Opinion: Why I Support States Banning Transgender Athletes

I competitively swam for 6 years when I was a girl. Practice and swim meets were some of the greatest times of my life. Although I was self conscious about my body around boys, I felt safe and comfortable around other girls.

By Jessica Marie Baumgartner | Published 2 years ago

I competitively swam for 6 years when I was a girl. Practice and swim meets were some of the greatest times of my life. Although I was self conscious about my body around boys, I felt safe and comfortable around other girls. It was also a place where I could forget my unstable home life, find focus, and hope to win. Now athletes born male can take a few hormones and compete as women. This makes me not only grateful that I was born before this insanity began. It also means I now support states banning transgender athletes from competing based on their current gender in favor of biological, birth sex-based rules.

Trans women deserve rights, like any other human, but they are not the same as natural born females. Anyone who says differently needs to go back to biology class. A man who puts on a dress and says he is a woman still has male genitalia, thicker bone density, a larger skeletal frame, more muscle mass, and even if they are prescribed hormone therapy, their testosterone levels are still higher than that of most females. These facts are undeniable.

I have always held true to my belief that a 3rd category should be created to accommodate anyone who wishes to compete and play sports without biological requirements, but men’s sports and women’s sports are for natural born men and women. Women’s sports in specific were created by natural born women for natural born women long before trans women ever came into the equation. This was done so that young girls and women everywhere could have fun and experience fair play in sports without being demeaned or overpowered by men.

Now that opportunity is being destroyed. In the name of “equality” or “diversity” or any other buzz-words that make politicians eager to appease mobs, women — who are born at a disadvantage to men — are losing their rights. We are no longer safe in our own locker rooms. We are no longer allowed to compete with other women and openly celebrate our natural born womanhood.

My own daughter left karate because of gender neutral ideologies forcing girls and boys to compete against each other. I had been warned about this by a colleague before entering my daughter in classes. Her grandson was in karate and forfeited every competition in which his opponent was a girl because he knew boys are physically bigger and faster and stronger.

My daughter wanted to learn karate so badly that, against my better judgment, I enrolled her in a dojo anyway. Training was fun, but sparring frustrated her because the boys always won. Even so, sparring was a requirement for belt advancement so she had to fight them. As if that weren’t obstacle enough, I witnessed boys with behavioral issues specifically targeting girls first during games where everyone had to fight to be the last “man” standing.

As the season went on, my daughter was encouraged to compete in an actual tournament. She was put in a ring with a little boy, and of course, lost. We saw this at every turn. The girls who did win either fought other girls, won on technicalities, or were experts in their weapons divisions — these are single person displays of ability and not fighting based.

Eventually my daughter got so tired of seeing the girls lose to boys that she quit. She didn’t want me to fight for her right to fair play. Often people argue that girl’s sports doesn’t do as well as men’s because it’s not as exciting and it’s not the best competing against the best of the best. What these people seem to misunderstand is that sports aren’t just about winning, that may seem silly to say here, but they are about learning teamwork, dedication, hope, and meeting goals.

How can young women work together when they are expected to share locker rooms with trans girls who have a penis? How are they supposed to be focused and dedicated if they know they don’t even have a chance at winning? Why should any woman have hope for their sport and the ability to achieve their goals when they aren’t even allowed fair play?

Winning is a beautiful dream, but it’s not the entire purpose. The pursuit of that dream through honesty, integrity, and upholding the rules of sports, is what really matters. Because trans activists scream louder than women, who are smaller and more submissive by nature, many people have refused to find common ground or protect the rights of young girls. It is their inability to compromise that has led lawmakers in several states to finally draw the line and give natural born women back their rights, and I support anything that brings reason back into this equation.

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