Sports columnist calls ESPN’s Sam Ponder support for fairness in women’s sports ‘plain old bigotry’

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ESPN broadcaster Sam Ponder got here below fireplace on Sunday as her help for holding girls’s sports activities truthful and equal was the topic of an opinion column from USA As we speak’s Nancy Armour.

Ponder, and fellow ESPN colleague Sage Steele, have voiced their help for Riley Gaines, who has taken the reins to guide the requires transgender athletes to take part in sports activities towards the gender they have been born as as a substitute of the gender they establish as. Gaines has been on the forefront since she tied with Lia Thomas within the NCAA Championship in 2022.

Just lately, Ponder spoke concerning the challenge once more after Gaines tweeted the messages she acquired about transgender highschool runners collaborating within the ladies division in California.

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Riley Gaines listens

Riley Gaines speaks throughout a dialogue on transgender athletes in girls’s sports activities throughout a Nationwide Ladies and Girls in Sports activities occasion, Feb. 1, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Put up by way of Getty Pictures)

“I barely stated something publicly abt this challenge & I’ve had so many ppl msg me, cease me on the street to say thanks+ inform me tales abt ladies who’re afraid to talk up for concern of misplaced employment/being known as hateful. It isn’t hateful to demand equity in sports activities for ladies,” Ponder tweeted.

Nevertheless, Armour known as Ponder’s phrases “plain outdated bigotry” in her column.

“Don’t be fooled by the individuals who screech about ‘equity’ to cloak their bigotry towards transgender women and girls, the transgender women and girls who’ve the audacity to need to play sports activities, particularly,” Armour began the column.

“That is, and all the time was, about hate, concern and ignorance.”

Armour significantly took challenge with Ponder selecting to talk out about this challenge slightly than discuss how women and girls’s sports activities don’t have equitable funding with boys and males.

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Sam Ponder in 2018

Samantha Ponder speaks at Contained in the Recreation Q&A introduced by IFA on February 2, 2018, in Minneapolis. (Thaddaeus McAdams/WireImage)

“Did Ponder use her platform to specific outrage at any of this? Urge her almost half-million followers on Twitter to put in writing or name their representatives and ask that girls be given the funding and alternatives they rightfully deserve? Did she publicly take part in any of the numerous wonderful documentaries, movies and commentary ESPN did to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Title IX final yr? And even Tweet about them?” Armor wrote.

“No, she didn’t. Her public concern about ‘equity’ for feminine athletes begins and stops with the miniscule variety of transgender girls who’re collaborating in sports activities.”

Armour accused Ponder of placing transgender folks in additional hazard together with her tweets “by additional amplifying the bogeyman that cisgender girls’s participation in sports activities is being threatened by transgender ladies and younger girls.”

Armour concluded that Ponder’s opinions don’t have anything to do with “equity.”

Earlier this month, a Washington Post-KFF poll showed that almost all of American adults imagine gender is decided at delivery and are towards organic males competing in girls’s sports activities.

Sixty-six % of American adults don’t imagine that organic males needs to be allowed to compete in girls’s sports activities competitions at the highschool stage, whereas 34% help organic males competing towards girls.

Riley Gaines and Lia Thomas

Riley Gaines, now a spokesperson for the Unbiased Girls’s Discussion board, famously tied Lia Thomas for fifth place within the 200 freestyle finals on the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships final yr. (Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports activities)

Relating to school {and professional} sports activities, 65% of American adults don’t imagine that organic males needs to be allowed to compete in girls’s sports activities, whereas 34% in each classes have been behind the thought.

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In youth sports activities, 62% of American adults didn’t imagine organic males needs to be allowed to compete towards organic ladies, whereas 37% have been behind permitting transgender ladies to compete with organic ladies.

Fox Information’ Houston Keene contributed to this report.

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