Consequences of banning trans youths from sports teams

While Mississippi lawmakers have labeled a new piece of legislation as an act of “fairness,” transgender people, activists and allies are pushing back against bills like SB 2536, which bars transgender athletes from competing on teams that match their gender identity.

Specifically, the Mississippi law requires public schools and universities that receive federal funding to make students compete on teams based on the gender they were assigned at birth, rather than that athlete’s gender identity.

Idaho led the way with its own law last year (the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act”) and has been joined by at least two dozen other states that have introduced similar legislation since, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

“This is definitely the most extensive attack on trans youth and people I’ve ever seen,” Chase Strangio, the deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU, told The New York Times.

Rodrigo Heng-lehtinen is the deputy executive director for the National Center for Transgender

Equality (NCTE), an organization advocating for policies to improve the lives of transgender people. He took some time to talk about the recent Mississippi legislation and addressed some of the arguments being made in defense of similar bills in other states. (This email interview has been edited for length and clarity. For a longer version of this conversation, visit sandiegouniontribune.com/sdutlisa-deaderick-staff.html.)

Q: To start, can you briefly help some of us understand what gender identity is and the differences between what it means to identify as transgender, nonbinary and cisgender?

A: A lot of people have never met a transgender person, or realize that they have, so it’s OK to have questions about what it means to be transgender. Transgender is a term used to describe someone whose gender identity is different than the gender that they were thought to be when they were born. For example, I’m a transgender man. I was raised as a girl, but even at a young age, I knew inside that that didn’t fit. After lots of consideration, I transitioned from female to male and now live my life every day as a man. To put things simply, transgender boys are boys and transgender girls are girls.

Most people know from a very young age that they are either a boy or a girl, a man or a woman. But that is not true for everyone. Some transgender people don’t identify as either a man nor a woman and use the term nonbinary to describe their gender identity.

Cisgender is a term for when someone’s gender identity corresponds to the gender they were thought to be when they were born. Most people are cisgender.

It can be hard to learn new terms. What I think we can all agree on is that everyone should have the opportunity to work hard and provide for their family. That’s why we must end discrimination against anyone, including those of us who are transgender.

Q: Some of the arguments I’ve seen that focus specifically on transgender women and girls competing in sports alongside cisgender women and girls is that there are unfair advantages for transgender athletes, related to physiology and biology; that the inclusion of transgender women and girls erodes Title IX (the federal civil rights law prohibiting discrimination, on the basis of sex, in any educational program or activity receiving federal financial assistance); or that science has already dictated an athlete’s gender, and that’s the team each athlete belongs on. Is there anything people are missing in making these arguments around gender identity and the inclusion of transgender athletes in sports?

A: No one chooses to be transgender; it’s just a matter of who you are and who you know yourself to be. Kids across this country — just trying to fit in, to have fun, and to learn the lessons that go along with participating in sports — didn’t ask to have their lives and their safety politicized. Trans youth want to play sports for the same reasons as other kids. We shouldn’t allow for them to be discriminated against. As adults, we should be helping young people to learn and grow, not putting a target on their backs.

Q: In a New York Times story about the recent Mississippi bill, the president of the Human Rights Campaign said “When you tell a transgender child or teenager that their identity is in their heads — that it’s imaginative, it’s not real — it has significant collateral consequences.” Can you talk about what some of those collateral consequences are and what kind of difference inclusion makes in the lives of transgender athletes?

A: For many kids, sports are an important part of growing up. It’s a way to learn about teamwork, to develop self-respect and confidence, and to make lifelong friends. We shouldn’t deny transgender students those opportunities.

The consequences of discrimination can last a lifetime. NCTE conducts the U.S. Transgender Survey, which is the largest examination of anti-transgender discrimination in the country. The report found that 78 percent of transgender students in kindergarten through 12th grade reported harassment, 35 percent reported physical assault, and 12 percent reported sexual violence. About one in six reported having to leave school altogether.

Transgender students do best when their families, schools and communities accept them for who they are and treat them with dignity and respect. What they are seeing right now in too many places are politicians who want to debate their right to exist. The harm and the pain are real, and they are lasting.