Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Feminism: chat

Original poster

US states ban trans athletes from competing in women's sport

30 replies

nickymanchester · 11/03/2021 15:59

This was in the Guardian earlier today, although it was actually reported in the US press last week:-

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/11/mississippi-governor-bill-banning-trans-athletes-womens-teams

Tate Reeves, the Republican governor of Mississippi, is set to sign a bill on Thursday that will ban transgender athletes from competing on girls or women’s sports teams.

Mississippi will become the first state this year to enact such a ban, after a federal court blocked a similar Idaho law last year. Mississippi’s Senate Bill 2536 is set to become law on 1 July, although a legal challenge is possible.

Reeves, who has three daughters who play sports, has said that the bill is needed to “protect young girls from being forced to compete with biological males for athletic opportunities”. The governor added that the “push for kids to adopt transgenderism is just wrong”.

[...]

More than 20 states are currently proposing restrictions on athletics or gender-confirming health care for transgender minors this year. Conservative lawmakers are responding to an executive order by Joe Biden that bans discrimination based on gender identity in school sports and elsewhere. The US president signed the order on 20 January, the day he took office.

South Dakota’s state senate passed a bill that restricts transgender female athletes from competing on high school and college girls’ and women’s teams. Schools and athletics bodies will be required to collect written statements that document each student’s “reproductive biology”.

So there is at least some acknowledgment of what is happening.

I also thought it was interesting the point that the Governor himself has three daughters who are involved with sport:-

Reeves has three daughters who play sports and he said March 4 on Twitter that Mississippi’s bill would “protect young girls from being forced to compete with biological males for athletic opportunities.”

“It’s crazy we have to address it, but the Biden E.O. forced the issue,” Reeves tweeted that day. “Adults? That’s on them. But the push for kids to adopt transgenderism is just wrong.”

Is this perhaps an example of that old phrase "the personal is political"?

OP posts:
nauticant · 11/03/2021 16:30

How many transmen are on drugs and how many not? It's not just transwomen who adopt an "opposite gender" appearance and leave it there.

andyoldlabour · 11/03/2021 16:27

I would think both transwomen and transmen would be barred from competing in women's sports, because transmen would benefit from the drugs they were taking, such as in the case of Mack Beggs, the transgirl wrestler who was forced by the authorities to compete in the girl's category, whilst transitioning. Beggs is now competing agaist the boys/young men.

nauticant · 11/03/2021 16:25

That changing room clause is quite canny nickymanchester. Get someone to engage with that and they could find themselves arguing explicitly that, of course, some boys have the right to be in spaces where girls are in a state of undress.

nauticant · 11/03/2021 16:21

a bill on Thursday that will ban transgender athletes from competing on girls or women’s sports teams

Is it really the case that all transmen athletes will be banned from competing on girls or women’s sports teams? Or it this yet another example that this is a serious matter because it affects men and whether it affects women and girls is neither here nor there?

Original poster
nickymanchester · 11/03/2021 16:14

I was just reading the law that will come into place in Mississippi and I noticed that it also effectively bans mixed sex toilets and changing rooms as well:-

[[http://billstatus.ls.state.ms.us/documents/2021/html/SB/2500-2599/SB2536IN.htm Senate Bill 2536
]]

Any student whose bodily privacy is violated, including encountering a person of the opposite sex in a facility traditionally designated for the exclusive use of members of one sex, by any action, policy or practice of a primary or secondary school or institution of higher education shall have a private cause of action for injunctive relief, damages and any other relief available under law against the school or institution.

OP posts: