On Wednesday, the Arizona State Senate passed an exclusionary, discriminatory anti-trans sports bill aiming to keep trans girls out of girls’ sports, as covered by the Los Angeles Blade. The bill, SB 1165, follows in line with the plethora of anti-trans bills intentionally misleading the public about the core issue. SB 115 is the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which, of course, refers to only cisgender girls, not trans girls, meaning it’s innately transphobic. The state Senate passed the bill 16-13 (plus one absent) along party lines.
The bill applies to public school and intramural sports and requires students K-12 and at the university level to participate on sports teams that align with their sex assigned at birth or even “in utero.” (Yes, transphobia is that outrageous.) It also applies to private schools if they play games against public schools. Teams can also be designated as “coed” or “mixed.”
“This is going to have our girls pull down their panties and show their genitalia to prove they are who they know they are,” Democratic State Sen. Victoria Steele argued, saying she can’t believe this measure is moving forward, according to the Tuscon Sentinel. “I believed some sense of decency, of love for children, would come through and we would not do something that I believe will harm children.”
While some anti-trans legislation does include genital examinations (yes, really), this particular one seems to rely on gender assigned at birth by a physician as recorded on a birth certificate. Regardless, this is still an attempt to misgender and ostracize trans girls, a population that is already vulnerable to bullying, harassment, and assault both in and outside of school.
When we get into the nitty-gritty of the bill, it gets clearer and clearer that folks pushing these anti-trans measures are rooted in bio-essentialism and archaic, outdated understanding of science, sex, and gender. For example, the bill sums up the “biological differences” between genders as determined “genetically during embryonic development.” It goes on to say that [cisgender] men have “higher natural levels of testosterone” which results in “men being able to generate higher speed and power” during activities. The measure also says the “sports performance gap” between men and women is “insurmountable.”
This bill, unlike some other attempts to keep trans youth out of sports, does permit people assigned female at birth to participate on men’s sports teams, meaning that non-binary students and trans boys would be allowed to play boys’ sports. This doesn’t mean the legislation isn’t inherently transphobic, but that the people behind it are so stuck in their outdated perspectives, they think someone assigned female at birth can’t possibly take a cisgender boys’ spot or beat one in a competition.
Keeping trans youth out of sports is discrimination, full stop. And while some Republicans try to argue that trans youth can play, provided they play on the team that aligns with their gender determined at birth, that doesn’t cut it. That’s asking students to go against their lived experience and identity to fit in. It’s potentially putting them at risk of violence and bullying by their peers by “outing” themselves. It’s dangerous, cruel, and completely unnecessary.
Sadly, this issue is gaining national momentum, thanks to false hysteria from conservatives. A number of states—including West Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Idaho, South Dakota, and more—have already passed either an executive order or variation of this law to keep trans youth out of sports. If conservatives had even one-quarter of this energy when it comes to getting marginalized folks to the polls, we might live in a very different country right now.
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