USA TODAY International Edition
States weigh bans on trans athletes
29 legislatures debate bills targeting trans girls
“People always conveniently forget about the massive diversity within bodies of women in sport. It is not as simple as looking at bodies and saying what is fair and unfair.” Veronica Ivy, competitvie cycler and expert on transgender rights
For five years, Rebekah Bruesehoff has played field hockey on a girl’s team, the team that corresponds with her gender identity.
The other students and parents cheer her on as they do everyone else on the team. This year, she made it through tryouts to earn a spot on the varsity team at her new middle school in southern New Jersey. “My teammates love and support me for me; on the field, I’m just a player. I’m so much more than trans,” Bruesehoff, 14, said.
Amid a national debate over whether transgender women should be prohibited from competing with cisgender women, Jamie Bruesehoff, Rebekah’s mom, worries whether her daughter will be banned from her favorite activity – or bullied over who she is.
“I’m sitting there, heart pounding, looking at the sidelines wondering ‘ is someone going to make this all go badly?’” Bruesehoff, 38, said.
As 29 state legislatures debate bills that would ban transgender girls and women from girl’s and women’s sports, family members and experts warn of potential long- lasting negative impacts on LGBTQ kids. Trans athletes and their allies say groups promoting bans rely on harmful traditional definitions of gender. Transgender advocates point to the fact that all major medical associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association, recognize the validity of transgender identities and support transgender kids in their transitions.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this month about the Equality Act, which would expand the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include LGBTQ Americans and create additional protections for people of color and women, lawmakers arguing against the legislation focused mainly on transgender girls in sports.
Civil rights experts said competitive sports are the latest facet of life targeted by anti- transgender legislation.
“It’s a proxy for them having lost the bathroom war,” said Veronica Ivy, a competitive cyclist and expert on transgender rights whose research on sports demographics has contributed to International Olympic Committee policy.
“Bathroom bills” attempted to restrict access to restrooms on the basis of sex assigned at birth.
Proponents of the transgender athlete bans argue it is unfair to have any cisgender girl, meaning a girl who identifies with the gender she was assigned at birth, play sports against a transgender girl. Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas banned transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports, and other states such as North Carolina, Alabama and Montana are debating measures.
Groups pushing for bills targeting trans women and girls include Save Women’s Sports and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian organization behind a campaign for bathroom bills, which have been proposed in at least 46 states since 2013.
“Sports are, whether we like it or not, a really classic long- standing component of the ways that young people can get engaged in their health and in their peer networks,” said Stephen Russell, a professor whose work has focused on child development at the University of Texas, Austin.
LGBTQ people, racial minorities
and women can experience stress when they’re treated differently from other people, Russell said. “It seeps into the culture, gets into our heads and could cause a kid to tell themself, ‘ I’m not worthy of being treated the same as other kids,’ ” Russel said.
Transphobia and misogyny
For curler and powerlifter JayCee Cooper, sports are both a part of her daily workout routine and a social outlet.
“That is the main vehicle I use to find friendship and to find community,” Cooper, 33, said.
Years after transitioning, Cooper was competing as a powerlifter, when USA Powerlifting stripped her of the opportunity, based on her gender identity.
She received an email from the organization in December 2018 saying “male- to- female transgenders are not allowed to compete as females.”
USA Powerlifting did not have specific guidelines for transgender people’s participation, but since then, the organization has moved to ban all transgender athletes.
Cooper said she felt ostracized. “That hits so deeply,” Cooper said. “There’s nothing more damaging than being told you’re different and that, because of that, you don’t belong.”
When Ivy, a track cycling world champion, competes at meets, organizers have to hire extra security because of death threats she’s received.
Ivy said she often faces transphobic verbal attacks from spectators, fellow competitors and officials.
“That takes all of the fun out of sport for me to know that I can’t just focus on my performance,” Ivy said. “I have to think, ‘ What horrible thing is someone going to say or do?’ ”
Ivy is one of the most successful transgender women athletes, claiming two world championships in women’s track cycling.
Ivy said transgender women are scrutinized more harshly than their transgender men peers in the sports world. The bills aiming to ban transgender women from women’s sports often don’t address transgender men who want to participate in men’s sports.
The debate over transgender inclusion in sports has increasingly revolved around physical characteristics such as height and weight. Lawmakers claim transgender women have competitive advantages over cisgender women.
Transgender women said calls to judge their abilities based on their bodies are reminiscent of centuries- old sexist presumptions that men are more athletic than women.
Data from the International Olympic Committee shows greater physical variation among people of one gender and less variation in height and weight between men and women.
“People always conveniently forget about the massive diversity within bodies of women in sport,” Ivy said. “It is not as simple as looking at bodies and saying what is fair and unfair.”
This year, six high- profile women athletes, including tennis icon Martina Navratilova and two- time Olympic gold medalist Donna de Varona, organized to propose federal legislation to exempt girls’ and women’s competitive sports from President Joe Biden’s executive order prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation.
The Women’s Sports Policy Working Group says it aims to foster more inclusivity by advocating for guidelines for transgender women and girl athletes.
The group asked lawmakers to restrict the participation of transgender girls and women who experienced male puberty and require hormone and sex tests based on a male- female binary. It wants transgender women and girls who don’t meet those criteria to compete separately, an idea LGBTQ advocates deem impractical and exclusionary given the comparably small population of transgender athletes compared with cisgender athletes.
None of the group’s members is transgender.
“The gatekeeping they are engaging in is damaging for the trans community,” Cooper said. “Trans youth are watching, and they’re hearing the message that they don’t belong.”
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves cited Biden’s protections for transgender people when he passed his state’s ban on transgender athletes this month. “I never imagined dealing with this, but POTUS left us no choice. One of his first acts was to sign an EO ( executive order) encouraging transgenderism in children. So today, I proudly signed the Mississippi Fairness Act to ensure young girls are not forced to compete against biological males,” he wrote on Twitter on March 11.
Exclusion could harm kids
Transgender coach Layne Ingram said this year’s wave of anti- transgender sports bills will deter young kids the most – not highly competitive athletes – by robbing them of a sense of well- being.
Ingram said that when he was a kid, he played basketball against boys as a girl, the gender he had been assigned at birth. “When I first started, they would look at me and say, ‘ You don’t have to guard her because she’s a girl,’ ” Ingram said.
As soon as a 10- year- old Ingram started knocking down shot after shot, the boys started guarding closer.
Ingram transitioned five years ago and is the head women’s basketball coach at Lansing Community College in Michigan.
“Basketball saved me,” he said. “I can’t imagine where I would be if I didn’t have basketball.”
When Rebekah Bruesehoff joined Amanda Hofmann’s field hockey team in 2017, Hofmann had never coached a transgender athlete before. In fact, she had no clue Bruesehoff was transgender.
Hofmann said that Bruesehoff is a star athlete because she gives 110% and listens to coaching feedback attentively and that her success doesn’t stem from physical abilities.
“There’s nothing to be fearful of,” Hofmann said. “Rebekah is one of those kids who is striving to better herself, not striving to take something away from other people or take something she doesn’t earn.”