Originally published at: Supreme Court Lets Red States Force Trans Girls to Play on Boys’ Teams - TPM – Talking Points Memo
The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that neither Title IX nor the Equal Protection Clause forbids schools from keeping trans girls off of girls’ sports teams, an inflection point in a years-long campaign by the right, particularly the Trump administration. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion in two related cases, West Virginia v. BPJ…
While I have sympathy for the rights of trans individuals, the headline is misleading. They are not “forcing” anyone to do anything. They are prohibiting people transitioning to a female identity from playing on a girls team. It does us no good to frame the argument in a misleading manner.
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Tell your trans/non-binary family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. you love them. This era of grotesque transphobia will end, but it’s up to all of us to help defeat it.
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Road runners in ny soved this problem years ago in the NYC marathon and other events there are 3 categories men women and non-binary. If you are biologically male or female you compete with that group and if you identify with a different gender than your biological sex you compete in the nonbinary group. Otherwise women will be disadvantaged. It’s just a fact biological males have a greater percent of lean body mass and bigger boes and in most sports thats an advantage .
“3 categories men women and non-binary”
In schools that would leave the trans student on a basketball, football, baseball, hockey, or in any other team sport on a team of one or two.
I’m not against some kind of rules. The one boy (if there was one) in the whole US who decided to start taking hormones and join the girl’s team the next day would be a problem.
I suggest everyone read the excellent IOC Policy on the Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic Sport and Guiding Considerations for International Federations and Sports Governing Bodies - https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/International-Olympic-Committee/EB/policy/policy-on-the-protection-of-the-female-category-english.pdf Also, https://www.olympics.com/ioc/news/international-olympic-committee-announces-new-policy-on-the-protection-of-the-female-women-s-category-in-olympic-sport
Women’s sports do need protection. The evidence is overwhelming. Trans athletes should be included in sports, however, whether through open competition categories or by their birth sex. I believe that sports bodies (federations) should be deciding the issue, especially with regard to those (few) sports where the differences might not be of consequence, rather than right-wing, mostly ignorant and anti-woman legislators and Supreme Court justices. Sotomayor’s dissent has a lot of truths about the hypocrisy and bigotry of the Court majority, and their unwillingness to let lower courts examine the facts.
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Next step in the John Roberts Shuffle is to let states prohibit trans students from playing on teams that match their gender assigned at birth.
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As in, no one ‘forces’ you to participate in sports? That’s not true, you know. There are many required PE activities. Also, sports is one of the many ‘optional’ kid activities that is important to many folks. Often, more respected than others; think chess club…choir…theater…
So saying that you are not forced to be part of something that brings joy, achievement, personal growth, recognition, etc. ignores a huge part of our social-cultural fabric. You are fully being denied the opportunity to participate.
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As folks more eloquent than me have pointed out over, and over, and over, and over on this site. There are rules. There have been rules for decades! None of this about tweaking or perfecting rules. This is just flat-out hate, using vulnerable children as tools.
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I don’t mean to come across as heartless, I am personally familiar with transitioning youths and to at least some degrees appreciate the difficulties, but the fact remains that no one is “forcing” transitioning children to do anything. It is also an undeniable physiological fact that genetically male individuals competing on a woman’s team create an inherently unequal situation, and my concern is more heavily influenced by a desire to preserve athletic fairness for millions of genetically female athletes than it is for making it possible for a relative handful of athletically minded trans individuals to compete in their gender of choice. Kids get cut from teams all the time for all kinds of reasons, kids who need to work because their parents are being financially ruined by Republican economic policies never get the chance to be on a team. I do not think this is a hill the Democratic Party should die on.
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We are not just talking about the elite industrial sports complex. We are also talking about elementary school kids playing kickball on the playground.
Separate is NOT equal.
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The people who rarely protect women are sure protective of women athletes. Their argument, right off the bat and first and foremost, is that trans girls and women are going to be better athletes than the cis girls and women on the teams. That’s not necessarily true. People don’t change their gender in order to win trophies.
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That is actually a pretty big assumption that the trans girls and women are going to be bigger and stronger and more athletic than the cis girls and women. People do not transition in order to play sports. Playing sports is an incidental thing. If you look at the average class, there are plenty of girls and women who are better athletes than many of the boys and men. Not all boys and men are big, strong and athletic. This argument is a ridiculous reaction to a non issue. Let the teams figure it out amongst themselves if a problem comes up. Surely that would be possible and probably more constructive and fair.
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Show your work, please. Scientific facts, where transitioning/transitioned trans women put cis women at risk either physical or losing because of specific, measurable, physical characteristics, directly attributable to their transition.
Riley Gaines, the queen of all of this, screaming how unfair this was, tied for fifth place with a trans swimmer. If that swimmer had not been in the race she would have finished ALONE IN FIFTH PLACE.
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Wait until they find out that women’s roller derby allows transgender women to compete. It’s a matter of the sport setting the rules for participation.
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No we are not. There are no mandatory playground all girls kickball teams.
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We are also talking about college/pro-bound high schoolers and those who would like to pursue high-level amateur competition like national teams. While relatively few will ever compete there, the stats that they accumulate matter for advancement.
One of the most important tenets of youth and amateur sport is that of fairness. No matter the degree of androgen suppression, after a certain age – with years of variability – most boys (and by extension, trans girls) carry the benefits of more and stronger musculature and lower body fat (lean weight increases strength-to-weight ratio) during some portion of their transition. This may be an unpopular opinion, but if one can be excluded from competition simply for unknowingly taking an androgen-like substance in a supplement, it seems reasonable to make a clear rule that excludes (trans) women and girls who may have a natural advantage despite the fact that their transition suppresses that advantage.
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Show your work.
It’s an unpopular opinion because it’s wrong.
After my testosterone was suppressed to cis woman levels my strength evaporated within a year. I work out at the gym and my max weights now used to be my warm up sets. There are other (presumably cis) women that lift more than me at the gym.
I too have anecdotal evidence, but it comes from actually talking to trans people, that trans women don’t have any advantage that variance doesn’t offer – there are cis women taller than me, should they be banned from sports too? Are trans men (who get to injections testosterone) going to have an unfair advantage and be banned? Which sports team should intersex people (of which there are many varities) be forced to compete on?
Schools/organizations do/should have policies in place that prevent the mythical scenario of someone taking hormones and competing on the girls team the next day. Usually at least a 1 year period on hormones. If you (general you, not necessarily op) ever spent a few days as a trans person or tried to get medical care you would immediately understand that no one transitions for fun or to win trophies.
Edit: there’s a huge mental component to how hormones affect you. My life got infinitely better with the right brain chemsitry. Alan Turing took his own life when he was forced to transition against his will. No one is transitioning for fun.
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Just how many elementary school age children are transitioning? I appreciate the sentiment, but can we keep the arguments connected to reality?
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i strongly agree with you..having raised 6 kids, 3 boys , 2 girls, it my opinion to leave the kid alone..they usually figure this out for them selves, my boys were not interested in football, etc.one went out for it then decided it was a relatively stupid game and the the other2 never even considered ‘sports’..they preferred the beach and fishing, the girls just did their thing…IMO, this is just another silly issue pushed adults; have you ever observed parents at kids school games..foot ball. etc? they are disgusting…IMO, soccer is the great equalizer..
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