Reflections on ICONS

The second annual summit of the Independent Council on Women's Sports

July 25, 2023

This post is available to paid subscribers only. As always, thank you for your generous support, which helps me continue in the fight to protect the sex-based rights of women and girls and to stop the abolition of sex.

This past Friday and Saturday, I attended the second annual summit of ICONS. You can now listen to the livestream of the entire 3-day summit on their website.

It was interesting and invigorating, and I’m so glad I participated. I had met Helen Joyce before, but I got to reconnect with her this past weekend, and it was great. I was hoping to meet Emma Hilton in person, but she had suffered a back injury and was only able to join via Zoom. I was also able to connect with many people in this fight who I had previously only known online, like Colin Wright, and with so many amazing women and men, including so many spectacular female athletes, who are fearlessly fighting to protect women’s sports. I got to hear Mara Yamauchi talk for the first time and was honored to listen to a panel of young women, including Riley Gaines, who have found themselves, bizarrely, in the position of having men compete on their teams and strip in their locker rooms.

This post reflects on my experiences at the summit and, in particular, on that last bit about what today’s young female athletes are being forced to deal with. It’s not pretty. The panel began with a presentation from Dr. Dina McMillan, who did a fantastic job of explaining why forcing female athletes to compete with men is a form of abuse, comparing it to her work on domestic abuse. Then the panel proceeded from there …