On Monday evening, the NCAA pulled all of its championship games for the 2016-17 season out of North Carolina, citing its disagreement with controversial bill, H.B.2, and the state’s continual trans-discriminatory legislation as the reason for doing so.
The NCAA issued the statement on its website last night, and emphasized its dedication to “an inclusive atmosphere”:
Based on the NCAA’s commitment to fairness and inclusion, the Association will relocate all seven previously awarded championship events from North Carolina during the 2016-17 academic year. The NCAA Board of Governors made this decision because of the cumulative actions taken by the state concerning civil rights protections.
North Carolina GOP spokeswoman Kami Mueller responded on Monday evening, calling the decision “so absurd it’s almost comical,” before going on a rambling tirade about the supposed unravelling of gendered sports.
“Under the NCAA’s logic,” she wrote, “colleges should make cheerleaders and football players share bathrooms, showers and hotel rooms.”
Mueller also accused the NCAA of being more concerned about the bathroom bill than survivors of sexual assault.
“I wish the NCAA was this concerned about the women who were raped at Baylor,” she wrote.
(Read the entire statement below.)
Mueller is, of course, not the first member of the GOP to use the threat of sexual violence as a scapegoat in its bigoted witch hunt against the trans community. Perhaps most infamously, in Februrary 2015, Mike Huckabee joked about finding his “feminine side” in high school so he could perv on women in the girls locker room.
The implication that trans people are a threat to women is not only totally invalid, it’s also an offense to both trans people and survivors of sexual assault.
It goes without saying that the GOP has never shown any compassion to the trans community, but it’s also worth noting that the Republican party has consistently worked against legislation that would provide support to rape and sexual assault survivors ― whether they’re children, in the military, or college students.
While the issue of rape culture and accountability in college sports is a serious one ― at Baylor in particular ― muddling it with North Carolina’s insistence on denying equal rights to its trans community is the entirely wrong approach: survivors of sexual violence should not be used as political pawns for the Republican party and its obsession with punishing the trans community.
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
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