In the flurry of Republican legislation lately, Ohio House Republican lawmakers passed a bill at 11:15 p.m. Wednesday night that would ban transgender girls and women from participating in high school and college athletics.
It also comes with a "verification process" of checking the genitals of those "accused" of being trans.
The proposed rules would prohibit any trans athlete from competing with cisgender girls or women. It also has a verification requirement, if someone is "accused" or "suspected" of being trans.
If someone is suspected to be transgender, she must go through evaluations of her external and internal genitalia, testosterone levels and genetic makeup.
That's right, Republicans legislators want to check their package. They believe their “inspection” is necessary.
(Morgan Trau.”Ohio GOP passes bill aiming to root out 'suspected' transgender female athletes through genital inspection.” 5 News Cleveland. June 02, 2022.)
I didn't make this up. The reality is so bizarre. The GOP wants to peek into athletes' pants to verify just exactly what? Why? This bill is so slimy that the Republicans tried to slip it into an unrelated bill at the last moment. And, they “conveniently” decided to do this on the first day of LGBTQ Pride Month. No surprise here.
Maria Bruno, legislative policy director for Equality Ohio, said, "I know that there are a lot of folks in the LGBTQ community who are sitting there asking themselves, 'What did I do to them? because they keep coming after me' and I can't blame them for having that perspective.”
The so-called “Save Women's Sports Act” – What a misnomer! – or House Bill 61, wasn't supposed to be on the schedule for legislators originally. However, at the last minute, Republican representatives added the language to a completely different bill.
H.B. 151 would revise Ohio’s Teacher Residency Program, trying to reduce state control in schools. The bill, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Don Jones, from Freeport, got this surprise addition.
News 5's Statehouse reporter Morgan Trau tried to get the substitute bill numerous times during the session, but Democrats told her they didn't have it and had also been looking for it. Some Republicans said the same, some didn't respond. It was finally sent to her the next afternoon, while still not being posted online for the public to read as of 8 p.m. ET.
Is this what the conservatives want to do to force their view of justice? I guess so.
Here is what H.B. 61 bill sponsor Republican state Rep. Jena Powell, from Arcanum, said while proposing the amendment adding her bill into H.B. 151 …
"Across our country, female athletes are currently losing championships, scholarship opportunities, medals, education and training opportunities and more to discriminatory policies that allow biological males to compete in girls sports."
(Last year, Powell added the Save Women’s Sports Act into a bill protecting college athletes’ names, images and likenesses. In the Senate, the amendment died.)
I guess Powell's claim of widespread discrimination begs the question “Is Ohio in the United States” because there is only one transgender girl in the state currently participating in high school athletics, according to Equality Ohio and the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OSHAA).
"Being able to play on the girls team is absolutely amazing, it's a total dream," Ember, a softball player and high school junior, said. "I feel at home and I can be myself and push myself every day to do my best, and I don't have to put on the mask or pretend to be someone else to enjoy the sport that I love."
Yet, many House Republicans – certainly adherents to defining gender as immutable, biological, and binary categories – say allowing people like Ember to join girls teams hurts her competitors, especially with women working hard to earn Title IX, the sex discrimination act, for sports.
"I was told in the last seven years the OSHAA transgender policy has been in place, we have never had more than one transgender female participating on a girls team at the high school level in any given year,'" state Rep. Dr. Beth Liston, a Democrat from Dublin, said.
Liston noted the bill would allow anyone – a disgruntled parent, player or someone looking for competitive advantage – to question a player as transgender. That player would be required to have a doctor evaluate her external and internal genitalia, testosterone levels and genetic makeup. The findings would then need to be reported back to the school so they could clear the athlete to play on the team.
That process could take days, even weeks. Liston was visibly disgusted with the proposed amendment as she urged lawmakers to stay out of this issue.
"I struggle to understand why we keep discussing bills focusing on children's genitals," Liston said.
(Jo Ingles. “Some say the Ohio bill that would ban transgender athletes from girls' sport teams goes too far.” The Statehouse News Bureau.” WKSU. June 03, 2022.)
"This is not a real problem," state Rep. Rich Brown, a Democrat from Canal Winchester, said. "This is a made-up, ' let's feed red meat to the base' issue."
Let's Be Fair
Do Republicans want every athlete competing in Ohio to undergo genital verification? I seriously doubt that. However, given their concern over transgenders, that would only be fair, wouldn't it? How absurd to single out a group and even suggest such a policy. I just can't see this “Save Women's Sports Act” as anything but trans bashing.
Ohio lack laws that protect LGBTQ people ...
Ohio does not have a statewide comprehensive non-discrimination law which includes employment protections for LGBTQ individuals.
There is currently no statewide law in Ohio that protects LGBTQ individuals from housing discrimination.
There is currently no statewide law in Ohio that protects LGBTQ individuals from discrimination in public accommodations.
Ohio has no explicit policy ensuring equal coverage for transgender and GNC people who receive healthcare through private providers.
(“Transgender Rights & the Law.” https://www.acluohio.org/en/transgender-rights-law#:~:text=No.%20Ohio%20has%20no%20explicit%20policy%20ensuring%20equal,from%20discrimination%20based%20on%20sex%20or%20gender%20identity. ACLU Ohio.)
