South Dakota’s legislature is considering a new House bill that would force transgender students to play for sports teams according to the sex listed on their birth certificate, according to a Monday CNN report.
Under HB 1225, that would be the “sole determinant” to decide if trans high school athletes will play on male or female sports teams. The South Dakota High School Activities Association’s (SDHASAA) current policy calls for schools to place athletes based on their gender identity.
“All students should have the opportunity to participate in SDHSAA activities in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on a student’s records,” the policy reads.
The bill was voted out of committee last week, according to CNN.
The bill’s proponents describe it as a preventative measure against transgender girls’ so-called advantage over cisgender girls in sports.
ACLU policy director Libby Skarin told CNN that the bill is “clearly fueled by a fear and misunderstanding of transgender youth.”
“No one is harmed by allowing transgender people to compete consistent with who they are,” Skarin said.
Athlete Ally, an advocacy group for LGBT athletes, slammed HB 1225 as an “attack on trans youth and their human rights.”
This is devastating, and an attack on trans youth and their human rights. #WontBeErased https://t.co/lmGxYbU013
— Athlete Ally (@AthleteAlly) February 22, 2019
This creates such problems for no good reason.
They did this to a kid here who was transitioning to male from female. He was a wrestler; he had almost completed the transition but they made him wrestle with girls because his birth certificate said he was female. He is effectively a male. It wasn’t fair to anyone - not to him and certainly not to the girls he was wrestling. He beat every one of them in nothing flat.
This is the nonsense they create with this.
I dunno. I have a hard time with the mix and match possibilities in similar sports:
Which one of these athletes do you want playing against your daughter’s field hockey team?
Why do we separate boys’ and girls’ sports in the first place?
If it’s primarily for sex-aligned physical characteristics, like muscle mass, height, center of balance, whatever, then I think this bill might actually be reasonable. Gender identity does not change baseline physical characteristics, any more than sincerely-held religious beliefs change the fact that medical science works and prayer does not prevent strep from turning into rheumatic fever.
If it’s primarily because we don’t want kids sexy-groping each other during school activities, then it makes no sense at all. In fact, if that were the case, it seems like we’d actually want to assign kids based on their stated sexual orientation.
They’re just punishing the kids who are transitioning. It’s senseless is right and that’s the only reason they are doing it - to satisfy some bigoted parents.
The parents found out here with the wrestler that they needed to back off since they created a situation in which competition no longer existed - the kid could beat any girl they paired him with.
Back in the dark ages when I went to high school, the only coed sports were Cross Country and Track & Field. Only two girls ever went out for either sport back then. As the sports became more popular, girls teams were created and the number of female medal winners increased dramatically. Sometimes physics doesn’t surrender gracefully to the notion that gender is a social construct.