As children across the U.S. head back to classes and practices for fall sports, four more states are expecting their K-12 schools to keep transgender girls off their girls teams.
Kansas, North Dakota and Wyoming had new laws in place restricting transgender athletes before classes resumed, and a Missouri law takes effect at the end of this month, bringing the number of states with restrictions to 23.
Is it just winning that you call a problem? It seems unfair to an Olympic hopeful woman to be held out of the Olympics because a man who transitioned is better than you.
Here is the rub. It’s not the fact one’s sex is male that is the advantage. It’s male puberty. If a person never goes through a male puberty regardless of their chromasomal makeup you don’t get any of the advantages in sport that cis men have.
Trans people and the medical systems which have studied trans adults and kids and reached a level of confident diagnosis are fighting so which puberty one ultimately experiences is an option and not something you are forced to experience because people around you do nothing.
Most athletes are in their early twenties. If we managed to actually let medical and social service professionals facilitate trans kids in a handful of years you basically solve this problem.