N.A.A. from the Archives: Save Women’s Sports: Fairness, Lawsuits, and the Line

Some conversations do not age. They sharpen. It's time to Save Women's Sports.

This episode drops you into a real-time, high-signal discussion with women who have lived sport from the inside: athlete, coach, administrator, advocate. Not theory. Not vibes. Not “it’s complicated.”

Just the blunt collision between sex-based sport categories and a policy regime that pretends biology is optional.

The result is simple: women’s sport becomes a tool for someone else’s emotional validation, and female athletes pay the bill in lost places, lost scholarships, lost safety, and lost truth. Saving women's sports is no longer an option.

What this episode actually does

This is not a debate about whether people deserve dignity. It’s an audit of what happens when institutions pretend fair competition is less important than social compliance.

You hear how this started, why it spread, why so many stayed silent, and what’s finally changing: lawsuits, legislation attempts, grassroots pushback, and women refusing to be guilted into surrender.

Key moments and themes

1) “There was absolutely no logic to it”

Former track administrator Linda Blade describes the policy shift hitting Canadian sport meetings around 2018: rules requiring male self-identification into girls’ categories.

Not presented as evidence-based policy. Presented as inevitability.

The punchline is what came next: silence, shrugs, compliance pressure.

2) Anti-doping hypocrisy

One of the most cutting segments is the contrast between strict anti-doping enforcement against female athletes and permissive policies that allow male-bodied advantage into women’s categories.

The episode frames it as what it is: institutional discrimination dressed as inclusion.

3) The book to bill pipeline

Blade explains how her work helped inspire legislative drafting in British Columbia, after years of behind-the-scenes effort.

The big takeaway: even when public progress feels slow, women are building infrastructure quietly, and then it surfaces all at once.

4) Sports builds women, and that is the point

Athlete advocate Marcy Smith explains what sport gave her: scholarship access, first-generation college opportunity, and the kind of confidence that carries into careers and leadership.

That framing matters because it makes the stakes obvious:

Women’s sports is not recreation. It is a pipeline to education, mobility, and self-trust.

5) “It doesn’t matter if we win” is the tell

A recurring theme is how some male athletes framed girls’ sports as “not that important,” or “just about belonging.”

The episode calls it out for what it is: women’s sport treated as therapy space.

That is not equality. That is colonization.

6) The media lens problem

Baughman recounts being featured in a special associated with CNN and **Anderson Cooper.

Even when coverage is slanted, there’s a strategic reality: once viewers see male athletes on-screen describing their pursuit of women’s records, the argument stops being abstract. People can see the mismatch.

7) Lawsuits are the pressure point

The episode highlights the lawsuit effort against the NCAA, and why legal action matters: institutions often do not change because they are persuaded. They change because they are forced.

Resource mentioned in the conversation: the project site “Take On The NCAA” (where listeners can learn, share, and contribute).

Why this episode matters right now

Because the conflict is no longer hypothetical.

It is showing up in:

• high school podiums

• scholarship pipelines

• athletic injuries

• institutional policies

• legislation battles

• the Olympics

• and the social punishment aimed at women who say basic truths out loud

This episode is a snapshot of what happens when women refuse to swallow it quietly.

Listener takeaway

If you are waiting for permission to speak plainly, stop waiting.

If you are waiting for institutions to protect girls without pressure, stop waiting.

Pick a lane:

• local sports boards

• school policy

• media amplification

• legal support

• legislative pressure

• donor support

Then do the work that lane allows.