Perhaps the biggest triumph of the #MeToo movement was that it empowered women to speak openly about sexual abuse without fear of social or career repercussions.

The left praised this achievement with slogans such as “We will not be silenced.” Time magazine dedicated its Person of the Year issue in 2017 to “The Silence Breakers” to honor the women who spoke up against their abusers.

But today, the left does not seem to want to condemn the abuse and silencing of women taking place in women’s sports.

President Joe Biden’s transgender executive order and legislation such as the Equality Act, if passed, would require the unqualified inclusion of biological males who identify as women in women’s sports. In so doing, the left actively subjugates women to abuse and silences them under the guise of “inclusivity.”

Although biological males hold unfair advantages in noncontact sports, such as track and field, forcing women to compete against biological men in contact sports approaches abuse.

In mixed martial arts, Fallon Fox, who “transitioned” from male to female at 30 years old, is the first openly transgender athlete to compete as a woman despite the dangers of injury to other competitors.

In September 2014, Fox fought Tamikka Brents. Within the first two minutes of the match, Fox had fractured Brents’ skull and gave her a concussion. Fox continued the brutal assault until Brents was knocked out. 

“I have struggled with many women and I have never felt the strength I felt in a fight like that night,” Brents said later. “I have never felt so dominated in my life and … I am an abnormally strong woman in my own right.”

In any other instance, the domination of a woman by a biological male would make her a victim of abuse and injustice, according to the left. But because Brents was a woman fighting a trans-identifying biological male, the left dismissed her as a sore loser.

Vice’s article on the story criticized Brents for not being inclusive and told her to “get over it” and accept that “Fallon Fox is a woman.” 

It is absurd and wrong for even one woman to be dismissed for being brutally assaulted by a biological male in a dangerously unfair competition. It is worse when women are told to put up with this kind of assault without any recourse or redress from the institutions meant to protect them. Yet, that’s exactly what is happening today.

Today, the NCAA silences its own female athletes to conform to the left’s gender identity ideology.

In its “Transgender Handbook,” the NCAA dismisses the fears of those who want to protect women’s sports as “not well founded.” Instead, athletic departments and personnel are encouraged to create “an inclusive and non-discriminatory climate” for their teams.

The handbook claims the “assumption that a transgender woman competing on a women’s team would have a competitive advantage outside the range of performance and competitive advantage or disadvantage that already exists among female athletes is not supported by evidence.” But it fails to cite its evidence.

In fact, its claims are contrary to the evidence.

A recent study by the British Journal of Medicine shows that male athletes who are “transitioning” retain their competitive edge against women even after two years of taking estrogen. Currently, trans-identifying biological males can compete on women’s teams in the NCAA and Olympics after only one year of being on estrogen.

Ultimately, no amount of cross-sex hormones is enough to undo the fundamental biological differences that exist between males and females.

In light of this study, NCAA’s publication of a “Transgender Handbook” that fails to cite any evidence of its claims and even makes claims contrary to scientific evidence can be explained only as an ideologically driven attempt to silence women in the name of inclusivity.

A growing number of women on both sides of the political spectrum are getting fed up. Last August, 309 women wrote a letter to the NCAA urging it to consider the biological realities, the physical dangers of having men compete against them, and the implications for fairness in competition.

More recently, the Women’s Liberation Front, a radical feminist group dedicated to supporting the basic rights of all women and girls, submitted a petition to the Department of Education challenging Biden’s recent executive order and the threat it poses to Title IX protections for women.

Other Americans are rallying around the Promise to America’s Children, which is dedicated to protecting children from the harms of destructive gender ideology as well as the equality and safety of girls and women’s sports.

If the hard-won equality and rights of women are to be preserved, women once again must speak up about injustice and challenge the unfair consequences of dissenting from an ideology that seeks to eradicate the very concept of women in sports.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal.