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Stefanik’s backing of trans athlete bill does little to support women in sports

What stake does Rep. Elise Stefanik have in the debate over transgender athletes in sports?

This is the question we pondered upon learning Thursday that Stefanik had voted to pass bill HR-734 “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” a piece of anti-trans legislation that joins 467 other anti-LGBTQ bills proposed at the state level across the country this year. (None of those in the state Stefanik calls home, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has been tracking the bills.)

In the process of announcing her vote, Stefanik said that by passing the bill, House Republicans “took a stand for fairness and to protect the future of women’s sports from being diminished by the radical gender fluidity agenda.”

She pointed to a single transgender athlete — Lia Thomas, the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA Division I Championship title — and said “female competitors were robbed of the chance to earn a championship” because of Thomas.

Here, Stefanik — a straight, cisgender woman with significant power and influence as an elected official and as House Republican Conference chair — punches down at a private citizen in her early 20s, who has become a political scapegoat by virtue of having the mettle to win a sporting event while being openly trans. One has to wonder: If Emma Weyant, an Olympic silver medalist competing against Thomas in the event, had bridged Thomas’ 1.75 second lead and won the championship, would Stefanik even know who Thomas is?

For as long as any of us can remember, female athletes have been chronically underpaid. Their achievements have been underappreciated and underpublicized for decades compared to their male counterparts. Part of that is the fault of media outlets, which have the power to elevate specific athletes and specific sports by virtue of the size of their audiences.

“The dialogue around trans women’s participation in sports implies that they are invading women’s sports for a competitive advantage. Competing for what? Crumbs,” wrote Lindsay Crouse, an opinion editor at the New York Times, in a 2021 piece titled “So You Want to ‘Save Women’s Sports?'”

If Stefanik wants to “protect women and girls in sports,” as the bill’s name states, Stefanik should be a leader in pushing for greater pay equity for all women in sports. She should be sitting in the stands herself to support female athletes, or encourage those who support her to in turn watch and pay attention to women’s sports in the same way that many fervently support men in sports.

Does she believe that cisgender girls that compete alongside boys on school sports teams — which is a reality here in her district — should be forced to move back to girls’ teams, or be blocked from playing sports altogether if there aren’t enough girls to compete in a district?

And does she fear that transgender men may have an unfair advantage when competing with other men, thereby “robbing” other men of a trophy? If not, why?

The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, specifically, “ensures biological females only compete against other biological females in women’s sports sponsored by entities receiving federal education funding,” according to Stefanik’s office. “The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act would require schools to protect individuals from sex discrimination based on the person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth, in compliance with the original intent of Title IX for athletics.”

Beyond the insidious underlying implication in this bill that cisgender women and girls need to be “protected” from trans women, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act is not based on sound scientific evidence about transgender athletes’ supposed advantage over cisgendered athletes.

The science on this topic is still unclear in many ways. Many frequently-cited studies on transgender athletes are built upon miniscule sample sizes. Why? If we had to guess, it probably has something to do with the fact that there simply aren’t that many transgender athletes. In Utah, where Gov. Spencer Cox last month vetoed a bill similar to the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, there are just four transgender athletes out of 85,000 who compete in school sports.

Ultimately, this is not an effort by Stefanik to actually improve the lives of those who live in her district. This is not an issue that affects the vast majority of her constituents, many of whom are struggling to simply put food on the table and find safe, affordable housing.

Instead, we would argue that this is largely a political tactic to distract voters from other, more pressing issues — especially considering this bill will never pass in the Senate and would almost certainly be vetoed by President Joe Biden were it to reach his desk.

This is yet another piece of a broader effort to demonize a small group of people who are as American and as deserving of human rights as anybody else. It’s yet another part of a broader effort to exclude transgender people from public spaces and activities, deny them access to health care and legal protections. It works to perpetuate harmful rhetoric against a group that’s — according to the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law — four times more likely to be victims of violent crime than those who are cisgender. They are also more likely to have considered or attempted suicide, in part, because of the discrimination they face.

More broadly, it’s yet another example of an effort to cut back on the rights of the LGBTQ-plus citizens of this country, the majority of whom simply want to exist without fear of discrimination and violence.

Simply put, Stefanik is in the wrong. If her goal is to protect women and girls in sports, this is a pretty ineffective way to do it.

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