By: Alexxa Rojas
On the first day of pride month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill banning female transgender students from participating in public school sports teams. In accordance with the bill, DeSantis claimed, “We believe that it’s very important that the integrity of those competitions are preserved, that these opportunities are protected, and I can tell you this: In Florida, girls are going to play girl sports and boys are going to play boy sports.” Under the bill, public secondary school and college sports teams are required to be designated based on “biological sex.”
One’s ‘sex’ refers to their physiology, while their gender expression is a much more innate and intricate sense of identity. Assigned sex is a label that you’re given at birth based on medical factors, including your hormones, chromosomes, and genitals. What you are assigned at birth has little to do with one’s identity, nor any “physical advantage” politicians claim transgender individuals may have.
DeSantis, and many others sharing his perspective, fail to understand the nuances of gender and sex, as well as the lack of foundation in bills like these. DeSantis claims, “It’s not a message to anything other than saying we’re going to protect fairness in women’s sports.” Many bills or policies which exclude transgender individuals from participating, whether this is through sports or the military, believe that there is an ‘unfair physical advantage’ to allowing transgender participation. However, there is actually no scientific foundation to these claims. According to the International Federation of Sports Medicine (IFSM), there is a lack of data to support any physical advantages of trans athletes.
Florida has become the eighth state to enact a sports ban of this nature, accompanied by South Dakota, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia, Montana, and Alabama. As more and more countries continue to participate in this harmful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and mindsets, they actively promote exclusivity and prevent opportunities for transgender individuals all over America. As summed up by Orlando Gonzales, the executive director of SAVE, a South Florida gay rights advocacy group, during a news conference, “This is really just to throw red meat out there to really rally the base of people who are anti-LGBT.”
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/01/politics/florida-transgender-sports-ban-ron-desantis/index.html
The Academy Journal for Global Affairs 