Debunking Republican Lies About Trans Athletes
Here’s what Republicans aren’t telling their people
by Bob Cesca
WASHINGTON, DC – Last week, the House Republicans successfully voted to ban transgender girls from participating in sports with cisgender girls. The amendment to Title IX would require that federally funded schools exclude any students whose gender was designated as male at birth from girls sports.
Before we tackle the Republican position on all this, it’s important to underscore that the “The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act” will never become federal law. The Senate won’t pass it and the president won’t sign it. It was nothing more than a cosmetic pander to the bigoted Republican base and a means of piggybacking onto the holy war against trans people led by the Red Hat entertainment complex.
Okay, now for the aforementioned tackling. Here’s what Republicans aren’t telling their people.
1) Only around one percent of public high school students identify as trans girls, and even fewer participate in sports. So we’re talking about a fraction of one percent of students. For this, Republicans need to pass a federal ban? Like voter ID or the myth of “trans terrorists,” Republicans are really into solutions to problems that don’t exist.
2) A great many cis girls are tall and broad-shouldered. Take a look at famously tall women like Jean Smart, Allison Janney, Hannah Waddingham, Kristen Johnston, Gwendoline Christie, Aisha Tyler, Geena Davis, and many others. If they played high school sports, should they have been banned for being nearly a foot taller than average height girls? CNN reported:
A 2017 report in the journal Sports Medicine that reviewed several related studies found “no direct or consistent research” on trans people having an athletic advantage over their cisgender peers…
3) In boys sports, pre-pubescent boys with testosterone levels comparable to that of girls routinely play sports with post-pubescent boys with testosterone levels around 900-1,000 ng/dl or higher. Should post-pubescent boys, with fully developed muscle mass, larger stature, and greater endurance be banned from playing youth sports with pre-pubescent boys? Of course not. No one’s calling for that. Why?
4) This issue has a lot to do with toxic masculinity and the patriarchal notion that girls are weak, delicate, frail, and need strong men to protect them. Call it Male Savior Syndrome. Girls are incapable of rising to a challenge, they believe, hence legislation like these bans. It’s a form of back door subjugation and control.
5) The argument about body type and hormones goes back to the days of Jim Crow segregation when white men feared having to compete against Black men, who racists claimed were more genetically gifted than whites. It was nothing more than an ignorant bro-science excuse to buttress the segregationist regimes of the time.
6) Speaking of hormones, some cis girls have higher than normal testosterone levels due to polycystic ovary syndrome and other causes, and to-date there aren’t any bans on girls with above average endogenous testosterone levels. Likewise, trans girls are often on hormone blocking medications as part of their gender affirming care. These meds block testosterone, perhaps to levels that are actually lower than cis girls.
7) Youth sports shouldn’t be exclusively about winning and scholarships. Sports are also about health and fitness, teamwork, overcoming obstacles, and character building, among other things.
8) If a cis athlete of any age has a physical advantage over other players, these advantages have always been celebrated. Look at basketball player Yao Ming, baseball player Jon Rauch, or boxer Nikolai “The Russian Giant” Valuev. People love watching these giants compete despite having seemingly insurmountable physical advantages over their opponents. But if on the exceedingly rare – bordering on nonexistent – occasion that an athlete is trans, they’re barred from competing. Knowing how physical advantage isn’t a factor among cis athletes, why is it a factor for trans athletes? Obviously, it’s the bigotry. It’s the transphobia.
9) Don’t let Republicans claim trans girls in youth sports is some kind of epidemic. The Olympics have allowed trans athletes to compete since 2004. So far, none have. In Kansas, where Republican lawmakers banned trans girls from school sports, there are exactly three trans athletes. Imagine a state law that addresses three specific kids out of a total population of 2.9 million people. Now imagine how bullied and tormented those kids are – not just by other students, but by Republican state lawmakers who claim to be acting out of fairness. How is it fair to single out three kids statewide – three kids who’ve done exactly nothing wrong?
This jihad against trans people is legislative bullying against an already vulnerable community of American citizens who are being denied their right to equal protection. We can’t let them continue to get away with this myth that trans girls are these 9-foot-tall Spartan warriors who eat cis girls for brunch. It’s bigotry and it’s bullshit.
You have my permission to steal whatever you need from this article to spread the truth about trans athletes.
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Shared! I was having this same conversation with someone. We all played sports when young with big strong gifted athletes, both male & female, and never thought anything about it, other than being happy they were on our team! The Trans issue is nothing different in my opinion.
Good points all. But let’s not debunk and say we did. Debunking is another form of explaining, and explaining puts the explainer in a subordinate position, which is just where the liar wants them to be.
Spewing disinformation is first and foremost a dominance move. So the trick is to undercut the liars argument by asking them to explain its weakest points.
So instead of telling them how few trans girls are in HS sports in their state, demand that they tell YOU.