Today, Explained - Making tennis a misdemeanor

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

More than half of US states are working to ban, or even criminalize, trans athletes playing sports. Vox contributor Katelyn Burns explains how conservative politicians came to care so much about women’s sports. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit connectsontario.ca. Dr. Rachel Levine made history last week when she became the first openly transgender person confirmed by the Senate for a position in the federal government. On this vote, the yeas are 52, the nays are 48, the nomination is confirmed. But she was confirmed by a narrow margin after a contentious confirmation hearing that featured tense questions on transgender rights. And while things got a little tense here in D.C., they're straight up brawling over transgender rights across the country. And one of the most prominent arenas for this fight is sports? Last night, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem signed an executive order to limit participation in women's sports to those assigned female at birth,

which might sound straightforward enough, but the reality is a little more complicated. And it's worth explaining because these trans bans in sports specifically are happening all over the dang country. Caitlin Burns wrote about it for Vox. So more than half of all state legislatures have proposed bans on trans girls and women playing girls and women's sports. And these bills affect people from elementary age all the way through college. More than half of the states. What's the deal? Is there some sort of pressing concern here? There's been a panic kicked off by mostly conservative media.

Well, for decades, America has been a world leader in providing athletic opportunities to women and girls on the same footing as boys. But now opportunities for women are being shoved aside for a new priority, transgender athletes. There have been a small handful of trans women who have found success at lower levels of sports, and they're receiving outsized media attention. Terry Miller and Andrea Yearwood are both transgender high school sprinters transitioning to female. They took home first and second place, respectively respectively in a girls qualifying race for regionals. We've seen Fox News devote countless segments now to this issue over the course of the last several years.

Boys and girls are physically different. And men, we tend to be more physically ready and more. We're faster. We're taller. We're bigger. We're stronger. So it is unfair. To the point where it's become a real political issue.

Transgenders participating in women's sports will destroy women's sports. In fact, there was an article in Politico during the presidential campaign about how the Trump campaign was debating whether they should use this issue in the presidential campaign. Ultimately, they decided not to. But if you look carefully, more recently, Trump spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, and part of his speech was about trans athletes. Young girls and women are incensed that they are now being forced to compete against those

who are biological males. It's not good for women. It's not good for women's sports, which worked so long and so hard to get to where they are. But in essence, this is like their new version of the bathroom bills. In its so-called bathroom bill, HB2, North Carolina's legislature demands that citizens use the restroom corresponding with the gender on their birth certificate, not the gender with which they identify. That became really politically unpopular. So they've moved on now to this trans athlete issue that they feel like they have a winning message on.

What do these bills actually do? First of all, they single out trans girls specifically. So those are trans kids that were assigned male at birth and transitioned to female. And basically, they have deemed that anybody born with a penis is athletically superior to anybody born with a vagina, regardless of circumstances. And they just outright ban these kids from playing with other girls. So like in one state, in Minnesota, they would actually make it a crime for a trans girl to play girls' high school or college sports. And the crime is equivalent to like possessing a small amount of marijuana. So potentially you could have trans kids end up in court in front of a judge, potentially going to juvenile hall just for wanting to play like tennis with their friends.

And why focus on trans girls, young people who have transitioned from, you know, boys to girls specifically? That's where people are worried about an unfair advantage? Yeah, so there's actually an interesting backstory to why these bills only focus on trans girls. People who have paid attention to trans issues for a few years now may remember this wrestler from Texas named Mac Biggs. I'm not gonna lie, these girls, they can wrestle. Anybody can wrestle. No matter who you put across the mat, it don't matter. It just comes down to technique and who has the most heart. Now Mac is a trans boy. He was assigned female at birth and transitioned to male during high school and he was a wrestler. And he was on testosterone. And Texas State High School of Sports athletic rules

stated that you must play sports in accordance with your birth certificate. So that means Mac had to play in the girls' division of wrestling. And you dominated in the girls' tournaments. You were undefeated your junior year? Yeah. And then I was undefeated my senior year. Two seasons without getting beat once? Yeah. I was pretty happy about that. Yeah. Nobody came close to beating him ever. Right.

