What the hell happened to common sense?
As a lesbian and longtime Lynnwood voter, I am appalled by my Lynnwood City council members who voted against girls by publicly opposing Initiative IL26-638 that simply keeps biological males out of female sports in K-12 athletics.
This is not compassion. It is willful rejection of biology and basic fairness. Let me explain the science since you all seem to lack common sense and the ability to google the facts.
Male puberty produces permanent advantages in muscle mass, bone density, lung capacity, heart size, and hemoglobin that hormone suppression does not erase. Consensus reviews in sports science document typical male-female performance gaps of roughly 10–30% after puberty, depending on the sport. High-school-age males routinely outperform the best adult female records in track, swimming, and other events, and even after testosterone suppression, most of that male advantage remains intact.
You dismissed verification of biological sex as somehow dangerous or contrary to DEI values. Routine sports physicals already exist; this isn’t something radical. What is more traumatizing, a girl being exposed to penises against her will and being stared at suggestively by a boy dressed as a girl in a locker room, or being examined by a licensed medical professional?
However, just to set the record straight, IL26-638 does not require a physical (or genital) exam to determine sex. You are telling lies. Did you not read the actual text of the measure or are you too stupid to understand it?
The actual text reads: “A student who wants to compete in female-only individual or team sports must provide, as part of the existing routine sports physical, a statement signed by their personal health care provider that verifies their biological sex. The provider must rely only on one or more of these three bases: The student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”
In other words, genetic testing such as a cheek swab or blood prick or a testosterone level test satisfy the requirement with no physical exam of reproductive anatomy at all. The text does not mandate a particular procedure or force a genital inspection.
So, Councilwoman Isable you are a liar perpetuating misinformation.
Washington’s current athletic policy has produced the predictable results of biological males taking podium spots, records, and long-fought opportunities from real girls — a fact you simply cannot erase. Yet you prefer ideology over that evidence.
Particularly galling and reprehensible to me is the performance of our three female council members—Isabel Mata, Derica Escamilla, and Chelsea Wright—yes don’t hide behind your so-call womanhood. You women in power have a special obligation, a duty, to defend the hard-won sex-based protections that Title IX created so girls could compete fairly. Instead, you voted to supplant female categories to male-bodied athletes who identify as women.
Councilwoman Isabel, your public identity as “queer” does not grant you a license to erase biological sex for everyone else. Lesbian and gay people have long fought for recognition based on same-sex attraction rooted in sex, not self-identification. I supported you in the resolution against ICE but cannot support you on this and now question if you truly care about my community. Conflating sex into one’s feelings harms the very young girls you and the so-call women on the council claim to protect.
Did you guys ever consider the equity consequences in your thought process? Councilwoman Chelsea, you should have done better.
My sister, cousins, and me grew up very poor in the south — we used an outhouse. We all got athletic scholarships to go to college, a pathway out of poverty for a lot of talented Black and BIPOC girls from at-risk backgrounds.
Almost every single one of those high-performing transgender-identifying males competing in female categories is disproportionately white. Every podium, roster spot, or scholarship taken by a male-bodied athlete is one denied to a biological female—a girl of color whose family has fewer alternative routes for a better life.
You council members frame this as “inclusion” while displacing the very students DEI claims to champion is frankly, hypocritical. Real equity means protecting the female category that Title IX was written to create, not diluting it.
Your resolution treats public concern about fairness and safety as bigotry, that is total bull. It is not. Polls consistently show a large majority of people including many Democrats like me, oppose males in female sports.
Refusing the science, taking away girls’ opportunities, and prioritizing ideology over evidence is a failure of governance. All of you should resign for your stupidity. Lynnwood deserves representatives who will put biological reality and the interests of girls first.
Now I will pay more attention to city council meetings. We already got rid of one of you who disgraced our city, and we can vote you out too. Council members Nick, Chelsea, David and Robert, you are up for re-election next year, I’ll be watching.
I encourage everyone to vote yes on IL26-638 to keep opportunities for girls in female only sports.
Sam, Lynnwood voter
COMMENTARY DISCLAIMER: The views and comments expressed are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the Lynnwood Times nor any of its affiliates.
Author: Lynnwood Times Staff
