{"id":25818,"date":"2021-06-25T08:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-25T08:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=25818"},"modified":"2021-06-26T22:29:17","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T22:29:17","slug":"youth-sports-and-other-challenges-of-a-nonbinary-world-3-essential-reads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/youth-sports-and-other-challenges-of-a-nonbinary-world-3-essential-reads\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth sports and other challenges of a nonbinary world: 3 essential reads"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Nick Lehr<\/a>, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While recognition and acceptance of people who don\u2019t identify as strictly male or female is growing, many aspects of American society, from language<\/a> to sports<\/a> to fashion<\/a>, remain structured or separated by gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when people decide to change genders \u2013 or not identify with a gender at all \u2013 it can create a host of administrative, legal and ethical challenges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At The Conversation U.S., we asked scholars from different disciplines to explore what happens when trans people try to assert their rights in a binary society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The bathroom brouhaha<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A few years ago, public restrooms were the focal point of transgender rights, with support for \u201cbathroom bills<\/a>\u201d \u2013 legislation that requires people to use the public restroom of their sex assigned at birth \u2013 serving as a barometer of conservative credentials. Most of the legislation that was proposed ended up dying out, vetoed<\/a> or repealed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That might be because, from a public policy point of view, policing bathrooms is almost impossible, while it\u2019s difficult to argue that letting trans people use the bathroom of their choice infringes on anyone\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plus, the practice of separating bathrooms by sex in the first place was grounded in beliefs that would strike most people as outdated. As law professor Terry S. Kogan has written, it emerged out of the \u201cseparate spheres\u201d ideology of the 19th century<\/a>, which advanced the view of women as \u201cinherently weaker\u201d and needing \u201cprotective, home-like havens\u201d in public places, whether it was at restaurants, at the workplace or in restrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the issue of trans rights was bound to butt up against other realms of American society separated by gender. Arguably none is more complicated than sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Sports a trickier matter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Unlike bathrooms, the rationale for separating sports leagues by sex isn\u2019t based on obsolete cultural norms; instead, it\u2019s grounded in science<\/a>. Meanwhile, the existence of funding for separate male and female sports teams at the amateur level, enshrined in Title IX of the Civil Rights Act<\/a>, represents a triumph of the women\u2019s rights movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As ethics and public policy professor Chris W. Surprenant<\/a> explains, trans girls and women \u2013 those assigned male at birth but who transition \u2013 possess a competitive advantage against biological girls and women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis advantage isn\u2019t simply a difference in degree,\u201d Surprenant writes<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s not just that male athletes are bigger, faster and stronger. It\u2019s a difference in kind. Pound for pound, male bodies are more athletic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFew would care about how to best accommodate transgender athletes if they were not winning events,\u201d he adds. \u201cBut that\u2019s exactly what has happened.\u201d Most famously, two trans females, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, competed in the Connecticut women\u2019s high school track championships in 2017, coming in first and second place, respectively, in the 100-meter dash<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While such examples are rare \u2013 as are trans athletes in general<\/a> \u2013 they pose a dilemma: how to balance the humanity of individuals who strive to compete alongside those who share their gender, and fairness in competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Surprenant, there are no easy answers. He lists the problems with proposed solutions \u2013 from testosterone-based handicapping<\/a> to replacing gender divisions entirely with ability-level divisions<\/a> \u2013 before arriving at one that he thinks best serves all parties involved: eliminate \u201cmen\u2019s\u201d divisions and replace them with \u201copen\u201d divisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any athlete could be allowed to compete in an open division. This better accommodates women \u2013 like Vanderbilt placekicker Sarah Fuller<\/a> \u2013 who are already competing alongside men, while giving coaches and organizers the opportunity to evaluate trans athletes on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor trans women athletes, at issue is their athletic ability, not their womanhood. If a tournament organizer determines that a trans woman athlete is too good to compete against other women because of her biological advantage, requiring her to compete in an \u2018open\u2019 division does not undermine her humanity. Instead, this acknowledges \u2013 and takes seriously \u2013 that she identifies as a woman, but that respect for the principles of fair competition requires that she not be allowed to compete in the women\u2019s division.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

3. Legislators pull from an old playbook<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, threading the needle and trying to remain sensitive to all sides doesn\u2019t exactly jibe with the country\u2019s charged, polarized politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conservative legislators are pointing to the success of trans female athletes like Miller and Underwood to try to ban all trans athletes from competing in a division that doesn\u2019t correspond with their birth sex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It isn\u2019t just youth sports being targeted. Bills restricting trans youth access to specialized health care, limiting which gender can appear on state-issued IDs<\/a> and mandating parental notification when teachers discuss LGBTQ issues<\/a> are all being debated. As of April 2021, 33 states had introduced more than 100 bills<\/a> seeking to curb the rights of transgender people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

University of Oregon political scientist Alison Gash sees conservatives pulling from an old playboook. For decades, she argues, they\u2019ve passed anti-LGBTQ legislation or blocked anti-discrimination ordinances by appealing to the vulnerabilities of children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gash explains how<\/a>, in the 1970s, singer and anti-gay rights activist Anita Bryant<\/a> honed a template that would be mimicked, in various forms over the years, to oppose LGBTQ rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBryant\u2019s \u2018Save our Children\u2019 campaign demonized gays and lesbians as \u2018recruiting children\u2019\u2026 and successfully encouraged voters to oppose legislative attempts to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination,\u201d Gash writes. Bryant\u2019s campaign also \u201cprompted Florida legislators to bar same-sex couples from adopting children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, it\u2019s more of the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the bathroom bill debates, some politicians argued<\/a> that girls and women would become vulnerable to predatory men who dress up as women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of the most recent transgender legislation, the handful of trans kids who win events and the relatively small number of teenagers who regret their transition<\/a> are being held up as justification for sweeping legislation and large-scale bans, all under the guise of \u201cprotecting children<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, discussing real or potential challenges that arise involving transgender youth \u2013 whether it\u2019s a trans athlete who wins an event, pointing out that some young people may have been allowed to medically transition too soon<\/a> or questioning how much is really understood about the long-term effects of certain treatments<\/a> \u2013 can be seen as giving fodder to legislators who are looking to score political points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As more and more transgender teens become visible, there are still complicated and unresolved societal issues, ones barely present a generation ago. And these conflicts and debates show little sign of abating anytime soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation\u2019s archives.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CC BY<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Transgender youth.<\/strong> This article is part of a series<\/a> exploring the social and medical issues of transgender children and their families. Sign up for a four-email newsletter \u201ccourse\u201d<\/a> to learn about the latest research on trans youth.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nick Lehr<\/a>, Arts + Culture Editor, The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Lehr, The Conversation While recognition and acceptance of people who don\u2019t identify as strictly male or female is growing, many aspects of American society, from language to sports to fashion, remain structured or separated by gender. So when people decide to change genders \u2013 or not identify with a gender at all \u2013 it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":25819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[5457,10110,4926,365,4146,2071,10111,639,203,5506,9957,10109,9518,1173],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25818"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25827,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25818\/revisions\/25827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}