be dismantled, too, especially as their conclusion uses the chilling language that proposed Title IX rollbacks will provide a “healthier, more humane social order.” One where men have dominion, of course.

Ahead of Title IX’s 40th anniversary, in 2012, I wrote about how that legislation had been one of God’s good gifts, giving women in America an opportunity to become who God intended them to be. I reflected on what that legislation had given me: how it helped me find myself in high school, develop myself in college, which allowed me to discover my strength as a mother and professor. My conclusion was this: “without legislation like Title IX, and without people willing to advocate for female athletes who deserve the same opportunity and recognition as men, young women will not achieve all God intended for them. As athletes, yes, but also as so much more: as reflections of God’s glorious image.”

No matter what The Heritage Foundation thinks, God’s glorious image is reflected in women, including the athletic and muscular and strong ones, fearfully and wonderfully made, just as they are.

The author, competing in 1989.