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I discover that Anne Simpson and Carol Brown are utilizing very outdated rhetoric to argue for discrimination towards transgender ladies in highschool sports activities. Lots of the arguments that they made, like the best to privateness, have additionally been made about queer athletes in locker rooms. Any safety for women in sports activities should embody queer and transgender youth.
I really feel it vital to say how insurance policies in different states just like the one proposed have disproportionately affected cisgender ladies who’ve been deemed to be too masculine or doing too nicely. 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 varsity.
Simpson and Brown selected to not focus on the precise strategies of verifying a pupil’s gender, that are to both show the scholar’s gender by start 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 pupil’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
