Payton McNabb is no stranger to the very real consequences of radical gender ideology. In 2022, she had to kiss her collegiate athletic future goodbye after a male volleyball opponent spiked a ball into her head during a high school match, causing a traumatic brain injury. 

In the years since, McNabb and other women’s rights advocates have made immense progress in the fight for fairness in women’s sports. But she has continued to face pushback for promoting common sense.

Just last year, McNabb found herself embroiled in a Title IX investigation after she encountered a 27-year-old trans-identified male in a women’s restroom at her college, Western Carolina University (WCU). McNabb confronted the male for making her feel uncomfortable in a vulnerable and private space, and subsequently expressed her First Amendment rights by posting a video of the “unreal” encounter on X. The male took action against her, filing a complaint with the school’s administration. 

But this year, McNabb won the campus Title IX case — a victory that is not only a personal triumph for McNabb, but also one with far-reaching implications in the ongoing legal battle over sex-based rights and the future of Title IX. 

When McNabb realized there was a male in front of her in the women’s restroom at Western Carolina University, she said she felt bewildered and alarmed. As she tried to sort through emotions in her head in the heat of the moment, McNabb said she reflected on how young girls come in and out of that bathroom regularly during field trips to WCU’s public campus, and said she decided to question the male because she had no way of knowing his intentions.

“I thought of how hypocritical it would be of me to just smile at him and leave when all of my advocacy is about standing up for these basic rights,” she told IWFeatures in an exclusive interview. 

The video McNabb posted of her interaction with the male shows McNabb calmly asking the male, who was wearing a dress, what he was doing in the girl’s bathroom and expressing to him how this felt like a violation of her privacy.

After she posted the clip on X, however, McNabb said people online began trying to doxx her private information — to the point where school administrators were concerned about her safety and had police monitor her dorm. 

This one event spiraled into a civil rights investigation with campus administrators spanning several months, as both she and the male then filed complaints. McNabb said while WCU threw her complaint out, they kept the male’s in, sparking a Title IX investigation against her. 

McNabb said she felt “outnumbered” and “betrayed” by her university.

“It certainly seemed like the deck was stacked against her,” McNabb’s lawyer, Ellis Boyle, said. 

McNabb said that throughout the process, she felt that the Title IX investigator –– an outside vendor from Colorado –– was biased against her. What’s more, it was discovered during the investigation that the male who filed the complaint against McNabb had been told how to make a complaint and was essentially walked through the steps by, WCU’s Dean of Students Betsy Aspinwall, Boyle said.

“I found it to be, if not shocking, certainly irregular, that the folks in the administration would be going out and soliciting Title IX complaints on this politically charged subject,” Boyle said.

Despite these concerns, Boyle believes WCU gave McNabb a fair trial by allowing her to present a “very calm and matter of fact testimony” in which she clarified her First Amendment rights to post the clip on X and laid out her sex-based right to a women’s-only restroom under Title IX.

WCU ultimately ruled that Payton did not sexually harass the male student because she was polite but stood her ground, and not in a severe or objectively offensive way. According to Boyle, the decision helps make clear that women such as McNabb have the right to stand up for themselves and their rights — especially when they feel their rights are being encroached upon. 

However, WCU’s decision could just be the first step toward an even bigger ruling on Title IX, specifically in regards to whether the legal statute’s protections are based solely on biological sex.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (encompassing South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland) has held that Title IX applies to “gender identity” as well as sex, ruling people who identify as transgender can use the bathroom of their choice. This has put pressure on universities like WCU to side with gender ideology.

A more recent case from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, however, held that Title IX’s reference to “sex” means only biological sex.

This circuit split could trigger action from the Supreme Court in the near term to “clarify the law and restore common sense for women in their private spaces and make Title IX protect women again,” Boyle explained.

But until then, Boyle said he hopes this recent win for McNabb inspires others to not just “roll over when faced with a woke sort of ideological mob issue.”

“She has proved that you can fight back, stand up for yourself, and prevail, and that common sense is not completely dead in this world,” he said. “Hopefully, this will discourage Title IX complaints from being filed under these circumstances.”

McNabb, who appeared in the IW Features mini-documentary Kill Shot last year, said her faith, her role models, and prayers from her supporters have helped empower her to be a public face for this fight. 

“I just couldn’t believe just for the simple fact that I was asking for a women’s only bathroom, that they were putting me under this legal battle for several months,” McNabb said. 

But no matter the hurdle, McNabb said she wants girls and women to know that it’s well within their right to stand up for themselves.

“Even if you don’t think you’ll have a chance –– because we certainly didn’t think it was going to be easy at all –– we still went into it and we prevailed,” she said.