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      in US Politics

      Biden proposal forbids US schools from outright bans on transgender athletes

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      The Biden administration has released a proposal that would forbid schools and colleges across the US from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes. But teams could create some limits in certain cases – for example, to ensure fairness.If finalized, the proposal would become enshrined as a provision of Title IX. It must undergo a lengthy approval process, however, and it’s almost certain to face challenges from opponents.“Every student should be able to have the full experience of attending school in America, including participating in athletics, free from discrimination,” said Miguel Cardona, Biden’s education secretary, in a statement.The Biden administration used “fairness of competition” as criteria, which has been part of the debate in the US and globally.The move is an effort to counteract a wave of Republican-backed measures targeting LGBTQ+ rights, particularly the participation of trans athletes in school sports. The proposal must undergo a lengthy approval process, however, and it’s almost certain to face challenges. While opponents sharply criticized the proposal, some advocates for transgender athletes were concerned that it did not go far enough.The proposal came on the same day that the US supreme court refused to let West Virginia enforce a state law banning trans athletes from female sports teams at public schools, one of many similar measures across the country.The justices denied West Virginia’s request to lift an injunction against the law that a lower court had imposed while litigation continues over its legality in a challenge brought by a 12-year-old transgender girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson.Two conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, publicly dissented from the decision.The law, passed in 2021, designates sports teams at public schools including universities according to “biological sex” and bars male students from female athletic teams “based solely on the individual’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth”.In the lawsuit, Pepper-Jackson and her mother Heather argued that the law discriminates based on sex and transgender status in violation of the US constitution’s 14th amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law, as well as the Title IX civil rights law that bars sex-based discrimination in education.West Virginia said in a court filing that it can lawfully assign athletic teams by sex rather than gender identity “where biological differences between males and females are the very reason those separate teams exist”.Pepper-Jackson, who attends a middle school in the West Virginia city of Bridgeport, sued after being prohibited from trying out for the girls’ cross-country and track teams.Critics argue trans athletes have an advantage over cisgender women in competition. Last year, Lia Thomas became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming title. College sports’ governing body, however, adopted a sport-by-sport approach to transgender athletes in January 2022, which was to bring the organization in line with the US and International Olympic committees, though recently the NCAA’s board decided it won’t be fully implemented until 2023-24.At the same time, international sports-governing bodies are instituting policies that ban all trans athletes from competing in track and field and effectively ban trans women from swimming events. More

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      in US Politics

      Wellesley College students vote to admit trans men and non-binary people

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      Students at the famed Wellesley College for women voted this week to extend admission to trans men and non-binary students, though campus administrators have said there is “no plan” to immediately change school policy.In a non-binding election on Tuesday, students at the liberal arts college in Massachusetts voted to open admission to all non-binary and transgender students, including trans men, reported Wellesley News, the college’s student newspaper.Wellesley’s alumni include former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, ex-US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, and other public figures.The proposed resolution, which will be presented to Wellesley’s board of trustees, would allow trans men to be admitted to the university. Non-binary applicants, regardless of their sex at birth, would also be considered for admission, according to the resolution approved by students.The ballot measure would also call for the university to replace gender-specific language with gender neutral language in reference to its student body, including using they/them pronouns in place of she/her pronouns, according to CNN.The admissions policy which students have voted in favor of modifying notes that anyone who identifies as a woman is eligible for admission, the college’s website says.Non-binary students “who were assigned female at birth” are currently considered eligible for admission. But trans men are not considered for admission.Students have argued that the resolution came in part because of students who transitioned in college and felt excluded by the university’s use of descriptors including “women” and “alumnae”, the Boston Globe reported.Despite the student support, Wellesley administrators have said they will not consider the ballot measure ratified by students.“Although there is no plan to revisit its mission as a women’s college or its admissions policy, the college will continue to engage all students, including transgender male and non-binary students, in the important work of building an inclusive academic community where everyone feels they belong,” Wellesley’s media relations director, Stacey Schmeidel, said.Wellesley’s president, Paula Johnson, spoke about the proposed question last week in an open message entitled: “Affirming our mission and embracing our community.”Johnson’s message said: “Wellesley is a women’s college that admits cis, trans, and non-binary students – all who consistently identify as women.” Johnson added that Wellesley’s being both a “women’s college and a diverse community” was not a mutually exclusive proposition.Several students were critical of Johnson’s open message, with the Wellesley News’s editorial board calling out Johnson for intervening in student discourse and neglecting to mention legislative attacks on transgender people in her broader statement.“The Wellesley News editorial board is once again stating that transgender and non-binary students have always belonged and will continue to belong at Wellesley, a historically women’s college,” the editorial board wrote in a letter.Students have previously criticized the university’s lack of inclusive language for transgender and non-binary students.Students also have urged Wellesley’s board of trustees to keep a mural featuring the transgender flag which was powerwashed in 2021.School administrators have said that they support students who transition after being admitted, noting on their website that “[once] accepted to Wellesley, every student receives the full support and mentorship of college faculty, staff, and administrators through graduation”.Wellesley currently has no data on how many transgender and non-binary students attend the college, according to the New York Times. More

