Fox News contributor Tulsi Gabbard hit out at what she described as “fake-feminists” and criticized the Biden administration for its approach to rights protected by Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972.
Gabbard, a former Democratic member of the House of Representatives who has left the party, spoke to Fox News‘s Tucker Carlson on Wednesday about Title IX protections for women’s sports.
Title IX forbids discrimination in “any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance” based upon sex and has recently been subject to significant debate about what the law means for transgender athletes.
Gabbard shared a video of her conversation with Carlson on both Twitter and Truth Social, writing: “50 years ago, feminists fought to pass Title IX so women didn’t have to compete against men. Today’s fake-feminists are undoing Title IX so women are forced to compete against men. They deny objective truth, and are doing all they can to erase women.”
Carlson showed his viewers a video from Gabbard’s podcast in which she criticized what she described as “self-proclaimed feminists” for refusing to define “what a woman is” and accused them of trying to “erase” women as a category of people.
Gabbard told Carlson: “This has been something building and growing over time.”
“I introduced legislation, bipartisan legislation, while I was in Congress out of a recognition of this problem that we have people who claim to be feminists yet who are exercising the height of hypocrisy by actually trying to erase women as an entire category of people, and doing so by doing things like the Biden administration is doing now in trying to undo Title IX—the legislation that was enacted 50 years ago out of a recognition of the difference in biological sex between men and women and boys and girls,” she said.
In June, the Department of Education announced proposed new Title IX regulations that would clarify that Title IX protections “apply to sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics.” This would require publicly-funded schools to expand their nondiscrimination policies to include students who do not identify as the gender they were assigned at birth.
Gabbard may also have been referring to the Biden administration’s interpretation of a provision in the Affordable Care Act as barring health care providers from discriminating against gay and transgender people based upon Title IX.
A federal judge in Texas ruled earlier this month that the administration was wrong in interpreting the health care law in that way.
Gabbard went on to speak to Carlson about legislation she had proposed during her time in Congress, the Protect Women Sports Act, which she said would have “upheld that original intent of Title IX ensuring that sports would be maintained with that original intent with females competing against females, males competing against males.”
The issue of transgender women and girls competing in women’s sports and the role of Title IX have been a source of controversy and legal action.
In September, a federal appellate court heard a suit from a group of cisgender women who argued that a policy allowing transgender students to compete in sports that aligned with their gender identity had violated their rights under Title IX. The case has not yet been decided.
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment.
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