"Et tu, NAACP?" It has taken time for me to process my deeply embedded disappointment. Many of today's human rights organizations are abandoning gir
“Et tu, NAACP?”
It has taken time for me to process my deeply embedded disappointment.
Many of today’s human rights organizations are abandoning girls, and NAACP has joined that disappointing group. The absolute audacity of it is what burns.
There is not an adult working in a human rights organization that is not keenly aware of:
- female genital mutilation,
- girl marriage,
- missing Black girls,
- the adultification of Black girls,
- Black girls disappearing into human trafficking,
- recorded online gender reveal parties that show outward disappointment when the color pink shows up (that ain’t cute by the way),
- we know people don’t even bother to learn the names of missing and murdered Black girls,
- little girls are prime targets during war, etc., etc., etc.
Every leader and civil rights professional knows the grim reality. They know that Black girls make up nearly 37% of all missing children cases, despite being only 14% of the population. They know about adultification bias—the documented systemic bias where Black girls as young as five are viewed as older, less innocent, more hyper-sexualized, and “needing less protection” than white girls, which directly funnels them into the school-to-prison pipeline and makes them prime targets for human trafficking. They are keenly aware of the global horrors of child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM) that rob millions of girls of their childhoods and bodily autonomy before they even hit puberty.
Yet, when the time comes to stand up and fiercely draw a protective boundary around these girls, many organizations choose to play political games instead. The community failing girls…… again.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 30, 2026, ruling in the consolidated cases West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox ignited a massive national debate.
The Court ruled 6–3 that states and schools are legally permitted under the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX to limit participation on women’s and girls’ sports teams to biological females (sex identified at birth). The majority specifically noted that the ruling was narrow and did not address or limit the participation of biological females on male or co-ed teams.
Following the ruling, the NAACP released a strong statement condemning the decision, which immediately drew intense criticism and backlash from conservative groups, parents’ rights organizations, and advocates for women’s sports.
Here is a breakdown of the NAACP’s position and the specific criticisms leveled against it. The same NAACP that has greatly benefited from the tireless labor, strategy, and devotion of Black women.
Meanwhile, Title IX was passed in 1972 specifically to rectify the historical exclusion of biological females from athletic opportunities. Something that girls and women can have for their own betterment. Separating sports by biological sex is not about “denying humanity,” but rather about recognizing undeniable physiological differences (like bone density, lung capacity, and muscle mass) to ensure safety and fair play.
Since it seems to matter, I am not MAGA. I am not a Republican.
I liken the people who want to take away girls rights as the selfish parents who kept the children’s money that their grandparents gave them. Kept the money and went out and had a good time while the children got nothing. Well, the lesson that they were never deserving of special and nice things ….especially if someone else wanted it more. No one on this planet can look at girls as a demographic and say, “I don’t have what I want or need because of you.”
Girls as a demographic hold ZERO systemic, political, or economic power. They do not hoard resources, they do not run institutions, and they do not write the laws.
Yet, they are the ones constantly asked to pay the price for adult political agendas.
When major organizations and movements demand that girls give up their protections, they are engaging in a classic, cowardly power dynamic:
Zero Leverage: Girls cannot lobby, they cannot vote, and they cannot withdraw financial funding. They are the easiest group to force a compromise upon because they cannot fight back on an institutional level.
The False Trade-Off: Pretending that a girl keeping her locker room private, her sports category fair, or her childhood intact is “harming” someone else is a complete lie. A girl’s safety is not a luxury item stolen from another group; it is a basic human right.
The Ultimate Extractors: When adults look at a young girl’s hard-won boundaries and say, “I need you to give that up so I can feel validated,” they are taking from someone who has absolutely nothing left to give.
“If a child is unsafe, our freedom is not complete.”
Any society or movement that treats the rights of girls as a disposable bargaining chip has lost its moral compass entirely. You cannot build a just world by taking away the safety nets of its most vulnerable children.
The fundamental biological, social, and developmental reality is that girls require sex-segregated spaces to be healthy, to be safe, and to thrive.
When human rights and civil rights organizations lose sight of this, they fail a core constituency. The entire purpose of creating sex-segregated protections—whether in sports, locker rooms, or crisis shelters—was not an act of exclusion; it was a hard-won act of preservation and safety.
For young girls, these protections are vital for three primary reasons:
1. Physical Safety and Physiological Reality
Pretending there are no biological differences between the sexes is not just scientifically inaccurate; in physical contact and competitive sports, it is a safety hazard.
Biological males, on average, go through a male puberty that grants permanent physiological advantages in bone density, muscle mass, lung capacity, and upper-body strength.
Forcing biological girls to compete in high-impact, high-contact sports against individuals who have undergone male puberty compromises their physical safety and increases the risk of severe injury. A human rights framework that ignores physical vulnerability is fundamentally broken.
2. Safeguarding Fair Competition and Upward Mobility
Title IX was enacted in 1972 because girls and women were being entirely shut out of athletic and educational opportunities.
Sports are a zero-sum game. There are a finite number of roster spots, podium finishes, and, crucially, college scholarships.
When biological girls are forced to compete against biological males for those limited spots, they are displaced. For many girls—particularly those from working-class or marginalized backgrounds—an athletic scholarship is their single ticket to higher education and economic mobility. Stripping that away under the guise of “inclusion” is a direct regression of women’s rights.
3. Psychological and Developmental Well-being
Adolescence is an incredibly vulnerable time. Girls undergo rapid physical and emotional changes and require privacy, dignity, and peer-group security to build confidence.
Safe, girls-only spaces (like locker rooms, showers, overnight trip accommodations, and sports teams) allow girls to participate fully in public life without anxiety, embarrassment, or fear.
When organizations compromise these boundaries, they often find that girls simply opt out of participating altogether. Instead of fostering inclusion, it drives girls back into the shadows and away from the very activities that build their health and leadership skills.
The True Measure of Advocacy Any movement or organization that demands girls sacrifice their safety, their privacy, and their hard-won opportunities to accommodate others has abandoned its duty of protection.
Justice. Opportunity. Safety. None of these things require girls to be silent, pushed to the side, or become invisible. None of these things require girls to act as if their needs are secondary. Girls haven’t been the oppressors of any group of people. Furthermore, especially in the Black community, girls have been making it possible for others to live their lives through countless unpaid hours of cooking, cleaning, babysitting, peacekeeping, nurturing, protecting, and mediation before the age of 18.
Civil rights cannot be a shell game where the rights of biological girls are traded away to satisfy modern political trends. True human rights advocacy must remain anchored in reality, protecting the spaces where young girls can grow, compete fairly, and feel safe in their own bodies.
You cannot claim to fight for “human rights” while actively dismantling the safety nets, sex-segregated protections, and legal structures—like Title IX—that were built through generations of sacrifice specifically to keep girls safe and give them a fighting chance at a future.
To ignore the girls is to abandon the future of the community entirely. It is a massive and inexcusable failure of leadership.
We can stop taking from girls present and their futures. We can get back on that path right now, today. We can create change and solutions that never ask another little girl to be silent, invisible, or unsafe. It is not necessary to rob from the coin purse of little girls’ rights.
Protecting Your Space Is Not Cruel. They Only Say That When Women and Girls Do It – Rosa’s Children
Can We Talk About Girls? – Rosa’s Children
Dear Girls: You Had Every Right to Speak – Rosa’s Children
🛑 Boundaries Are Not Accusations—They’re Standards That Protect Children – Rosa’s Children
No, Safe Spaces for Girls Are Not Jim Crow – Rosa’s Children
Human Rights Organizations Should NEVER Tell Women and Girls to “Move” – WE Survive Abuse