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      in US Politics

      My daughter is trans. She was nearly taken away from me because I let her transition | Carolyn Hays

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      My daughter is trans. She was nearly taken away from me because I let her transitionCarolyn HaysA child welfare investigation drove us from our conservative state. Little did we know that rightwing governors across America would soon be embracing this kind of persecution One autumn day in 2011, an investigator from our state’s department of children and families knocked on our door. At the time we lived in a conservative state in the American south. Someone had made an anonymous complaint accusing us of child abuse for allowing our child to have a girlhood. A lawyer told us that, in this state with decades of Republican-appointed judges, we were at risk of losing custody of our transgender daughter.The investigator’s visit felt like a bizarre clerical error; our four kids were thriving and we were well-liked in our community. The investigator ultimately found us to be good parents doing what was best for our child. However, it had become urgently clear that we would have to leave the deep south and move to a place where our youngest daughter, who had recently transitioned to she/her pronouns and a nickname, would have basic rights to equal education, housing, healthcare and, as she grew up, employment.Our map of the United States included about 13 states where there were laws likely to pass or already in place that would allow us to live as a family fully protected by law. It was a shock to have our country suddenly shrink, almost overnight. My husband and I are white, able-bodied, cis-gender, and straight; we’d taken for granted that each and every part of the United States was available to us. That was over. We were still Americans, but the terms of our supposed agreement with our own country had changed.We couldn’t have predicted that what happened to us would has now become an explicit rightwing political strategy. Earlier this year, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, issued an executive order directing the state’s department of family and protective services to investigate parents who support their transgender children, threatening to wrench apart families like ours, in a state that is home to almost 29 million people.After our own brush with losing custody of our child, we moved to New England. Over the next few years, to our surprise, the list of states with anti-discrimination laws grew. In New Jersey, a Republican governor signed laws to protect trans students. Even below the Mason-Dixon line, some Republican officials signed laws protecting transgender students in public education. Eventually there were 17 states, then 21, where children’s rights to gender self-expression were protected. It seemed possible that our daughter might get to be an American anywhere in America.That hope ended with the Trump administration. His administration waged a lockstep attack against transgender people – banning trans soldiers from military service, revoking civil rights guidelines that had protected trans students, rescinding protections for trans people who are incarcerated and for those living in homeless shelters and allowing discrimination based on gender identity in healthcare. It was ugly, swift and terrifying.After Trump lost in 2020, states took up the charge. Republican-led state governments pushed slates of anti-trans laws, many of which targeted kids. Being openly anti-trans seemed to become a point of pride among certain Republican politicians. It felt like whiplash. While our transgender daughter was flourishing, the country taking shape around her was hostile to her existence.We worry about what the map of the United States will look like in 2024 or 2025. If Republicans are in the White House with an uber-conservative majority in the supreme court and a Republican-dominated Congress, will individual states retain the right to protect families like ours? Or will the map of the United States be one solid anti-trans bloc?This issue has been clarified by the supreme court’s decision to repeal Roe v Wade. No longer allowed to make choices, with privacy and dignity, about their own bodies, people of reproductive age are being pushed to the edge of the same cliff as trans people. Every woman, queer or trans person – as individuals and as members of families and communities – faces threats to their bodily autonomy and basic privacy.It has become abundantly clear that we need to protect that autonomy and privacy for every American. The right to privacy includes our right to birth control, to marry the person we love, and to seek the healthcare we need in conversation with our doctors and not our politicians. As the country gets carved away from us, we must draw closer, putting aside differences and rising up as one. We need the power of working in solidarity to reclaim America – not in bits and pieces, but in the entirety of these United States.
      Carolyn Hays is an award-winning, critically acclaimed, bestselling author. She is the author of A Girlhood: Letter to My Transgender Daughter, which she has written under a pseudonym
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    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

      The Debate On Transgender Athletes Is Fundamentally About Fairness

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in Elections

      'You are loved': Joe Biden signs executive order to fight anti-LGBTQ+ state bills – video

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      US president Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at curbing discrimination against transgender youth and drying up federal funding for the controversial practice of ‘conversion therapy’. ‘My message to all the young people: Just be you. You are loved. You are heard. You are understood. You do belong. And I want you to know that, as your president, all of us on the stage have your back. We have your back,’ Biden said before he signed the executive order

      Biden signs executive order to curb anti-trans laws and conversion therapy
      Group of men storm Drag Queen Story Hour in California in possible hate crime More

