What a shocker that everyone who warned that Republican states banning transgender women and girls from sports would be used against all girls and women in sports were correct all along.
After one competitor “outclassed” the rest of the field in a girls’ state-level competition last year, the parents of the competitors who placed second and third lodged a complaint with the Utah High School Activities Association calling into question the winner’s gender.
David Spatafore, the UHSAA’s legislative representative, addressing the Utah Legislature’s Education Interim Committee on Wednesday, said the association — without informing the student or family members about the inquiry — asked the student’s school to investigate.
The school examined the students’ enrollment records.
“The school went back to kindergarten and she’d always been a female,” he said.
To protect the student’s identity, Spatafore said he would not reveal the sport, the classification of play nor the school the student attended.
He told committee members about the events in response to their questions of whether the UHSAA, which sanctions and oversees high school activities, receives such complaints and how they are handled.
Spatafore said the association has received other complaints, some that said “that female athlete doesn’t look feminine enough.”
The association took “every one of those complaints seriously. We followed up on all of those complaints with the school and the school system,” he said during an update on HB11, a ban on transgender girls from participating in female school sports, which was passed during the final hours of 2022 General Session.
“We didn’t get to the parents or the student simply because if all of the questions about eligibility were answered by the school or the feeder system schools, there was no reason to make it a personal situation with a family or that athlete.”
The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Kera Birkeland, R-Morgan, bans transgender girls from competing in girls sports. In the event of a lawsuit, however, the bill defaults to a commission that would evaluate transgender students’ eligibility to play.
So now millions of girls live in states where if they don't meet "standards of femininity" and they are excellent athletes, they will be accused of being transgender and have their bodies investigated again and again to "prove they are women".
And millions of voters in these states are not only okay with this, they think it's 100% necessary in order to "protect girls". Note that the event happened last year, before the law was passed. We had parents so hateful that they went back to accuse a girl of breaking a law last year in order to use it against her.
We must beat the mantra of second-class citizenship early into women, that their bodies are uniquely subject to the state's whims, so they get used to the idea that states can mandate what those bodies are to be used for.
This is the GOP present and future.
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