Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told a progressive campus crowd she backs males in women’s sports because she is a “girl’s girl”, a claim that lands hard against girls already walking off Washington courses in protest.
A biological male from Camas High in Washington state switched to the girls’ cross country team midseason and lined up at a district meet against 25 girls from four schools. That scene is the practical backdrop for remarks Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., delivered at More Perfect University beside Maine Senate candidate Troy Jackson.
A student who identified as transgender at the University of Southern Maine pressed her on Democratic backing for transgender rights. Ocasio-Cortez answered with a full-throated defense of males in girls’ categories and tied the issue to Title IX itself.
OutKick reported her line that framed the whole position as female solidarity.
"I support the rights of trans women because I'm a girls girl."
She did not stop there. She cast Republican focus on fairness in girls’ sports as an attack on every woman on campus.
"Understand, when they attack trans girls in sports, they're also attacking all women's ability to stand up against their abusers, their rapists, and their assaulters on campuses across America."
She also said Title IX is “the federal protection for all gender equality and all women to be protected,” and warned that “the moment you try to compromise the rights of a trans person in America, you compromise the rights of everyone citizen in America.” The room, per the same account, answered with applause.
While Ocasio-Cortez spoke in abstractions, girls at Camas High dealt with a concrete starter’s gun. Logan Mihailoff, a junior, had raced in the male category as recently as September 5, placing 76th of 301. After the switch to the girls’ side under Washington Interscholastic Activities Association rules that let athletes compete by gender identity, Mihailoff became one of the team’s fastest runners and set a personal best.
National Review detailed what followed: more than half the Camas girls’ cross country team walked the first 50 meters arm-in-arm rather than race against a male athlete in the female category. Holly Burns put the grievance in plain terms.
"Women already had to fight to have their own team and race. I just think it’s unfair."
Sarah Burns added the biology the podium does not erase: “A biological boy has bigger lung capacity, more muscles and longer legs so they can run faster. They’ll kick a girl who has worked really hard out of a spot she deserves.”
The New York Post reported the same meet against Battle Ground High School. Roughly half of the 24 Camas girls refused to compete and walked into the tree line at the start. Parents held signs. Security followed parent Kevin Burns and told him to leave.
"So I just went ahead and held up my sign, and they had several security guards following me and pestering me and telling me that I would have to leave. And I just said, ‘No, I’m not going to leave.’"
Washington voters will decide Initiative 638 on Nov. 3. The measure would restrict K-12 public school athletic categories by biological sex at birth and end the gender-identity pathway Mihailoff used.
At More Perfect University, a progressive campus program More Perfect Union launched in April 2026 to counter Turning Point USA, Ocasio-Cortez tried to shrink the controversy by the numbers. She said transgender Americans are “about 1% of the population, perhaps less than 1%,” then later warned against shredding the Constitution and “kill[ing] Title IX” to “attack 3% of the U.S. population.” The student held up three fingers for the higher figure. She also claimed political ads leave Republicans thinking transgender people make up 40% of the country.
She framed the right’s energy this way:
"The billions of dollars and the enormous amount of energy that The Right is putting and focusing on trans Americans, when you actually zoom out, trans Americans are about 1% of the population, perhaps less than 1%."
And she insisted the sports fight is really about every girl:
"When they (The Right) want to focus on trans girls in sports, it's not just about trans girls in sports. It's about girls, all girls."
An X user summed up the logic gap in one line the OutKick piece flagged: “This is like saying, ‘I agree that 2+2=5 because I’m a mathy mathematician’.”
Ocasio-Cortez treated Title IX as a blank check for gender identity. The statute, as originally understood in 1972, protected biological sex, male and female, so girls and women could have their own teams, scholarships, and locker rooms. The left, especially under former President Biden, pushed to rewrite that language to fold in gender identity and sexual orientation. That is the live fight her speech papered over.
She equated efforts to keep males out of girls’ sports with an assault on women’s ability to report abusers. The Camas girls who walked off were not shredding campus safety rules. They were refusing to surrender a fair race and a roster spot to a male who had been racing boys weeks earlier.
Related coverage has tallied thousands of championship opportunities claimed by transgender athletes at the expense of biological women. The pattern is not theoretical for the girls who trained all season only to watch a midseason transfer take the lane.
Initiative 638 puts the question on a November ballot in clear terms: K-12 categories by biological sex at birth. School policy under the WIAA already green-lit the Camas switch. Parents and athletes answered with a walk-off and protest signs. Ocasio-Cortez answered a friendly audience with the claim that defending males in girls’ sports is what a “girl’s girl” does.
She told the student that basic rights “don’t matter who you are, what you do. You have those rights guaranteed by being an American citizen. Point blank. Period.” Fairness in a girls’ race is also a right the girls on that starting line were trying to keep. One side left the course rather than pretend the categories still meant anything. The other side called the pretense solidarity.
Girls who want a fair finish line should not have to walk off the course to prove the point, and politicians who call that surrender “being a girl’s girl” are not protecting women.
