Opinion: Adding Layers of Exclusion to Transgender Students is Harmful — So Let Them Participate in Sports

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Photo: Michelle Myers, Unsplash

Transgender students should be allowed to participate in school sports, CityBeat columnist Jack Brennan writes.

Of course I abhor the right wing attacks on transgender people, particularly transgender kids. I’m on the transgender spectrum myself, having self-identified as a cross-dresser at age 3.

And even were I totally straight (whatever that might amount to), I’d like to think I’d see through the right’s B.S. about gender being immutable, or about what “God wants,” or about how parents need “protection” from the choice to access widely tested and approved affirmative care.

I see the right’s design as inherently evil, meant to demean and stigmatize people who are vulnerable because they’re “different,” because queer folks’ emergence is threatening to the morally pathetic class who existentially cling to the unearned privileges of being straight and mostly white and (largely) Christian. Sharp-minded right-wing leaders have made transgender issues tip-of-the-spear in their culture war, and I believe it’s almost completely rooted in fear-based prejudice.

But did you notice I said “almost?” Oh jeez, that means there’s an exception, and in my case it has been a nagging feeling that these heartless hordes could be right — for once — in saying transgender girls and women, due to anatomically male birth characteristics, pose an unfair competitive threat to cisgender females in sports. It has led me to think that of all the battlegrounds where trans people are striving for justice, this might be the toughest fight to win in the square of public opinion.

Believe me, I am not happy about this, but NBC News reports that in a Gallup survey conducted just last May, 69% of respondents said transgender athletes (effectively meaning transgender women athletes) should not be allowed to compete on teams that fail to correspond with their assigned sex at birth. Alarming as that number is, it’s perhaps even more appalling that the number is significantly up from 62 percent in 2021. The survey also said — can this get any worse? — that 55% consider changing one’s gender to be “morally wrong,” up from 51% in 2021.

The bad guys are winning on this, folks. It’s a hugely tougher justice issue than marriage equality, which Americans approved by a landslide 71% in the same Gallup Values and Beliefs survey that produced the numbers against trans athletes.

So why am I calling the majorities in these polls “the bad guys,” when I’ve just said that in my own mind, I can’t help wondering if some trans girls do have physical advantages?
It’s because my human nature believes some things to a moderate degree and other things to a truly visceral level. And much as I can’t discount a possible trans advantage — the science on this is most inconclusive, per my own Google search — my gut fairly screams at me that if a very small number of cisgender girls have a harder time winning trophies because a very small number of trans girls are in the mix, well gee, we all have to battle some hurdles. Life will never be fair in all its myriad of aspects, and what these girls (and their competitive parents) will face is nothing compared to the injustice confronting trans people during every waking moment.

According to the U.S. Trans Survey, as reported by the American Civil Liberties Union, 22% of trans women who were perceived as trans in school were harassed so badly that they had to leave school because of it. Another 10% were kicked out of school.

“The idea,” the ACLU concludes, “that trans women and girls have an advantage ignores the actual conditions of their lives.”

Another plea for transgender justice that clearly dwarfs the issue of sports results comes from Dr. Deanna Adkins, a pediatric endocrinologist from Duke University.
“When a school or athletic organization denies transgender students the ability to participate equally in athletics because they are transgender,” Dr. Adkins told the ACLU, “that condones, reinforces, and affirms the transgender students’ social status as outsiders or misfits who deserve the hostility they experience from peers.”

The guy who perhaps best expresses my own slightly mixed feelings is Dr. Eric Vilain, a pediatrician and geneticist from the University of California-Irvine who discussed these issues with NPR. After pointing out that there indeed can be two sides to some of these questions, Dr. Vilain was asked the following:

“A lot of people say they're worried about inclusion. A lot of other people say they're worried about protecting female athletes. You're an expert in this field. What are you worried about?”

His answer?

“I'm worried most that outright bans will prevent inclusion,” he said. “And it's especially worrying at the school level, because there is already so much inequity in sports participation that comes from all sorts of other issues, such as socioeconomic status and access to sports. So adding layers of exclusion is just not helpful.”

So count me convinced of the larger truth here. Trans girls must be allowed to play. And you know what makes me really sick about the right wing? What makes my gut feel ever more that they’re despicable, even if possibly correct on a lesser issue?

It’s how they like to snidely imply that trans people are trans because they simply want to be. The old canard of “lifestyle choice,” you know? How ludicrous. They’ll even imply that for many trans persons, the chance to win sports events is a factor in that alleged choice.

And that’s beyond ludicrous. It’s absolutely shameful.

Jack Brennan is a Dallas, Texas, native with roots in Cincinnati since 1983. He was a Cincinnati Post beat reporter for the 1988 Super Bowl Bengals and Cincinnati Enquirer beat man for the 1990 World Champion Reds. He joined the Bengals in 1994 as public relations director and worked 23 seasons before retiring in 2017.