And it's obvious why. Like he was developing into this man's body with testosterone like any other boy would, right? I mean, it was blatantly unfair to the girls that he was competing with that he was wrestling against them after transitioning. The state would not let him wrestle with other boys. And now that's why you see all these states now come out and say, well, we're only focusing on the trans girls. And it's because they want to avoid a Mac bags situation. So I imagine Mac isn't an example that conservatives love to talk about. But what are the examples of trans athletes that conservatives love to talk about? The two most cited examples are there were these two trans sprinters from Connecticut who are both trans girls and they competed against other girls in the sprinting events in track and field in high school. England Regional Championships in Boston, a chance to get in front of college coaches and maybe even earn a scholarship. But Connecticut junior Selena Soule won't be competing in the 55-meter dash. She was edged out of the top six spots in part by two transgender runners, Andrea Yearwood and Terry Miller, both male at birth, now identifying as female.

And they were less dominant than Mac was. By the end of their senior year, they were losing to some of their cisgender competitors. And cisgender just means that your gender identity matches the sex that you were assigned at birth. So this is the example that is almost always cited. Their participation in girls' sports in Connecticut has actually prompted a lawsuit where several of their cisgender competitors and their parents sued the state of Connecticut High School Athletic Association over this policy.

And the Trump Department of Education also jumped in on the side of the plaintiffs to try to get the state to change their trans inclusion policy. It's frustrating and in a way demoralizing when you're at the start line of a race and you know what the outcome of the race is before it even happens. But actually, over the course of the lawsuit, the cis girl that was still in high school athletics actually beat one of the trans girls in an important meet. So like, we know it wasn't impossible for the girls to win. And I understand when you're looking at this from the outside, and this is the only example that

you've heard, you jump to the conclusion, well, yeah, of course, they're winning because they're quote unquote boys. But they're not the only trans girls playing sports in high school. And you never have heard of another trans girl being as dominant as them. So I think it's a little bit misplaced to just look at this one example and decide that this is the one example that defines the whole issue. The issue itself is much more complicated than just one set of athletes from one state. So it sounds like there's the reality, there's the conservative narrative, and then there's these very real bills that are in more than half of the states. Are these bills going to pass or is it just some sort of Republican fever dream? Several of them already

have passed. Last year, Idaho, they instituted a similar ban. They were the first that has already been put on a temporary block by a federal court while litigation is pending. And also recently, Mississippi passed a similar ban that was signed into law. And then last week, you had Arkansas and Tennessee also pass those bills. So I do think these will get passed and this issue will end up getting settled in the courts. I don't want to make this a red state, blue state thing, but you're naming a lot of red states here. But you also mentioned that this has happened in more than half of the states. Is this something that breaks down on party lines or is there any bipartisanship to be seen? If you look at the polling on this issue, it is not friendly to the trans side.

The vast majority of conservatives believe that trans girls should be banned from sports. Independents lean that way. And even 40% of Democrats think it's okay to ban trans girls from girls' sports. So if you look just at polling, trans inclusion is just not very popular. But I think in the legislature, there aren't very many Democrats that are supporting these types of bills, like actual Democratic elected officials. I think the reason why is these legislatures are hearing from trans kids and their parents. My name is Grace Walker. I'm a senior at a high school in Minnesota, and I'm captain of my school's tennis and cheer teams. When I was in sixth grade, I expressed some interest in, not interest, I'd say disinterest in my identity. I pulled away. I felt like the body I'm currently in is not the body I was meant to be in. So I talked to my

parents and they put me on something called puberty blockers, essentially a wall that stops testosterone from either being produced or spread throughout the body. So up until about eighth grade, I still had almost the biology of a sixth grade, fifth grade boy. I didn't go through puberty. My voice never really dropped. Once I was in eighth grade, I was put on HRT, so hormone replacement therapy, which means that on top of taking puberty blockers, I introduced estrogen to my system. When I was growing up as a biological male, being on athletics never seemed like an option or a route that I ever wanted to take. Almost immediately post-transition is when my view of high school athletics specifically drastically changed. I suddenly saw this group of overly welcoming and bubbly girls who really were on a team just to be on a team and make friends. The first time I ever went to practice, I was overwhelmed with joy.

