This week, we celebrate Women’s Sports Week and the 51st anniversary of Title IX, a federal policy that ensured equal athletic opportunities for both sexes and led to the growth of women’s sports.

Unfortunately, though, we live in a time when too few politicians and sports governing bodies recognize the importance of Title IX or even the value of women’s sports. No, the reality is that states, the NCAA, and the White House continue to prioritize the welfare of trans-identifying men over women.

While there is so much to celebrate during Women’s Sports Week thanks to the enactment of Title IX, this is also a time to acknowledge the fight to save women’s sports and the dangerous times in which women are living. We are in this fight together, not because we want to be but because we faced situations that gave us no choice.

This is modern-day feminism, and America needs to wake up.

When will our leaders take action and stop forcing girls and women into unfair, unjust, and discriminatory situations? Women in America continue to lose opportunities — roster spots, championships, titles, and awards — because they’re forced to face male competitors in the women’s sports division in the pool, on the track, on the court, and on the field.

The rights of women in America are taking a widespread and deeply concerning backseat.

We know this based on our own (not-so-unique) personal experiences: we share a common history of training with and/or competing against a mediocre male athlete who switched to the women’s category and went on to win a national title, beating out every female in the entire country… by body lengths. We relate because of the silencing, gaslighting, and emotional blackmail we faced from our universities in efforts to silence us.

Since experiencing this injustice, we have developed a relationship where we were able to convey our feelings and concerns to each other. We have realized that we are not alone in this battle. Standing alongside each other has given us the strength and momentum to continue fighting to restore safety, privacy, and fairness in women’s sports. We can only hope our courage is contagious, so we can lock arms with people across the globe who see what is at stake if this issue isn’t solved.

If you have eyes, a brain, and any amount of common sense, you can easily comprehend the fact that men, on average, are faster, taller, more powerful, stronger, and can jump higher than women. It’s not “anti”-anything to say so. In fact, pointing out this simple fact embraces years of scientific research and biological reality. Denying it denies the truth.

“Men displacing women is unlawful and discriminatory” — that is the message that needs to be communicated to sporting governing bodies, large corporations, academia, state/federal governments, the media, and unelected bureaucrats and officials changing guidelines though they have no authority to do so. This is exactly why the women’s category in sports was created in the first place. Just like any division in sports, women’s teams were created to account for the distinct and obvious differences in abilities. This is also why 12 & under baseball teams don’t compete against 15 & under teams; why a featherweight does not compete against a heavyweight; why Olympic athletes do not compete in the Paralympics.

Biological differences resulting in a nearly universal 10%-12% performance gap cannot continue to be ignored. Women cannot continue to be threatened and intimidated into silence and feel as if they should apologize for wanting fairness and safety in their sports.

If these threats to women do persist, the integrity of women’s sports is lost. But even more importantly, women will continue being erased as a whole.

Unfortunately, this is a very real threat.

Less than half of all states have enacted some form of legislation to protect single-sex athletic participation and equality for girls in sports. Moreover, the majority party in control of both the White House and the United States Senate is turning a blind eye to women and rejecting what should be a bipartisan effort to protect females. And even if the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act was brought to the U.S. Senate floor for a vote, President Joe Biden has committed to vetoing this legislation. Protecting girls and women has become an issue that has almost unanimously (at every level) fallen entirely along party lines. Read that sentence again.

Likewise, the NCAA dodged the opportunity to be a bold leader and adjust rules to protect current and future female collegiate athletes, instead leaving rule-making and policy decisions up to the national governing bodies of each individual sport.

In the guise of “feminism” being mansplained to us, leftist misogyny is slapping us females across the face. How is the contempt and prejudice against women being so easily overlooked by our leaders in sports and, more critically, the leaders of this country?

This is not what women’s rights advocates fought for when, in 1972, Congress passed Title IX, a law that ultimately provided a generation of women and girls — ourselves included — with athletic and academic opportunities previously out of reach. What we are witnessing today is an undoing of the progress that so many women athletes and our allies fought for.

Sadly, many state and federal politicians will ignore this and continue to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to women’s sports. Or worse, like Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), they will laugh at the issue as if women’s sports aren’t important — as if they aren’t a vehicle for so many women to develop critical life and leadership skills, to be part of something greater than ourselves, to find confidence, and to gain life-changing opportunities such as college scholarships. Are we not worthy of this in the same way men are?

We also know that many girls being unjustly treated will remain silent due to fear and bullying. It’s unfortunate and heartbreaking that this is becoming less and less shocking. We need to break this trend by saying, “Enough is enough.” It’s time we hold the line and demand change to limit the number of girls who are hurt, exploited in a locker room, and forced to step aside and asked to kindly smile while a man takes her place and her hard-won achievements.

Since when did America become the land of discrimination and inequality for women? Our welfare matters too. As we kick off Women’s Sports Week, will our politicians and sports governing bodies even acknowledge the progress women have made in sports over the last 51 years?

More likely, they will celebrate their own discriminatory policies that are erasing women.