As the girls rounded the corner into the last stretch before the finish line, I couldn’t help myself: “Go, girls, go, girls!” I yelled as they sprinted and jostled for first place. Their feet pounding and red cheeks flaring, they ran hard because, on this cold fall day, the State Championship was up for grabs in Belfast, Maine.

However, something was out of place in this scenario, and it wasn’t me.

I stood there watching as a woman who had vigorously competed in high school sports, relishing the competition and the banter the girls on my teams had during practice and on the field. It wasn’t the girls who were out of place either. They ran like the wind and came in all ages, shapes, and sizes from every corner of Maine to compete.

What was out of place during this track meet? It was the boy.

The boy who was running alongside the top girls with his pigtails flapping in the air was crushing the competition in front of me. It was the boy who was snuffing out the dreams and diminishing the hard work these girls had put in for years. This boy was being lauded for his athletic prowess as he competed against young girls who never had the testosterone that had built his lean and strong muscles. This young man, who only last year had run with the boys and performed poorly, was now (obviously) dominating the girls’ track championships. This boy was the one out of place.

Just ten years ago, you would’ve thought: where are the outraged feminists?

Where are the women who marched to allow women to excel in their fields, who screamed from the rooftops, “Women are special and deserve the opportunities to succeed in their own right”? Shockingly, these feminists are now the ones declaring that women shut their mouths, that we ignore the truths of physical womanhood, and that we let anyone who declares they identify as a woman “be” a woman.

Any feminist who now holds the once obvious belief that women and men are biologically distinct, and that those biological differences necessitate sex-specific sporting events, is now derided with the pejorative term, T.E.R.F. — aka Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist.

This diminishing of girlhood didn’t begin on the athletic fields. The loss of preciousness and protection of our young women became pervasive in our state back when the Maine legislature added “gender identity” to the Maine Human Rights Act in 2019. The definition in the statute of “gender identity” means the gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, regardless of the individual’s assigned sex at birth.

Based on this ideological view of human nature and human sexuality, new policies began to weave their way into the rules governing our government-run schools. The further implementation of the ACAAA (Transgender and Gender Expansive Students) policy has brought gender identity into all aspects of school life. The ACAAA allows an “anything goes” approach when someone chooses to identify as a woman. In schools that have adopted this radical philosophy, a boy can now use the girls’ bathroom, join the girls’ sports team, and walk naked in the girls’ locker room simply by declaring he is a girl. It doesn’t matter if a student, a mom, or a concerned citizen protests this insanity because the School Board, Superintendents, and teachers can simply fall back on the “law” and ignore very real concerns.

More strength has now been added to the ruling class’s contempt for our girls since the Biden-Harris Administration officially changed Title IX protections to include those who identify as whatever sex they choose. Gone are the days when Title IX was used to give opportunities; now it takes them away. What bitter irony that a federal rule once invoked to elevate women and girls has now become a tool to allow biological males to invade and dominate female spaces (and races).

I have realized that the true feminists, the women who are speaking up for and protecting girls, are myself and the conservative women around me. We stand appalled that a young man is allowed to crush girl athletes and steal championships from our daughters. The feminists are now the women who show up to the school board meetings and get called bigots or haters only because they want our girls to be seen as the unique people they are. These conservative feminists are boldly declaring that girls are not a product of the clothes or makeup they put on, but are in fact, biologically, emotionally, and spiritually born into womanhood.

I read feminist material in college and found much of it too radical, now I am shocked to find I am the radical one because I want our girls to succeed without having to compete athletically against confused young men.

Where are the feminists?

We are right here and we won’t stop fighting. “Go girls, Go girls!”

State Rep. Katrina Smith (R-Palermo) has served one term representing House District 62, which includes the towns of Windsor, China, Hibberts Gore Township, Somerville, and Palermo.