Re: “Youth sports in WA: Allowing trans athletes on girls teams violates Title IX” (Feb. 24, Opinion):
I discover that Anne Simpson and Carol Brown are utilizing very outdated rhetoric to argue for discrimination in opposition to transgender women in highschool sports activities. Lots of the arguments that they made, like the fitting to privateness, have additionally been made about queer athletes in locker rooms. Any safety for ladies in sports activities should embrace queer and transgender youth.
I really feel it essential to say how insurance policies in different states much like the one proposed have disproportionately affected cisgender women who’ve been deemed to be too masculine or doing too properly. There was a case in Utah the place a cisgender woman had her gender secretly investigated after different athletes’ dad and mom complained to the college.
Simpson and Brown selected to not focus on the precise strategies of verifying a scholar’s gender, that are to both show the coed’s gender by delivery certificates or by getting an affidavit from a licensed physician. I discover the shortage of particulars concerning the affidavit alarming contemplating legal guidelines which have been proposed in different states, which might contain invasive exams of a scholar’s genitalia, like Ohio, where those whose gender is being disputed would have to undergo examination to verify internal and external reproductive anatomy.
Noelle Fandel, Bellevue
