When Charlie Baker, president of the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA), appeared before senators earlier this week to discuss Title IX, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) asked, "Why do your guidelines allow biological men into women's locker rooms without the women's consent, without the women's foreknowledge?"
Baker tried to argue that the guidelines do not say that, but Hawley, who had them handy, read that "transgender student athletes should be able to use the locker rooms, showers, and toilet facilities in accordance with their gender identity."
Baker added that "everybody else should have an opportunity to use other facilities if they wish to do so," and Hawley pointed out, "Your burden's on the women."
"Your guidelines say that biological men can go in and use the women's locker rooms if they want to. What the women want has nothing to do with it; they're not mentioned in here at all," the senator clarified.
Responding to this on Fox News Channel, OutKick contributor and former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines (pictured above) said many female athletes have not been given a choice when it comes to competing against and sharing private spaces with males.
"We had a 6'4" 22-year-old man … wearing nothing … inches away from where we as women were simultaneously fully undressed," she accounted. "I can't even put into words the feelings of humiliation."
Any woman who questions the policy or voices her feelings of embarrassment against the "totally violating experience" is reprimanded and sent to sensitivity training.
"We were the ones who were told we need to learn how to feel OK with this," she lamented. "What Charlie Baker and what the NCAA has done … is truly criminal."
"He's put the onus on 99.99% of the population to make adjustments for the .01%," said Gaines.
She also questioned why women even have locker rooms if men who merely claim to be women can just wander in.
Gaines is among more than a dozen college athletes who filed a lawsuit against the NCAA earlier this year, accusing it of violating their Title IX rights by allowing men like William "Lia" Thomas to compete at the national championships in Atlanta in 2022.
That is where she and the other female swimmers were shocked to learn they would have to share a locker room with Thomas.
