A New Jersey Democrat running for the US House in a closely watched district said recently she’s “not super worried” about biological men entering women’s locker rooms and is advocating for their inclusion in female sports.
Sue Altman, a former Columbia University women’s basketball player who played professionally in Ireland and Germany, told prospective voters at a Sept. 26 town hall in Phillipsburg that she “got such a benefit from Title IX” — but had no qualms with “our trans brothers and sisters” dissolving female-only athletics.
“If we decide as a society that making rules about who is and who isn’t female is more important than giving young children a chance to be on teams and compete and to be part of something bigger than themselves, especially young people who are more susceptible to suicide and bullying, then I think we’ve lost our way a little bit,” Altman said.
“As someone who’s been working to advocate for women’s rights and women’s sports, I promise you that in the locker rooms of women’s sports teams, we’re not super worried about this,” she added.
“We’ve been worried about getting equal access to gym time, good referees, good trainers so you don’t get injured, fair shake at scholarships, equal pay at the higher levels.”
Transgender participation in sports, especially youth sports has been a hotly debated topic at both international and national levels in recent years, with biological males winning first-place awards ahead of their female competitors at several high-profile competitions.
Between 2021 and 2023, the percentage of Americans who said that athletes should only be allowed to play on teams corresponding to their biological sex increased from 62% to 69%, according to Gallup. Other surveys have had similar findings.
A majority of Democrats in 2021 supported participation based on gender identity, the Gallup survey found, but by 2023 a plurality of 48% favored sex-segregated teams and spaces.
The opposition to biological males competing in female athletics is even higher when women alone are polled, one UK study found.
Scientific studies have also debunked arguments, which Altman deployed at the town hall, about transgender teens and young adults being more prone to suicide — a claim often invoked to advance LGBT policy priorities.
Other studies have found that transwomen athletes retain a competitive advantage over their biological female peers even after hormone therapy.
Altman — a former leader of the Garden State’s progressive Working Families Party, which has advocated for similar trans-inclusionary policies — has kept mum about her more radical past policy positions as she looks to unseat Republican incumbent Rep. Tom Kean in New Jersey’s 7th District.
The race is currently ranked as a toss-up by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
Kean was one of 219 Republicans who in April 2023 helped pass a House bill codifying protections for women’s-only sports. No Democrats supported the legislation, though 10 did not vote, several of whom were gearing up for competitive re-election races.
Altman, who also received an endorsement from the LGBT-advocating Human Rights Campaign, prefaced her town hall remarks by saying she was “aware of the struggles that our mothers and grandmothers struggled to give me and my generation.”
Her mother, Barbara, was apparently “too aggressive” on the basketball court herself and got thrown out of a game in Garden City, Long Island, she recalled.
“This is a place where people care about girls sports, and I respect that,” Altman said. “And I also know that I grew up with people who are now trans, who have transitioned from boy to girl or girl to boy, and those people struggled in adolescence.”
“And I will let individual sport committees decide the highest, highest level things, but at the very heart of it, we have to respect people of all genders and give young children, especially young people and adolescents struggling with their gender identity, the chance to compete,” she concluded, without further clarification.
Reps for Altman’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
