Ellie Randall,* an Albuquerque, New Mexico mother and nurse practitioner, came face-to-face with the effects of radical gender ideology in her 14-year-old daughter’s life as well as her own. Both avid mountain bikers, Randall said she has competed against a male identifying as a woman, while her daughter has raced against a female athlete who appears to be “transitioning” to identify as a boy.

Women’s sports have become a battleground in recent years as males who identify as girls and women, like swimmer Lia Thomas, have been allowed to compete with females and collect trophies and scholarships intended for females. 

Females can also disrupt women’s sports, however, if they take testosterone as part of wrong-sex hormone therapy meant to affirm their “gender identity.” While testosterone has historically been considered a performance enhancer, female athletes appear to evade ethical questions if they claim to be “transgender.” 

“I race mountain bikes with a team of women,” Randall said. “I have raced against one particular man who lives in town, who probably raced at a B minus level [as a man,] but now as a [“trans woman”], he’s racing at a solid A.” 

According to Randall, most of the women on her team have daughters and are thinking about the issue of males competing against females. Even within this tight-knit group, however, Randall said she is the only one “willing to openly talk about it”—despite the fact that gender ideology has reportedly captured some of her own teammates’ children.

“One of my teammates’ 14-year-old daughter is transitioning to a boy right now, and it’s really heart-wrenching for her and her husband,” Randall said. “A couple I’m friends with, they’re both physicians.… Their 16-year-old daughter is transitioning as well.”

While Randall said that she and her female teammates are still holding their own against the male mountain biker, her daughter Megan’s* high school racing career has already been compromised by rampant gender ideology.

“This year, as a freshman, my daughter is racing for the JV team,” Randall said. 

According to Randall, there is another junior varsity cyclist who she believes may be undergoing wrong-sex hormone therapy. This cyclist is “also a freshman, that just smoked everybody at a race, and every consecutive race after that has also been a blowout. At the final race, she was so fast that she caught and almost beat the winner of the varsity team.”

Cycling is “physically very, very different” for men and women, Randall said. While Megan’s competitor is not a biological male, Randall said she has seen signs that this competitor is likely co-opting one of men’s most significant physical advantages: testosterone. 

This female athlete, Randall alleged, has started to develop male-pattern leg hair and a deeper voice. Based on her experience as a family practitioner, Randall believes the evidence that the athlete is using testosterone is compelling.

“It is my understanding that she is transitioning to be a boy, and there must be hormonal augmentation going on there, because there is no way that a girl that age could ever do what she’s doing without augmentation,” she said. “I’m a family practitioner, and when I look at her, her body, her face, her hair, it’s not natural. There’s nothing natural about it.”

Unfortunately, Randall said that Megan has not only been affected by gender ideology in mountain biking, but she has also encountered it in basketball. 

“My daughter and her best friend both made their basketball team this year,” Randall said. “They are encountering teams from many areas of the state, including Albuquerque, that have boys playing on the girls’ team. Since basketball is a very physical contact sport, she’s getting her a** kicked.” 

Randall said that she has already placed a transfer request to move Megan to a different high school in another school district. Not only is the athletic situation untenable, but she also said that gender ideology in the classroom has been extremely “distracting” for her daughter. 

“This freedom to ‘do whatever you want’ has changed the school culture to the point that it’s distracting, all the time, in every class,” she said. “The high school demographics have completely changed over the last couple of years—there’s a very depressed energy.” 

According to Randall, the takeover of school culture by progressive ideologues has been so complete that her daughter has reportedly been discriminated against for being “normal.” 

“She was being preyed upon because she’s natural and feminine,” Randall said of the bullying tactics that her daughter has endured at school. “There’s very few of them left.” 

Albuquerque has only one school district and is a “monopoly,” Randall said. Moving Megan to a new school district, therefore, will require her family to leave the city they’ve called home.

Despite the inconvenience of moving and starting over at a new high school, Randall said that Megan was adamant about it—not just for herself, but for her younger sister, who Megan said “cannot go to that school.”

Randall is not alone in her decision to uproot her family due to problems with the public school system. 

“The world is hard right now,” Randall said. “I never, ever thought this would happen.”

*Storytellers’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.