Macy Petty, who played women's volleyball at Lee University and is now a legislative strategist at Concerned Women for America (CWA), was in the Senate gallery as members were voting on the legislation.
Watching Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville cast his vote for the legislation he put forward in support of girls' and women's sports was stirring -- but so was seeing the bill fail because of a Democrat filibuster.
"It was such an honor to see Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) cast his vote for his legislation, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act," she accounts. "But then I also saw several members just enthusiastically vote against it."
The test vote on the bill, which seeks to determine Title IX protections "based solely on a person's reproductive biology and genetics at birth," failed to gain the 60 votes needed to advance in the chamber Monday as senators stuck to party lines in a 51-45 vote tally.
Though she has come to expect this kind of action from the Democrats, Petty confesses it still affects her personally.
"It felt like they were voting against me; they were voting to replace me in sports and take away my college scholarship that I had enjoyed for four years of my life," she tells AFN. "It was very disheartening."
But as polling shows support for this legislation is only growing, Petty thinks this issue is among the many reasons why Democrats lost in November.
"We conducted exit polling, and it showed that 70% of voters found this issue as important to their voting selection," she reports. "So, it heavily informed who they were voting for."
When it comes to swing states, the states that ultimately won President Trump the election, 73% of Georgians, 75% of Pennsylvanians, and 80% of Michiganders oppose men in women's sports.
"This is across the board," Petty asserts. "I am very safe to say that this has influenced politics before, and coming off this Senate vote, it will continue to influence politics in the future."
So as Democrats continue to ignore women's Title IX rights and maintain that sports should be inclusive, Petty predicts this vote will come back to haunt Democrats.
President Trump, who reiterated in his speech to Congress last night that the government only recognizes two genders – male and female – has signed an executive order to keep males from competing in female sports. But members of Congress know legislation is needed to do more about this issue.
"I expect that politics will adjust and that the American people will put representatives in place that will uphold those values and protect women's sports in the future," she says.
More women need to be heard to help the politics adjust. More men too, Petty says.
"Their voices matter, and their vote counts as much as the rest of us," she said. "So, we encourage them to contact their senators and engage, and we have several ways to do that at Concerned Women.org."
"We like to joke that we are Concerned Women for America and likeminded men. We are always happy and eager to link arms with men who are defenders of their families and daughters," she told AFN.
