After South Dakota banned transgender students from competing in girls sports last year, some Sioux Falls Lincoln students staged a protest, but the ban has taken effect without much other noticeable ruckus. We are now one of 21 states banning transgender participation in female sports, and last week South Dakota Congressman Dusty Johnson joined his fellow House Republicans in approving a national ban.
Down in Kansas, whose legislature overrode a gubernatorial veto earlier this month to enact a transgender sports ban, activist Vince Munoz says folks who are serious about stopping these bans need to resort to civil disobedience:
Regarding the anti-trans sports ban, there are several ways to disobey this law. Coaches and school administrators should enroll trans athletes in the teams of their choosing, regardless of what the law says. If an opposing sports team says nothing upon seeing this, great. You’ve essentially neutered the law.
When opposing teams do try to enforce the rule, cisgender teammates of the trans students should boycott the game. Parents need to wholeheartedly support the athletes and coaches in doing so. While forfeiture may give the other team a de facto win, it denies them the satisfaction of playing and denies athletes the individual sports statistics needed for college recruitment. So the action raises the cost of discrimination for the discriminator and those around them. To hurt other people, they end up hurting themselves, too.
For solo sports, disobedience requires some creativity. Once again, schools should register trans athletes for competitions in the hopes that no one says anything. But if someone does try to block a trans student from competing, allies need to raise the cost of discrimination. For example, students can physically stop cross country or track an field competitions by laying across tracks and paths. Parents volunteering as timers at swim meets can withhold their needed volunteer labor when trans athletes are excluded. Walk offs can be applied to most other competitions [Vince Munoz, “Lobbying Didn’t Stop Kansas Anti-Trans Bill. Here’s What Will, Even After It Goes into Effect,” Kansas Reflector, 2023.04.23].
If sports are being conducted under unjust conditions, then the sports should not be happening. But you can’t just run out onto the track or the tennis court alone to stop a meet. You’ll get tackled and dragged away, and the unjust contest will continue. To really disrupt the sport, you have to organize and bring lots of people to be tackled and dragged away:
Before trying anything like the above examples, keep in mind that the most successful civil disobedience campaigns are strategic and done in groups. Activists of past movements formed organizations such as the Jane Collective, ACT UP New York, ADAPT (Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transportation), and so many more to plan and execute their actions. They pooled resources to minimize risk for those at the front lines of these fights, such as setting up legal defense funds for protestors. It’s easy to punish one disruptive person. It’s much harder to punish a large group [Munoz, 2023.04.23].
Will anyone work up the courage to wage such pro-transgender civil disobedience against the pressure of the jockocracy?
Competitive sports require a degree of fairness, otherwise records don’t mean much and competitions are boring.
To provide some level of fairness, we’ve traditionally separated into competitive groups by age/girl/boy/varsity/jv, etc and every combination.
Perhaps new groupings are needed.
Civil disobedience works both ways. I am sure there is a far greater number of parents of girls and other sympathetic parents who are willing to defend girls from blatantly unfair competition. The states enacting bans recognize the biological facts of life. This may sound harsh, and maybe it is, but some guy who believes he is a girl doesn’t change reality nor should others be compelled to accommodate their belief.
sx123, the whole concept of “fairness” is sports is a misnomer. That some athletes have a genetic gift of speed, height, coordination takes away any real consideration of “fairness.” How is it fair to pit male basketball player who the genetic lottery hits for 6’8″ against the 5’4″ male player who does not have that genetic gift? How about the long jump? Of course there is skill, but it is tough to say this is “fair” from the onset unless we agree to just dismiss genetics. We create artificial “fairness” with A versus AA versus B designations in school size; we create artificial “fairness” with gender segregation; we crate artificial “fairness” with age restriction divisions; but is any of this fair?
Ron Jon, you just dismiss the very existence of transgender? I do appreciate the irony of you saying that a single point of view does not change reality — then give your single point of view to dismiss reality.
Can we also please permanently DQ the SD HS football teams who bring female kickers (aka Soccer players) into their games? Female kickers (Soccer players) are ringers and provide an unfair advantage. These kind of stories make for cutesy class B town news items, but they are ruining the true spirit of the game of sd hs football, which is a traditional competition between boys. Kristi Noem should ban this gender non-conforming travesty.
