The discriminatory effort by Indiana legislators to ban transgender girls from K-12 school sports attempts to create a “solution” to a “problem” that doesn’t exist, while needlessly demonizing and harming vulnerable kids.
The arguments that proponents of HB 1041 are pushing rest on false assumptions about biology, athleticism, and gender. Believing and perpetuating myths and misconceptions about trans students is harmful. Let’s debunk them.
Transgender people have been competing in sports as their authentic selves for many years, and yet we simply haven’t seen trans girls “dominating” their peers. Trans kids are not a threat. There isn’t evidence to support the idea that trans girls will inevitably outcompete cisgender girls. In fact, the author of HB 1041 admitted that there is no widespread "problem” of trans girls unfairly competing in school sports in Indiana (Jan. 19 - 0:43:10).
Nowhere in the country has allowing trans girls to participate in sports led to an epidemic of boys pretending to be trans so that they can compete in girls’ sports.
It’s hard to imagine any kid pretending to be transgender and putting themselves at risk for harassment, bullying, and exclusion simply to attempt to obtain a perceived advantage in school sports.
The few examples of trans women and girls having some success in athletics at the collegiate level have been highly publicized, politicized, and weaponized in defense of policies altogether banning trans students from every level of school athletics.
Besides, this bill isn’t targeting elite athletes, or even collegiate athletes. It’s targeting kids who just want to play on a team with their friends. Less than 1% of kids who play sports end up competing at an elite level – and the overwhelming majority of transgender kids, like most kids, just want to play sports to be part of a team, to have fun, and to challenge themselves.
HB 1041 requires transgender girls to play on boys’ sports teams if they want to compete in school athletics. This requirement effectively excludes them from participating at all. Forcing a girl to compete on the boys’ team when there is a girls' team available would cause unnecessary distress, harm, and stigma.
When school officials recognize that a transgender girl is a girl during the school day, but then turn around and treat her as if she’s a boy when sports practice starts, it disrupts the school’s duty to treat all kids fairly.
The notion that transgender girls have a competitive advantage in school sports has no merit, and is based on two false premises. The first is that transgender girls are really boys. But that is not true. The second is that being assigned male at birth gives someone an unmitigated competitive advantage in all sports.
The truth is that athletic success is based on many factors that vary sport to sport – what it takes to be great at gymnastics is different from sprinting is different from swimming – so it is impossible to generalize about any competitive advantage of different body types. That's why some girls excel at gymnastics, others at volleyball, some at basketball, and others at soccer.
Trans youth vary in athletic ability, just like cisgender youth. Every kid has a range of different physical characteristics varying in size, strength and athletic ability. Success in school sports is dependent on practice, hard work, self-discipline, access to good coaches and facilities, and money to pay for outside training – not being trans.
When one trans athlete succeeds at any level, her success is often used to suggest both that the only reason for the athlete’s success is the fact that the person is trans, and that all trans people are inherently better athletes than all cisgender people. Neither is true.
There will always be some successful trans athletes and they should be celebrated for their hard work, not demonized because of who they are. And certainly, the fact that an occasional trans person succeeds in a sport should not be used to exclude all trans athletes.
Trans girls are girls and their participation in the girls’ category does not change the nature of the category. That’s why women’s rights advocates support trans-inclusive sports policies.
Allowing transgender kids to play on school sports teams does not undermine the protections afforded under Title IX. Women’s sports have continued to thrive in states with policies that allow trans student athletes to compete. We can celebrate girls’ sports and protect transgender youth from discrimination, helping ensure that all young people can grow and reach their full potential.
Excluding girls who are trans hurts all girls. It invites gender policing that could subject any girl to invasive accusations of being “too masculine” or “too good” at their sport to be a “real” girl.
25 states have had policies in place for years that allow inclusion of transgender youth in sports. A 2021 study found that states that allow all kids to participate in K-12 sports have steady or increasing opportunities for girls in sports, while states that bar transgender kids from sports have declining opportunities for girls in sports.
In any matter, trans people are just as worthy as anyone else of achieving their educational and career aspirations.
