Pirate's Cove

Too bad most do not restrict transgender “females” from being in female bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers

How Washington state’s sports ballot measure will impact all girls

When Bella, a high school senior in Washington, heard that a ballot initiative to restrict transgender girls’ participation in school sports would appear before voters in her state this November, she already had her misgivings. She wasn’t trans, but some of her teammates on her school’s ultimate frisbee team were — girls she considered family after years of competing side by side.

Bella, 17, who asked to be identified only by her first name, couldn’t imagine another season without her trans teammates.

“They deserve to be on my team as much as anybody else,” she said. “At the end of the day, we’re just a team trying to play together, and we’re just a group of girls supporting each other and hanging out on and off the field.”

Bella won’t be old enough to vote on November 3, but she still felt a responsibility to stand up for her friends, so she gave the initiative, IL26-638, a closer look. The stakes, she learned, were far higher than she thought.

“My knee-jerk reaction was like, ‘Ew,'” she said. “It was an immediate reaction of, like, disgust and offense.”

If that’s her reaction, maybe she shouldn’t be commenting, because that sounds as from a juvenile with little knowledge. But, hey, I wonder how the girl who didn’t get a spot on the team because of the gender confused male feels?

Washington state’s proposal, introduced last year by Let’s Go Washington, a political action committee founded by conservative hedge fund manager and multimillionaire Brian Heywood, is among several this fall asking voters to limit transgender athletes’ participation in school sports. Similar initiatives will appear on the ballot in Arizona and Colorado, and another, in Nebraska, is pending approval from the secretary of state. (Nebraska law already prohibits trans students from competing in line with their gender identity, which the ballot initiative aims to codify in the state constitution).

But unlike those measures, which would broadly require schools to designate athletic programs as definitively male, female or co-ed, Washington state’s initiative applies to only girls’ sports. It’s also the only initiative with a direct bearing on girls who are not transgender: Under the state’s proposal, every girl in kindergarten through 12th grade will have to have her sex assigned at birth verified by a doctor — through either genetic or hormone tests or an examination of her reproductive anatomy — to be eligible to play girls’ sports.

Can it pass in very liberal Washington with the testing requirement?

“It’s the most extreme measure of its kind,” said Libby Watson, campaign manager for No Hate in WA State, the primary coalition fighting the initiative. “People are often appalled when they hear that and when they see it in writing on the initiative.”

Watson said her organization is already preparing legal arguments in case the initiative becomes law.

The “democracy is in peril” folks sure seem unhappy and unaccepting when they lose, eh?

Opponents of the measure say its requirement for girls to verify their sex can be easily exploited, putting both transgender and cisgender girls at risk. Survivors of sexual assault could be retraumatized, Watson said, and students without health insurance or a regular primary care doctor may be at a disadvantage. Some girls, she said, may decide to forgo sports altogether.

The kids should be seeing a doctor for a yearly checkup, and said doctor can attest to the child’s actual gender.

Tori, the mother of a transgender 7-year-old in Washington, who spoke on condition that only her first name be used to protect her family’s privacy, said the initiative would cause “direct and immediate harm” to her family. Tori’s daughter runs girls’ cross country and track with her school and plays soccer on a local club team.

A 7 year old is doing that? Also, in a sane world Tori would be prosecuted for child abuse.

Stella Keating, a 21-year-old college student in Washington, wouldn’t be directly affected by the initiative if it passes in November, but, as a transgender woman, she can’t help but feel the measure is still leveled at her.

The feeling has taken her back in time to 2015, when she was in middle school and another initiative on Washington state’s ballot was trying to block her from using the girls’ bathroom at school. That measure ultimately failed, but Keating still internalized its underlying message — that she was different in a way that could not be accepted. Now, she suspects other young trans girls in Washington are harboring similar emotions, exacerbated by the initiative’s broad impact on their peers across the state.

Obviously, the whole article is against the ballot measure, but, what of the young girls who have to deal with the gender confused in their bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers? Taking their spots on women only teams? Why is there never really a thought for them?

Read: Several States Have Ballot Initiatives This Fall To Stop The Gender Confused From Playing On Female Teams »