O, read my last sentence in answer to your question. I can express an opinion or belief like anyone else and it may or may not correspond to reality. What my opinion certainly doesn’t do is alter reality. A boy or girl expressing the belief that they are the opposite gender doesn’t change reality no matter how much they wish it could. I support a transgender person believing whatever they want to but I draw the line when I need affirm their reality-defying belief or when others, girls in this case, are discriminated against.
O is correct, but so is sx123. Much of life isn’t fair. As a 5’8″, I was not going to compete in basketball against my 6’2″ friend, who was on the varsity team. (I know for sure that I couldn’t compete against Britanny Griner, but could Griner compete against Giannis? Probably not.) I suppose I could have worked on my game, become a great outside shooter, but at the time there was no 3-point arc, and coaches screamed at you if you took a shot much farther out than the free throw line. That 3-point arc opened the game up considerably for the short people, but only until the big guys learned how to shoot from outside. Now there are 6’7″ and taller guys shooting the 3. Maybe there should be a 4 point arc, or a rule that says 6’5″ people or taller can’t shoot from outside.
I don’t know what the answer is to the trans folks in competitive girls’ sports is. I see the point of both sides.
Wait!! These are the same “head in their own sand” people who bullied gay and lesbian Americans and banned their marriages. Do they just wake up every morning and decide who to hate on today?
~ Fully and faithfully living on the wrong side of history and never examining why they’re pissed off at something all the time.
I sure am glad we have resolved EVERY other issue to have the extravagance to spend ANY thought on trans women in sports. A tempest in a tea pot to ensure incompetent governance on larger issues is not addressed. P. Aitch has the GOP pegged: if you cannot govern, HATE! (Then maybe nobody will notice you are not governing.)
Jeez, now I have to type this response again. If you searched and searched you might find a trans in sports in South Dakota right? Sure got the right boiled about nothing. Just protecting girls sports right? Sure, sure. The hate the right is projecting from their tiny, tiny hearts is really something. Just another marker for the magas. There’s a ton of them and by next year it will be something else to fire up the base of idiots.
Donald Pay, remember those days well. I had the ball in the right corner, my favorite horse shot and let it fly against Miller. Swished the shot. I was pulled from the game given a lecture and told to just run the damn plays. Can’t play Indian ball.
Ron John, you should look up Caster Senenya. A born woman who had too much testosterone that was forced to take medication to reduce her levels. It’s really a complicated thing. Trans are also taking medication but have a body that is sometimes not fair depending on when they turned. On the other hand you have to look at Chis Evert’s argument that some of the lesser men tennis players might lose their balls to make more money in women’s tennis. Her statement goes along with the old joke about Renee Richards wanting to adopt a kid. She didn’t care what sex it was because she’d make it a girl anyway.
Donald Pay, since this is about trans, you can now add on a few inches for 100,000 bucks or so. In height that is. I’d have to do it too. Last year when I was following the USD women I put up the old net, bought a new basketball and shot horse again, had to settle for free throws. That hoop seems to have moved farther away. After awhile I figured the neighbors might think the old boy shooting hoops was getting daft and stopped.
Mark is right about this being largely a manufactured issue. It’s really not much of a problem anywhere, even in liberal Madison, WI, where we have lots of trans folks. The chances someone is trans and competitive at varsity level sports is going to be just a touch over 0. Of course the pearl-clutching righties get the vapors when some trans swimmer wins a medal, but, really, that and me beating Brittany Griner in 1 on 1 is about zero point zero.
Ron John, looked it up. Intersexed people might be as high as 1.7 percent. A new sports category? The binary you love has sooo many other categories doesn’t it? One thing for sure, every male on the right is an alpha. That’s a joke son.
Conservative men often feel a strong sense of responsibility to help women solve their problems whether they’ve been asked to or not asked to by women.
This is due to deviant social conditioning, where boys are taught from a young age to be the protectors and providers for their families and communities. Grown men often feel a false sense of accomplishment and fulfillment when they believe they’re assisting women with their issues, as it can replicate a sense of purpose and value.
For conservative men, solving women’s problems is an ultra assertive way to establish their own authority or demonstrate their perceived competence.
In short, conservative men’s subconscious need to solve women’s problems stems from a deviant combination of cultural expectations, needed personal fulfillment, and a desire to impersonate competency and authority.
How does transgender transfer an unfair advantage in barrel racing?
P. Aitch–An excellent and quite accurate description of modern day conservatism that could be summed up as
a power play,because some women revel it (think concubines) and other women (think voters) allow it to happen.
