COMMENTS: Don’t silence us

Forty-eight years ago, the U.S. enacted Title IX, which, among other things, provided hard fought sex-based protections for women in sports.

The road to these protections was long and arduous, full of odious sex role stereotypes and misogynistic silencing conventions that stifled the important voices of women as they cried out for fair treatment.

As a woman who paid for her college education with a basketball scholarship afforded by these protections, I am both thankful and protective of them.

That’s why I was surprised and deeply angered recently when I woke to discover that the powers-that-be at the Coeur d’Alene Press had employed those same silencing conventions to suppress my respectfully offered comments on the Press’s Facebook page.

The article discussed California’s attempt to bully Idaho women and girls into admitting biological males onto our sports teams. My comments explained why this was unacceptable and how biological factors like increased O2 capacity, musculature, bone size and density, etc., provide an obvious unfair advantage for male bodies in women’s sports.

And my comments were deleted, my profile blocked. The job of a journalist is objectivity, not activism. Censoring inconvenient women’s voices is an age old problem. I don’t expect you to advocate for us, but you should not interfere with our right to advocate for ourselves.

It’s 2020. Let women speak.

KAELEY HARMS

Coeur d’Alene