Patrick revives war against transgender kids

Transgender issues were everywhere this past week.

On Thursday, the U.S. House passed the Equality Act, basically an LGBTQ-focused addendum to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The House vote prompted Marjorie Taylor Greene, the conspiracy-prone Georgia Republican, to post an anti-transgender sign across the hall from the office of Illinois Rep. Marie Newman, whose daughter is transgender.

The same day that the House passed the Equality Act, the Senate held a confirmation hearing for Dr. Rachel Levine, President Joe Biden’s pick for assistant health secretary, and the first openly transgender individual ever nominated for a federal office.

During Levine’s hearing, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul falsely accused the pediatrician of supporting “surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia.”

In Arkansas, two separate bills — including one from the Republican Women’s Caucus — were introduced with the shared goal of preventing transgender women and girls from competing in female sports.

Meanwhile, Hasbro announced that it planned to drop the “Mr.” title from the name of its Mr. Potato Head toy, in favor of the gender-neutral Potato Head. The move prompted swift outrage from GOP culture warriors, with Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz devoting part of his Friday CPAC speech to a rumination on Mr. Potato Head’s genitalia.

“Mr. Potato Head was America’s first transgender doll,” Gaetz said. “And even he got canceled!”

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has never seen a transgender political battle he could resist, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise that the list of 31 legislative priorities he released on Tuesday included an item euphemistically called “Fair Sports for Women & Girls.”

Patrick wants to ban transgender Texas athletes from competing under the gender by which they identify, just as four years ago, he was determined to prevent transgender Texans from using public restrooms that matched their gender identity.

The transgender sports question is one that’s been building momentum over the past year. In 2020, 18 states considered bills restricting transgender sports participation, with Idaho passing its bill into law.

A 2020 letter from the civil rights office of then-President Donald Trump’s Education Department argued that a Connecticut policy allowing transgender girls to participate in high school female sports violated the rights of cisgender females by forcing them to compete with athletes who had an unfair physical advantage.

The letter threatened to deny federal funding to Connecticut over the issue.

This mindset is best understood by considering the words of John Fuller, a Montana Republican state representative, who recently sponsored the “Save Women’s Sports Act” in his state.

“Allowing males to compete as women in female sports will result in women once again being shouldered aside to stand below the awards podium and forced to cheer the accomplishments of men,” Fuller said.

That’s a pretty slick argument, in that it frames its bigotry as an expression of feminist solidarity. Fuller wants you to believe that he hates the fact that women athletes have long been overshadowed in this chauvinistic society by men. So he wants to fight the patriarchy, by keeping transgender women out of women’s sports.

The most telling piece of Fuller’s statement, however, is his use of the word “male” to describe a transgender female.

It’s not simply that opponents of transgender rights feel hostility toward transgender individuals. They don’t even recognize that being transgender is a legitimate thing.

Too often, issues around transgender rights are argued with one side stubbornly clinging to a bizarre notion that the whole concept is fake; that a transgender woman is just a man who puts on women’s clothes so he can peek under the stalls of women’s restrooms or scam their way to women’s track and field trophies.

It would make it easier to discuss this issue if these transgender-rights opponents recognized some basic facts: that it’s absolute physical torture for someone to grow up knowing that they’re trapped in a body that does not match who they are inside; that it’s absurd to believe boys are going around pretending to be transgender girls so they can be female track stars.

For Patrick and other Republicans, the sense of urgency on this issue has been heightened by Biden’s recent inauguration. On Jan. 20, his first day as president, Biden signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.

“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room or school sports,” Biden’s order stated.

Patrick doesn’t agree with that, because he thinks transgender kids are scam artists. In his mind, fairness in sports doesn’t apply to them.