Police investigating after group says bus vandalized in NC town with pro-trans messages
A group touring the U.S. that opposes people assigned male at birth playing women’s and girls’ sports said its bus was vandalized in Chapel Hill last week.
On Friday morning, members of the Our Bodies, Our Sports Take Back Title IX tour group saw their bus covered with messages written in black marker ink, including “Hate Group,” “Trans Rights are Human Rights,” and “‘B’ is for Bigot” A flower and penis also were drawn on the bus, which was egged as well, according to tour manager Brianna Howard.
“Not saying all the messages were hateful, but I think it was hateful that someone would purposely attack a piece of private property,” Howard said.
At previous tour stops, supporters had written messages like “so proud of you” on the bus in similar black ink.
Carrboro police are investigating the incident, which the group said happened while the bus was parked on the 300 block of East Main Street, according to a police report.
Tour members are advocating against “male-bodied” individuals in sports “intended for female bodies,” Howard said. She added that about 75 people attended the group’s event at The Pitch, an event space and entrepreneurial hub in Chapel Hill, on Thursday.
The tour also opposes an April revision to federal rules aimed to protect people from gender identity discrimination in schools.
Women in athletics
May Mailman is the director of the Independent Women’s Law Center, a Washington, D.C. -based group that “fights for equal opportunity, individual liberty, and the continued legal relevance of biological sex,” according to its website.
The new rules take equal opportunities away from women in athletics, Mailman said, citing competition results and scholarships as two examples.
“To assume that women need to bear the burden of someone else’s gender identity is a burden that’s uniquely put on women,” she said. “It is discriminatory.”
The center and bus tour are projects of the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative nonprofit group.
Former mayor calls tour harmful
Damon Seils, a former mayor of Carrboro, said the tour’s advocacy is harmful to the local trans and LGBTQ+ communities.
“They campaign against an imaginary threat based on a flawed understanding of science and the real-life experiences of trans athletes,” he wrote in an email to The N&O.
Seils, who is gay, added that if tour members “truly cared about threats to women’s sports,” they would instead be calling attention to pay inequality, gender-based bullying, poor media coverage and underrepresentation of women in sports leadership.
Howard said some of the tour’s speakers include those issues in their messaging. She also said her advocacy isn’t transphobic.
“It’s not against any particular group of people,” she said. “It’s just ensuring women have the same opportunities to compete.”