Under this, female rodeo events should only allow them to ride mares. The horse is a huge part of this athletic team. Female event, female horse
P. Aitch men don’t look at maps either. They are a lost generation again, without women. They don’t do housework but like the fact that women earn money plus cooking and cleaning. They believe that they deserve more money for the same job because their the breadwinner. It goes on and on. More women in college getting better grades, the stress goes to interpersonal strategies. How do you have any type of equality when Republican men want to totally control women? It’s easy, the next vote smile at your Republican husband or boyfriend and vote for yourself. Then find a good Democrat of any sex.
Mr. P.h, grudznick likes it when women solve my problems. Golly, if they feed me and point me where I need to go what’s the point in maps?
Some high schools in rural SD simply do not have enough young ladies to make a complete team/squad, so they have to recruit their female-identifying girlfriends to participate. In such instances, it is for the good of the whole school’s record and ability to compete. And it is also illegal here. Good grief. Don’t we have a crisis, like thirst, hunger, climate or something that actually exists to spazz out about?
Furthermore, would you want a person with blindness to be your surgeon? So why would you want a girl standing at the plate when you can have a batter who has an adam’s apple?
Anyways, don’t start no sht, there won’t be no sht.
Regardless, I am down to fight and do all sorts of disobedience for equal rights for my LGBTQ. Has there even been a single person speaking out about being robbed of an opportunity by a young LGBTQ person before this hateful law? These laws prove the people who wrote them are totally bereft of any lawmaking or problem solving ability. It is embarrassing for a whole state to be so heartless and impotent.
This is an interesting study.
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/transgender-estimate-press-release/
“38.5% (515,200) are transgender women, 35.9% (480,000) are transgender men, and 25.6% (341,800) reported they are gender non-conforming.”
So roughly .6% of the US population ages 13 and older identify as transgender.
In SD, the numbers are about 500 kids ages 13-17.
I just looked up South Dakota’s school enrollment numbers for grades 7-12. 63,337 in public schools, 6,620 in private for a grand total of 69,657 students.
https://doe.sd.gov/ofm/enrollment.aspx
So congratulations South Dakota. Not only have you marginalized about .7% of South Dakota students ages 13-18, if the nationwide ratio holds true, about 192 transgender girls statewide. All for fairness in sports. Heaven forbid young women learn that they’re going to have to work hard to earn and keep their place in this state’s workplaces.
What’s next? Banning transgender people in the workplace because they might have some advantage?
Mr. Johnson needs to be held accountable for coddling a would be dictator, building a war chest on the Big Lie, for his failures to support Medicaid, for voting against marriage, for not moving on immigration reform and for his culpability in driving talent from South Dakota.
reality, feelings, belief.
we have learned that bottled up feelings lead to disaster. women are more i
“in-touch” with them for a variety of reasons.
we didn’t understand this until more recently. it is a liberal idea.
but if a male feels he is a female, and if science backs those feelings up, then liberals tend to trust science. conservatives have been led to believe not to trust science. conservatives shout ‘liar’ from the back of the hall. they obviously don’t like the truth in the Kinks lyric “boys will be boys and girls will be girls, its a mixed up world, my Lola”. God loves rock’n roll.
some conservatives hire private investigators to run air conditioning trucks off the road (in the name of baby Jesus, perhaps) because they feel. they believe there are stolen ballots in the back. no stolen ballots, though. so that particular conservative filed a federal lawsuit, in texas, as a class action, to, in an attack for the 71st time, rule the ACA unconstitutional, this time (under the appointments clause).
and a Ft. Worth judge does so rule the ACA unconstitutional. mitch mcconnell has changed the nature of the court system so this will land in the lap of his 6-3 conservative, packed SCOTUS. Republicans alone have succeeded in mucking up the works of our functioning, unique democracy. Braidwood v. Becerra (March 30, 2023)
i await discovery that a conservative billionaire is behind these three issues, the transition, religion, and the Affordable Care Act.
Montana legislature just removed their only trans elected member for the remainder of their session. Remind me; doesn’t SD legislature try to model themselves after Montana when they’re not sure how to proceed on sensitive and pertinent issues?
Montana Republicans trumped South Dakota’s nutball legislature by banning a woman with gender dysphoria from serving the people who elected her.
Well, Dems refused to seat a legally elected drumpf as Lord of the Realm after 2020 election, so both sides do it.
Voters are best served by politicians who view gender dysphoria as a condition instead of a pathology.