A House Democrat moved to adjourn a hearing before Payton McNabb, who as a teenager suffered a traumatic brain injury after getting spiked in the head by a male athlete in women’s volleyball, could testify.
McNabb told The Daily Signal she thinks the Democrat did this in order to prevent McNabb from speaking.
The House DOGE Subcommittee in the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing called “Unfair Play: Keeping Men Out of Women’s Spots.” The hearing included four witnesses: McNabb; competitive fencer Stephanie Turner, who withdrew from a fencing round when paired against a male athlete competing in women’s sports; USA Fencing Chair Damien Lehfeldt; and Fatima Goss Graves, CEO of the National Women’s Law Center.
“I want to make clear that this hearing is actually not about oversight or DOGE, but about spreading hate and using trans lives to distract from the real issues that Americans are facing, from attacks on our economy, to attacks on our democracy, to attacks on our communities,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., the subcommittee ranking member, said during her opening remarks.
She moved to adjourn the hearing, and when Subcommittee Chair Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., held a voice vote and determined that the “nays” have it, Stansbury called for a recorded vote, delaying the hearing further.
“I think that she tried to end that completely because she just didn’t want to hear it,” McNabb told The Daily Signal in a phone interview after the hearing.
“She didn’t want either of us to share our story, which was pretty obvious throughout the whole thing,” the former athlete said of Stansbury. “She tried to sweep this under the rug even while we were laying out the facts that it does exist and it does matter.”
McNabb noted that neither Stansbury nor any of the other Democrats in the hearing asked her a question.
“She doesn’t even care how we feel,” McNabb said. “She was fighting for the trans community.”
“The theatrics were a lot and I think she was trying to get some media attention from it,” the witness added.
McNabb noted that Stansbury came to her and to Turner, the other athlete witness, privately “and was trying to thank us for coming and testifying.” Stansbury also thanked them in her closing remarks.
“I don’t believe that at all,” she said. “Stephanie even told her, ‘If you actually cared you would have asked us a question.’”
Stansbury’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment in response to the suggestion that she tried to end the hearing in part to prevent McNabb from testifying.
Stephanie Turner
Turner, the competitive fencer, testified first.
“USA Fencing has over 200 self-declared members who identify as transgender,” she said. “Each time a man competes in the women’s category with USA Fencing’s support, it removes fair sport and takes opportunities from women.”
“It’s unbelievably demeaning to female fencers to put down the differences between men and women and any woman’s loss to a man as a skill issue or that a woman simply needs to work harder,” Turner added.
She condemned “a culture of intimidation which demands that we be silent when men enter our tournaments, a culture that includes public humiliation, bullying, social ostracism, dismissal, and even threats.”
Payton McNabb
When McNabb was able to testify, she said her love of sports has been “taken away from me since 2022, following a serious but avoidable injury.”
“My athletic career was hindered and cut short because I was forced to compete against a male athlete on an opposing high school women’s volleyball team on Sept. 1, 2022,” she added. “The male athlete went up to spike the ball, and it came right at my face, slamming into my head.”
“The force of the ball knocked me down unconscious,” McNabb recalled. “While my body lay in a fencing position on the court. The fencing position is how your body reacts to a serious brain injury. Everything was dark to me. The auditorium was absolutely quiet and my teammates were scared. That was my last day playing volleyball.”
“It is completely aggravating because the injury suffered was 100% avoidable, if only my rights as a female athlete had been more important than a man’s feelings,” she added.
Damien Lehfeldt
Greene confronted Lehfeldt, the chair of USA Fencing, with a photo he posted on social media ahead of the hearing. The photo Greene shared suggested Lehfeldt had held up an obscene hand gesture, but Stansbury interrupted Greene to show another photo, which suggested the previous photo had been cropped and Lehfeldt did not use the obscene gesture.
Lehfeldt initially refused to testify, but he appeared in response to a congressional subpoena.
Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, highlighted one of Lehfeldt’s social media posts comparing a parent who was concerned about males in women’s sports to the Ku Klux Klan. Lehfeldt acknowledged the post and apologized for it, calling it “inappropriate.”
Fatima Goss Graves
Graves, the National Women’s Law Center CEO, argued that “transgender women do not pose a threat to women’s sports. Transgender women belong in sports.”
“I’m here because I care about all women and girls in sport, and I know that bullying trans kids and creating panic about the existence of trans people will not make us safer,” she said.
Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., asked Graves, “What is the average difference in skeletal muscle between biological men and biological women?”
Graves did not directly answer, but she insisted that there is no overwhelming advantage for males competing in women’s sports.
“The answer, I think where you’re trying to go, is ‘Is there an inherent advantage for transgender women in sports in all contexts?’ and the answer is no,” she said.
McClain responded that men have 30%-40% more skeletal muscle than women and that biological men exhibit 20%-50% greater upper body strength.
Graves acknowledged that “what happened to” McNabb was “tragic.”
“I would argue, though, that the answer is to ensure that people can’t spike volleyballs into people’s heads,” she added. “That seems unsafe, no matter who’s spiking the ball.”
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