The Evergreen Echo
Midterms are upon us, and I don’t feel ready.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been raking through your voters’ pamphlet, trying to make sure you’re making the best decision you can. This year’s midterms feel different—there’s something rumbling under the surface. The mood around this election season has been dire and reasonably so. We are fighting against an administration that has been hell-bent on stripping vulnerable folks of their rights, beating down the working class, and making our day-to-day lives difficult and expensive.
I am lucky enough to live in a state that has been blue for a long time, and there are many things that I do not have to worry about that my rural Queer friends and siblings do. Even so, the ripples of inequality that come from our administration can be felt even here, and it has manifested in a slew of initiatives that I believe do not have our best interests at heart. Of these, number 638 threw me into a spiral. So, let’s talk about this initiative and what it would mean for our youth, both Trans and not.
Washington Initiative 638, the Sex Verification Requirements for Female Sports Initiative, was created by Let’s Go Washington, a conservative Political Action Committee (PAC) led by Brian Heywood. This initiative claims, per Let’s Go Washington, to “protect fairness in girls’ sports,” by having all school-aged athletes undergo an exam to verify their biological sex. They also claim that existing laws already require athletes to have a physical exam that “includes a declaration of biological sex,” but this is not accurate. The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) does not currently require a doctor to confirm a student’s biological sex as part of their physical exam, which is used only to ensure that the student athlete is able to take part in the sport safely. This initiative would add an undefined exam, procedure, or blood test that would determine a child’s natal sex.
Initiatives and bills like 638 have been cropping up all over the country in states like Arizona, Colorado, and Nebraska, as the current administration continues to push anti-Trans rhetoric. While I and many others believe that a large portion of anti-Trans rhetoric has been used by the far right to distract from other policies and debates, that doesn’t mean that initiatives like this can’t or don’t reach us. The threats made towards Trans youths especially are far-reaching, disappointing, and troubling. Trans youths face so much already, not only discrimination from their peers and the adults in their lives, but now they worry about being stripped of their agency, their access to healthcare being limited, and losing governmental protections. All on top of the inherent difficulty that comes with growing up Queer and Trans in a world where it is still hard to build community or find representation in media and beyond.
The Evergreen Echo
What I find baffling is how much these initiatives overinflate and misunderstand the purported “issue” of girls’ sports. According to research done by UCLA, there are approximately 300,100 youths in the United States that identify as Transgender. This feels like a big number, until you do the math. There are, on average, about 16 million high school students in the US in any given year, meaning Transgender students make up just a little less than 1.88% of that population. And of those Trans students, how many of them are trying to play in girls’ sports? A fraction of this already miniscule fraction? Why is the right obsessed with keeping a small handful of individuals out of sports? Why do so many of our politicians and government officials treat this like it is the end of days?
And why oh why do these attempted bans only get pushed on women’s sports? If we are truly concerned about fairness or the “social order,” why does this not extend to men’s sports? Even the National Collegiate Athlete Association (NCAA) bars individuals assigned male at birth from competing in women’s sports, but has no such ban on individuals competing on men’s teams. When Let’s Go Washington or other conservative groups purport that their Initiatives “protect fairness” in school sports, what they actually seem to be saying is that they believe girls and women to be weak, that what they perceive to be a man in their sport would somehow completely overtake the leaderboards, which has also been proven not to be the case. There are several Transfemme and Transwomen athletes who, while certainly being excellent at their sports, do not actually beat their cisgender peers. For example, Laurel Hubbard, a New Zealand weightlifter who competed in the 2020 Summer Olympics, was incredibly controversial at the time due to her being openly Transgender. But Hubbard did not even finish the event and subsequently did not place.
The claim that initiatives like this are designed to “protect” women in sports is also baffling. In order to prove that they are cisgender, young girls will be potentially made to get extra bloodwork done or have to undergo an anatomical exam. For girls in middle and high school, undergoing these exams could prove to be invasive or embarrassing, and potentially harmful depending on who performs the exams. I also would like to point out how in many political advertisements, like the one for I-638, they refer to the cisgender students that they wish to protect as “girls” but the Transgender students they wish to ban as “men,” when all parties they are actually speaking about are children and teens. None are adults. None are “men.” This verbiage is being used to convince the reader that the Transgender students wishing to play sports are inherently predatory, when they are also just young girls or femme-identifying children and teens who simply want to play a game with friends and peers.
Whether you are a Trans, Queer, or LGBTQIA+ adult or an ally, I highly encourage you to review these initiatives completely and with all the facts. Trans students are a small but important part of American youth. They, like all other kids, should be able to play sports, have extracurriculars, and enjoy their childhood.
Vote ‘no’ on I-638.
The Evergreen Echo
