Stop Excluding Trans Girls within the Name of ‘Protecting Women’s Sports’

The query stays: How, exactly, do bans on trans athletes protect girls from abuse? The reply is, they don’t. The notion that trans girls are a threat or pose danger to cis girls is solely unfaithful. If anyone’s safety is in danger straight away, it’s trans kids’, whose access to gender-affirming care and secure spaces is being taken away as right-wing lawmakers proceed to unleash a torrent of anti-trans laws and rhetoric.

Distressingly, in 2020 Idaho passed a law that truly invites further harm to women and girls through invasive genital or bodily inspections, in response to the Movement Advancement Project. That is beyond horrifying and something no parent would want their child subjected to. Who gets to make your mind up what a “real girl” looks like? What about tomboys, like I used to be as a baby? Will they be subjected to invasive exams just because they aren’t “feminine” enough?

Female athletes are already subjected to rigid gender norms in addition to pressure around their performance and appearance, which is detrimental to their mental and physical health. NCAA athletes across the country are sometimes tested for body composition to find out their level of body fat, which an authority told The Recent York Times is “steeped in weight stigma, stereotypes, and misinformation.” In keeping with one survey, a staggering number—70%—of student athletes are experiencing mental health issues.

Between the inequities in resources, the risks posed by people in positions of power, the pressure to look a certain way, and the high rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems, there are good enough threats to women’ sports with clear evidence of injury. Every legislator pushing forward laws to ban trans girls within the name of “saving women’s sports” should need to answer how, exactly, they’re addressing all of those very real documented threats to women in sports.

As a substitute, lawmakers are focusing their influence and resources on pitting cis and trans girls against one another. This harms all kids and stokes the flames of anti-trans hate by implying that, if trans girls are granted equality, cis girls might be harmed. That is inaccurate, unfaithful, and needs to be recognized for what it’s: a talking point for those in search of not to guard cis girls, but to marginalize and harm trans girls.

The recent story of a Vermont highschool deciding to forfeit a basketball tournament relatively than play against a team with a transgender girl shows how all young female athletes are hurt by anti-trans beliefs. Moderately than giving one trans girl a probability to play, school leaders punished everyone.

Fairness and equality means kids of all genders get more opportunities to play

The information is there to indicate that when school sports include transgender athletes, engagement is stronger for all girls. One 2021 report states that, in California, where trans youth have been allowed to play on teams in keeping with their gender identity since 2014, highschool girls’ sports participation was the very best it has ever been in 2020, increasing by almost 14% since 2014.