A female athlete said she was replaced on the girls’ track and field team by a male who was not held to the same standard as the young women.
Taylor Starling from the Martin Luther King High School in California made headlines in November 2024 when she revealed her athletic director claimed her pro-women T-shirt was akin to wearing a swastika around a Jewish student. The shirt said “Save Girls’ Sports” on the front and “It’s Common Sense. XX ≠ XY” on the back.
Starling spoke at a California State Assembly meeting recently and told state legislators that she was “replaced” on the female team by a male transfer student, who did not have to attend practice.
“I was removed from my varsity girls’ team and replaced by a newly eligible male transfer student who received favorable treatment,” the 16-year-old claimed.
“In late October, the male transfer student was given my spot after not being held to the same strict team requirements as me and the rest of the girls,” Starling continued. “He did not have to attend practice while my team and I were running seven miles a day together. After having my spot taken away from me that I earned, I missed out on running with my varsity team in one of the top cross country invitationals of the season.”
The teen, recalling being told she was wearing Nazi-like attire, then stated plainly obvious facts that it is “not hateful or unkind” to say that “boys and girls are different.”
Starling has a lawsuit against her school district and California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who will see court on May 15. However, a Democrat majority at the state capitol recently declined two bills that support the removal of males from female athletics.
Starling, along with her father, Ryan, spoke to Fox News about the fight she and a classmate are taking on.
“I asked Taylor and Kaitlyn, ‘Are you prepared to deal with this? Are you going to be able to walk through the hallways in her school and [have people] dislike you, call you names, and call you out?’ And they were,” the father stated.
The female athlete went on to tell the outlet that the requirements were changed for the male competitor because he is “transgender,” while her sacrifice and dedication did not seem to matter to administrators.
‘I don’t find that as a safe environment.’
During a board meeting for the Riverside Unified School District in November, a third student spoke about her issues with school administrators in relation to males being treated as females.
“These girls feel silenced. They felt silenced. And when they finally spoke out and did something to go against it and speak out, not directed towards a single person at all, they were completely stabbed in the back by the person that we were told would support us and be able to help us through this,” the unnamed girl said.
After citing that she felt the two other girls were among the nicest people she had “ever met,” the fellow 16-year-old revealed that she does not feel she is in a safe environment at school.
“It is not OK that I have to be in a position where I’m going to practice and having to see a male in booty shorts and having to see that around me. As a 16-year-old girl, I don’t find that as a safe environment. I don’t at all.”
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