The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2021 (HR 426) is a cruel attack on the transgender community and the legislation shouldn’tbe considered by Congress.
On Jan. 21 Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube introduced this bill which would withhold funding for athletic organizations that allow trans students to participate in sex-segregated programs.
According to a March 11 NBC article, similar bills have recently passed in Mississippi and South Dakota.
HR 426 specifically targets trans women athletes and states “sex shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”
This raises many concerns for the trans community. Trans students are already marginalized and passing this bill will only make them more vulnerable to harassment and ostracization.
The bill doesn’t discuss how athletic programs will identify trans athletes. This has lead many to fear that both cisgender and transgender students may be forced to undergo genital exams, according to a Feb. 9 Them article, a community platform that tells stories about the queer community.
Such exams would be extremely violating and traumatic, especially to young trans students.
Trans youth are already at an increased risk for abuse and passing HR 426 would only make that risk higher. Trans students also might be more likely to harm themselves as a result of that abuse.
More than half of young trans men and almost 30% of young trans women will attempt suicide, according to a Sept. 12, 2018 Human Rights Campaign article. Children are dying because they aren’t being protected and the bill will only make these statistics worse.
There is absolutely no reason to put children, or anyone, through such an upsetting situation in the name of “fairness.”
However, this bill isn’t about fairness. Rep. Steube, who introduced the bill, is known to be outwardly transphobic.
He said transgender people offend God during a debate on the Equality Act, according to a Feb. 25 Independent article.
“It’s not clothing or personal style that offends God, but rather the use of one’s appearance to act out or take on a sexual identity different from the one biologically assigned by God at birth,” he said.
This isn’t even the first time Steube has introduced discriminatory legislation like this.
He introduced a bill nearly identical to HR 426 last year called the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2020, according to Congress’s website. The bill never made it to the voting stage.
HR 426 supporters argue trans people have an unfair advantage against cisgender athletes because of the hormones they take, but this is completely false.
Patricio Manuel, the first trans man to become a professional boxer, said that these assumptions about transgender people are dehumanizing in a Sept. 26, 2019 Reuters article.
“A lot of the immediate pushback is usually from people who haven’t done adequate research,” Manuel said. “I don’t feel that trans athletes have any specific advantages
or disadvantages.”
The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2021 is intentionally transphobic and passing it will do more harm than good. This bill needs to be thrown out and there is no reason for it to be passed.