This Legislation Is Misguided And Intrusive
This language also affects coed sports. Rep. Jennifer Gross noted the bill also keeps girls from playing on boys teams too.
"It simply requires that each school that participates in athletic competitions to designate separate single-sex athletic teams based on the sex of the participants," Gross explained.
The Ohio High School Athletic Association, already has an existing policy for transgender athletes that allowed them to play in a girls sport or team with requirements to ensure fairness. A transgender girl has to complete one year of hormone treatment for gender transition, or demonstrate to the OHSAA executive director that they don’t have “physical (bone structure, muscle mass, testosterone, hormonal, etc.) or physiological advantages over genetic females of the same age group.”
Bottom Line
Republicans clearly sought a back-door path for the controversial measure … again. They wish to discriminate against a small group of children who face higher rates of bullying, depression and suicide.
In their haste to slap restrictions on trans athletes, GOP legislators propose a tool that could be used to humiliate any young woman playing sports in Ohio.
The bill provides plenty of protection for people bringing these charges. The bill does not include any language limiting who may dispute the athlete’s gender, under what conditions, nor when such disputing can occur.
Protections for schools that follow the ban against transgender athletes come in the bill as well, saying no state government branch, accrediting or athletic organization can investigate, take complaints or take action against a school for following the rule.
Joe Burgett of Science Sensei writes …
A lot of people make a big deal out of competitive advantages. However, very few people make a big deal out of this for cisgender men and women. For example, if someone like Shaquille O’Neal walks onto the basketball court, I’d expect he could likely dominate inside the paint.
They want the competitions to be fair, and a trans-person could ruin that in their eyes. Most do not seem to care about trans-males in sports, in spite of being the most common trans athletes. However, many do care about trans-females. The reasoning makes some sense in theory. They feel that since this trans-female athlete is biologically a male, they’ll naturally have more advantages over cisgender females. However, this is often incredibly misguided.
(Joe Burgett. “The Advantages for Trans Athletes Are Not As Prominent As You Think.” Science Sensei. Marcy 31, 2022.)
The International Federation of Sports Medicine (IFSM), which represents 125,000 physicians in 117 countries, has said that none of the latest research supports a blanket ban on transgender athletes competing in sports. Each sport should decide for itself how to fairly regulate transgender women competing in women’s sport, rather than follow the blanket bans proposed in dozens of U.S. states, sports scientists said.
(Rachel Savage. “No science to back blanket ban on trans women in sport: study.” Reuters. March 24, 2021.)
Currently, there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery) and, therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.
(B. A. Jones, J. Arcelus, W. P. Bouman & E. Haycraft. “Sport and Transgender People: A Systematic Review of the Literature Relating to Sport Participation and Competitive Sport Policies.” Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 47(4), 701–716. 2017.)
But, in the meantime, those sneaky and overly intrusive Republicans in Ohio seek to undress anyone they think may be transgender. Why? We all know why, don't we? It's all a part of the GOP's culture war.
That war can be traced back to the famed “bathroom bills” from some years ago that spread across dozens of states. Those bills were introduced in tandem with former President Trump’s targeted federal government-led attacks that included the overturning of anti-discrimination statutes protecting trans people and an outright transgender ban in the U.S. military.
In just the first three months of 2021, GOP-led state legislatures introduced more bills aimed at transgender people, especially youth, than they did over the entire previous year. There were more than 80 bills introduced that year alone that, according to Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, “are not addressing any real problem, and they’re not being requested by constituents. Rather, this effort is being driven by national far-right organizations attempting to score political points by sowing fear and hate.”
Bills banning access to health care and sports only fuel greater violence against young trans girls and trans women. Every year, dozens of trans women are killed, and more transgender people were killed in the U.S. in the first seven months of 2020 than all of the previous year. It’s no surprise that the spike in violence has coincided with legislative attempts to dehumanize the community.
(Sonali Kolhatkar. “Why Republicans are Betting the Farm on Attacking Transgender People.” Counter Punch. April 12, 2021.)
The Republican movement is trans-phobic and rooted in doctrine. Of course, the GOP is beholden to evangelical Christians, a particularly powerful constituency within the Republican Party that can threaten to “primary” a candidate who does not stay close to their position.
In addition, GOP lawmakers also refuse to condemn extremist groups such as White nationalists, anti-immigrant groups, and others who help vote them in office. With their extreme conservationism, they defend them, thereby condoning hatred to maintain their base as they defy science in favor of emotional appeal and even conspiracy theories.
The Southern Poverty Law Center reports there are currently 13 well-known, anti-gay hate groups like Focus on the Family that moderate their views. Most of them are religiously motivated and continue to pump out demonizing propaganda aimed at homosexuals and other sexual minorities.
Save women's sports, my ass.
Clueless Is The Transgender
By Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
Is the person in
dispute
He, she, neither or both?
Genetics, Endocrinologists,
Psychiatrist, Gynecologists,
Radiologists, and Surgeons
Take
a look, examine and fail
To concede it male or female.
A
female is with female organs
Fully functional, with female
Hormones and 46 xx chromosomes.
Any deficit or any mix
Will
upset the gender specific
And one will go clueless.
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