Conservative politicians discovered decades ago that fear and misinformation are political tools to be weaponized against marginalized communities. The playbook is as old as it is predictable.
As we enter into another session of the Georgia General Assembly, the Senate has already introduced anti-LGBTQ legislation targeting transgender Georgians through Senate Bill 1. If passed, SB1 would effectively ban transgender students from participating in women’s and girls’ sports in middle school, high school and colleges across the state.
Proponents of the ban falsely claim the legislation is about protecting women’s sports, despite zero incidents involving transgender youth or collegiate athletes in Georgia and despite transgender people making up less than 1% of Georgia’s population.
In Georgia and statehouses across the country, lawmakers have consistently been unable to cite examples of transgender participation in sports causing a negative impact to cisgender (nontransgender) girls and women in their states. The number of trans athletes is minuscule compared with the exponential number of bills targeting them nationwide.
There is no evidence that restricting transgender students from school sports has any benefit for cisgender students. In fact, research shows the opposite: some states allowing transgender students in sports actually have higher rates of participation among girls than those with bans.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
When we challenge the ability of transgender students to fully participate in school activities and extracurriculars alongside their peers, we often forget we are talking about actual people’s lives.
Transgender youth are fellow Georgians who belong to families. They are our neighbors — our children, and children are not problems. They are people. They belong to everyday American households and want similar things as other kids: to grow up happily, to play and belong on teams with their friends and to get a good education that promises a bright future.
Transgender youth are kids who, just like yours, want to play sports with their friends for all the reasons kids desire to play sports. And being characterized as nefarious simply because one is different is dangerous.
The playing field should be accessible to all girls and women.
There are so many other critical issues lawmakers could tackle to help Georgians: affordable housing, food accessibility, education and eradicating gun violence in schools. Instead, Georgia lawmakers are wasting precious resources and time, emboldened by the dangerous antitrans rhetoric of their conservative congressional colleagues and by a recent executive order issued by the president.
These words and efforts deny the proven reality of the existence of gender expansive people and create a problem that will inflict unnecessary emotional and psychological harm on all children, transgender or not.
When the so-called Georgia Senate Committee on the Protection of Women’s Sports held hearings in the summer and fall of 2024, discussions revolved around NCAA Division I championship collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas, who is not a Georgia native or part of our school system but happened to compete in the state one time. The committee flew in past collegiate swimmers from other states to try to force a policy change in a state they have no connection to and don’t care about.
If transgender girls and young transgender women truly enjoyed an unfair advantage, they would constantly win against cisgender women competitors, but that isn’t the reality. The truth is, we are all born with different traits that help us succeed in various aspects of our lives — athletics or otherwise. All players follow protocols in order to participate; and transgender students are no exception.
SB1 is a solution in search of a problem.
If we begin to police kids’ bodies, will coaches be responsible for enforcing genital checks? Will school police officers force young people to disrobe in front of them so they can examine their genitalia? Will young girls be at risk if they are deemed too strong, too fast or too tall?
Any person whose proportions deviate from societal norms or expectations, especially in relation to Eurocentric traditional beauty standards, will start to be critiqued, exposing all young people to possible privacy invasions and violations in the form of genital checks. To truly support girls and women in sports, we should focus on eliminating actual barriers to their success: inequitable facilities, unequal pay for female players and coaches and abuse and harassment.
As a child sexual assault survivor, I am all for taking steps to protect all women.
For example, I would love to see more thorough domestic violence bills introduced. That would help everyone in Georgia achieve safer communities because the common thread among perpetrators is that they are most frequently cisgender (not transgender) men, and, too often, they are related to the victim.
Like cisgender women, transgender women are statistically more likely to be victims of sexual violence than men are, and now they are being victimized and bullied in the halls of our Capitol. The painful reality of harmful legislation like SB1 is that, regardless of whether it passes, the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric espoused by proponents of the bill has grave consequences on the mental health of transgender youth.
According to the Trevor Project, suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth increased by as much as 72% from 2018 to 2022, at least in part because of the antitransgender proposals and the rhetoric surrounding them.
The dehumanization and unfair regulations of a minority population are nothing new.
We saw it in the fight for marriage equality. Before that, we saw it in the fights for interracial relationships and desegregation. Transgender people are the latest political scapegoats used by right-wing extremists to unify their base by vilifying a small number of people who are simply trying to exist authentically.
But just like we’ve seen with marriage equality, interracial relationships and the civil rights movement, for beneficiaries of privilege, equality can often feel like oppression. There will always be detractors who oppose progress, but the future demands us to fight until we all win.
We invite you to stand on the side of love and progress with us.
Noël Heatherland, an Atlanta resident born and raised in South Georgia, is a University of Georgia graduate. They are currently the statewide organizing manager at Georgia Equality, the state’s oldest and largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.
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