A Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on protecting women's sports became the latest flashpoint in an internal Democratic Party dispute, as only two Democratic senators attended and both departed within an hour, according to accounts of the proceedings. The hearing, held Wednesday, featured witnesses who argued for separating biological males and females in athletic competition, but Democratic leaders called no witnesses of their own and did not stay to hear the full testimony.
The sparse Democratic presence has intensified criticism from within the party's own base. Jean Chadbourne, a registered Democrat from the Bay Area who has donated to Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg, said the party is alienating its own constituents. «They're eroding their base,» said Chadbourne, who founded Women are Real, a grassroots group she describes as roughly 65 percent Democratic. «You would think four years into this I would be prepared for them to continue to die on this hill. However, I again was just struck with how deranged this whole thing was... they didn't even want to argue their case for why boys should be in girls sports.»
Public opinion polling suggests Chadbourne's frustration reflects a broader Democratic sentiment. A New York Times poll from last year found that 67 percent of people who lean Democratic oppose mixing the two sexes in sports, while a Pew poll indicated that 55 percent of Democrats would be «not too» or «not at all» comfortable with athletes playing on teams that do not match their sex at birth. Despite these numbers, Democratic politicians have largely avoided the issue or, in the case of Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger in July, rolled back proposed protections for biological female sports without public announcement.
Kara Dansky, another registered Democrat and author of the 2023 book «The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls,» pointed to a «multi-billion industry» motivated to make gender-transitioning as frequent as possible. «A lot of kids are being put on a lot of drugs, which, if they go the traditional route, they will take for decades if not the rest of their lives,» said Dansky, a lawyer who attends rallies supporting the separation of sexes in sports. «So we're putting a large chunk of the young generation on a lifetime's worth of hormones.» She suggested a well-funded lobbying effort could be influencing lawmakers, though she acknowledged this cannot be confirmed.
Former Democrat Jennifer Sey, founder of XX-XY Athletics, believes the party's leadership is guided by activist staffers rather than voters. «I think the (Democrat) politicians are old and out of touch, they're not even reading the words given to them by the activist staffers,» said Sey, whose apparel brand has become associated with the push to separate biological males and females in sports. «They've completely lost touch with not just their voters, but with reality.» Sey also disputed claims made by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin during the hearing that a national ban on biological males in female sports would lead to «inappropriate gender verification checks,» noting that 27 states already have such bans and no such checks are occurring.
The hearing included testimony from former Australian rules football player Carly Smolak, who said a registered sex offender had joined her former team, and from 17-year-old high school volleyball player Briley Lehcner, who described a biological male entering her team's locker room. Last year, Oregon, Washington, and California each had state-champion track-and-field athletes who were born male. Whether these incidents are common is debated, but they are not isolated.
Dansky is skeptical that the issue will significantly impact the midterms, suggesting Democrats may simply ignore it and hope President Trump's unpopularity helps them flip the House and Senate. Still, the tension between party leaders and a substantial portion of their base shows no signs of fading, as voters like Chadbourne continue to press for a change in direction.