Bethany Hamilton is someone people should admire. Young women in sports, in particular, should look up to Bethany and seek to emulate her persistence, her courage, and her grit: She lost an arm to a shark and went on to become a competitive professional surfer. She's a determined, capable young woman, and as we are learning, tough-minded, too — which is why she isn't accepting of letting dudes compete in women's sports.
Professional surfer and one-armed-athlete Bethany Hamilton is set to speak at the Oshkosh Women's Fund's Annual Power of the Purse event in Wisconsin in May. And due to her past statements on protecting real women in sports, protestors are boycotting the event and trying to get others to do the same.
Because as we all know, the left hates to see anything that they disagree with succeed.
The event coordinators announced last week that Hamilton, who lost her arm in a shark attack in 2003 before going on to become a decorated surfer, would be the keynote speaker.
She sounds like the ideal person to keynote such an event, incidentally. One would think that the organizers would count themselves as lucky to have her on board. Some others in the community, though, had other ideas.
Back in February of last year, Hamilton announced that she refused to compete in World Surf League events after the group adopted the International Surfing Association’s policies to allow "transgender women" (aka men) to compete in women’s surfing competitions. At the time, Hamilton posted a video to social media backing up her boycott of the competition.
“I personally think that the best solution would be to create a different division so that all can have a fair opportunity to showcase their passion and talent,” she said at the time, according to Newsweek.
This past Tuesday, a letter was released that was signed by “dozens” of individuals from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, protesting Hamilton’s presence at the upcoming event. The letter read, in part:
Bethany Hamilton wants transgender surfers to be segregated into a separate athletic division. Currently, there are no transgender athletes competing in the World Surf League, and only one transgender athlete, Australian longboard surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson, has ever won a professional surfing competition.
Bethany Hamilton's boycott is not motivated by concerns about athlete safety or maintaining the integrity of a professional sport. Bethany Hamilton simply does not personally want to accept transgender women as women.
Here's a reality check: Transgender women aren't women. Even the Olympics are — slowly — absorbing that message.
See Related: Are Olympic Officials Getting the Message? Transgender Athletes Will Face More Restrictions in 2024
The "transgender division" idea that Hamilton proposed seems perfectly reasonable, the obvious solution that is fair to everyone. Women compete against women, men compete against men, and anyone who claims to be anything else gets this category. Makes good sense, right? Of course it does. That's why the left will have no part of it.
Cast your optics on the statement above, the one signed by "dozens" of people from Oshkosh, and note the utter flapdoodle of the statement about there being only one transgender surfer who has won a competition. So what? The picture is much larger than just surfing. Just ask Riley Gaines.
See Related: Riley Gaines Demolishes Third-Place Female Athlete Who Praised Transgender 'Winners'
Look, it's nobody's business if a guy wants to put on a skirt and identify as a woman, as long as that decision doesn't impact anyone else. Personally, the guy could be living next door to me, and as long as he left me alone, I wouldn't give an ounce of rodent urine how he "identified." But these "transgender athletes" are not only robbing actual women of championships and scholarships, but they are also, in some cases, causing actual, serious, no-s**t injuries. They are boycotting admirable people and, in so doing, setting an example of intolerance for anyone who fails to toe the left-wing line.
These "transgender women" athletes are, almost without exception, stronger, faster, and have more endurance than their female competition. That's biology. It pertains even after hormone therapy. Deny it all they like, but the pro-trans people are just wrong on this. The differences are real; they are there from conception.
These are facts.
Bethany Hamilton is a remarkable young woman. She recovered from a life-changing injury to have a career doing what she loves. She now advocates against unfair practices that will shut out female athletes from competitions that rightly belong to them. Good for her. Good for Riley Gaines. Good for all these determined young women who are pushing to keep women's sports — and women's locker rooms — for women. If they and others like them keep up the fight, perhaps at some point, some modicum of sanity will return to the wide, wide world of sports.