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      in US Politics

      Idaho bill that criminalizes medical trans youth treatments passes house

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      Idaho bill that criminalizes medical trans youth treatments passes houseBill aims to make gender-affirming care a felony and punishable by life in prison for anyone who helps a child travel out of state Idaho’s house of representatives has passed a bill that would criminalize gender-affirming medical procedures for transgender youth and make it a felony punishable by life imprisonment for anyone who helps a child travel across state lines to gender-affirming healthcare.The bill, approved on Tuesday, targets medical measures that include vasectomy, hysterectomy, mastectomy, puberty-blocking medication and supraphysiological doses of testosterone or estrogen.The bill will now move on to the state’s Republican-controlled senate. If approved, the Republican governor, Brad Little, could either sign it into law or veto it.“Whoever knowingly removes or causes, permits, or facilitates the removal of a child from this state for the purpose of facilitating any act prohibited … by this section shall be guilty of a felony,” the bill states. “Any person convicted of a violation … shall be guilty of a felony and shall be imprisoned in the state prison for a term of not more than life.”Civil rights and LGBTQ+ advocacy campaigns condemned the proposed bill. “By making it impossible for doctors to provide care for their patients, transgender youth are denied the age-appropriate, best practice, medically necessary, gender-affirming care that a new study just found reduces the risk of moderate or severe depression by 60% and suicidality by 73%,” Cathryn Oakley, state legislative director and senior counsel for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group, said.“Bills like HB 675 are being pushed across the country by well-funded, national, anti-trans groups to mobilize their political base,” Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said. “These bills do nothing to invest and protect Idaho youth and families and Idahoans deserve better.”According to a 2019 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), almost 2% of high school students identified as trans, and 35% had attempted suicide in the previous year.According to the Human Rights Campaign, more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills are currently under consideration in state legislatures across the country.State representative Bruce Skaug, the bill’s lead sponsor, said that the bill was “about protecting children”. He also compared gender-affirming treatments to minors drinking alcohol and getting tattoos.The bill passed with a near party-line vote, with Republicans winning by 55-13. Dr Fred Wood, the House’s only physician, joined 12 Democrats in voting against the bill.“Our transgender youth are so incredibly courageous, and I know how stressful it has been for transgender youth and their families as they’ve watched this bill move through this body,” said the Democratic representative Lauren Neocochea during its debate.“An Idaho doctor has had to assist three transgender youth related to their suicide attempts since this bill has been introduced. We need to trust those parents and providers to make these deeply personal decisions,” she added.The Idaho vote comes as the Florida senate also passed a bill on Tuesday which forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.Last week, a Texas judge blocked the state from investigating the parents of a trans teenager over gender-affirming treatments after the order by the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, that officials look into reports of such treatments as abuse.TopicsIdahoTransgenderLGBT rightsUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Biden honors transgender people killed in US: ‘Each of these lives was precious’

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      Biden honors transgender people killed in US: ‘Each of these lives was precious’President issues statement on Transgender Day of Remembrance and notes 2021 has been deadliest year on record for trans people Joe Biden issued a statement in honor of Transgender Day of Remembrance, memorializing the dozens of transgender people who were killed this year in America and saying “each of these lives was precious”.Biden noted that 2021 has been the deadliest year on record for transgender Americans, particularly Black and Latino individuals. A recent study found that transgender people are over four times more likely to experience violent crimes than cisgender people.“This year, at least 46 transgender individuals in this country – and hundreds more around the world – were killed in horrifying acts of violence,” Biden said in a statement Saturday. “Each of these lives was precious. Each of them deserved freedom, justice and joy.”Transgender people killed this year in the US ranged in age from 16 to 49, according to nonprofit Human Rights Campaign. Two siblings, one who was transgender and one who was non-binary, were killed by their mother in Pennsylvania in February. Natalia Smut Lopez, a 24-year-old beloved drag entertainer from the Bay Area, was murdered by a man who she was in a relationship with in April. Over 100 people attended her memorial service in her honor.Trans women of color comprise four in five of all known violent killings of transgender, non-binary and non-conforming people, according to a report released by Human Rights Campaign in October. Since 2013, at least 256 transgender ad gender non-conforming people in 36 states and DC have been murdered.“The rhetoric and stigma aimed by anti-equality political leaders at transgender and non-binary people have led to an unprecedented level of horrific violence against our transgender community,” said Human Rights Campaign president Joni Madison on Twitter. “We must bring this epidemic of violence to an end.”In his statement, Biden said that he called on his administration to coordinate across the federal government to address the violence and advance equality for transgender individuals. He also called on state leaders to “combat the disturbing proliferation of discriminatory state legislation targeting transgender people, especially transgender children”.Over 100 anti-trans bills – including over a dozen that were passed – were proposed by lawmakers this year across 37 states. The laws include bills banning transgender girls from participating on girls’ sports team in Florida, Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia and bills prohibiting trans children from using bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.TopicsJoe BidenTransgenderUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      The GOP’s push for anti-trans laws: Politics Weekly Extra

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      Republican lawmakers have introduced the highest number of anti-trans bills to be filed in a single year in 2021. Joan E Greve speaks to Sam Levin about why some in the GOP are trying to ban transgender children from certain sports teams and limit their access to gender-affirming healthcare.

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      Up to 2% of the youth population of the US are trans children, but lawmakers have introduced more than 110 bills in 2021 regulating their access to healthcare and sports teams. That is the highest number of anti-trans bills to ever be filed in a single year. The volume of laws proposed and the coordinated campaigns behind some of them suggest that this issue has become a central focus of the GOP culture war. But what is the full extent of the proposed legislation? And how many of these bills actually have a chance of becoming laws? Sam Levin and Joan E Greve discuss. Archive: CBS, ABC7, ABC11, PBS News Hour Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More