It was this amazing environment full of a bunch of girls who really, again, were just there to make friends and be themselves. So I walked out in this uniform that my parents never would have let me wear. It's a short skirt and a tight top. And suddenly I was surrounded by a bunch of girls. I was hesitant about explaining myself because I know there is controversy around transgender females in athletics. So when I stood up there, I'm like, hi everyone, my name is Grace and I want to let everyone here know that I am a trans female, I had some more people question it more than anything. Just like, okay, sounds good. I mean, welcome. Cool. I never really had much pushback and I'm so, so thankful for that. Having a group of girls just say, oh, okay, sounds good. It felt odd,

but it felt relaxing. It was a weight off my shoulder. For the first time in a long time, I was like, oh, okay, I am like every other girl here. No one's seeking me out. No one's saying, oh, this person is different. It's, oh, it's Grace. She's on the girls' tennis team. I am lucky enough to go to a school where it is very inclusive. So to be able to go to these practices just as myself felt liberating because it was the first time in a while

that I was myself in public and I was myself surrounded by other people. It was amazing. When it comes to athletics, I have never seen people defend women's sports more than when transgender women are included in that sport. I am a fairly basic, decent, but basic tennis player. I play for fun. No way, shape, or form am I ever really going to go pro. My athletic ability does not reflect that of a man's. My blood work, BMI, testosterone, or body, none of them reflect that of a man's. Now at the same time, whenever I went to a game

or a match, I had my blood work on hand. If someone ever questioned and said, that female has too much testosterone, I could prove I didn't. I have less testosterone than many biological females. So this idea of fairness, if I were to be put on the men's team, no way would I do better than a man. Absolutely not. Representative Lucera has proposed a bill that would criminalize transgender females or transgender individuals as a whole by playing in the athletics. So essentially, being a trans female and playing on a girls team, you will get a petty misdemeanor. I've never had a teammate have any pushback or concern. So for me to talk to them and say, oh, by the way, there's a chance I may not be able to play in the future because I don't want something on my permanent record. I think it always kind of takes them back because one, they're suddenly reminded of the fact that their teammate is transgender. So they have a moment of like,

oh my gosh, I forgot about that. Oh my gosh, what? And the second one is anger. It's just, wait, why now? What's happening now? Like, what? Because I don't think my teammates really see me as the trans female in sports. They see me as grace. Athletics have been nothing but kind to me. I truly believe that I would not be the person I am today without them. I believe my academic career got better. I believe my social life got better and my mental health. They made me the person I am today. The science of trans sports in a minute on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to Thank you. directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday

and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays.

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please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Kaelin, we spoke in the first half about the movement to ban trans women from sports, Trans women. What do we actually know about the athletic ability of trans women? We actually know very little. Trans bodies have been ignored in sports sciences for the longest time, or trans women's bodies have just been assumed to be male. So the male data must also correlate for trans women. So there's a lot of assumptions and incomplete data that goes in behind these. But when you get Twitter randos and my mentions arguing about this,

most of their arguments come down to penis strong, vagina weak, right? On average, cisgender men tend to be more athletic than cisgender women. But I think our culture also takes that to an extreme. There was a study from a couple of years ago that one in eight men believed that they could win a point off of Serena Williams in a tennis match. Drake has a line about this. I'm with my whole set, tennis matches at the crib.

I swear I could beat Serena when she playing with her left arm. He could beat Serena if she was playing with her left. At least he says if Serena's playing with her wrong hand, I could win. They have to be an incredible tennis player to pull that off. Okay, I have a hard time buying that argument. Sorry, Drake. Whoa, whoa. I think this is all tied back into how people are looking at this specific issue. And it's people genuinely believe penis strong, vagina weak. Behind that is an assumption that there is no difference between cis I was a runner before and after my own transition. And I went

from running like seven minute miles on my seven mile runs to like not being able to break 10 minutes after a good time on hormone therapy. I also got in worse shape. So there's that, but also like, we know there are changes. Like, there are trans women who were incredibly strong before their transition who can't even open, like, a pickle jar now. We know for a fact that changes happen when trans women begin their hormonal transitions. But we don't know exactly how much change happens and how that affects sports. And it's only just now starting to be studied. I mean, for anyone who finds all of this confusing, tell me how this even works in practice. I mean, how does a teenager on a high school tennis team go from maybe playing like boys tennis one year to playing girls tennis the next year? First of all, it depends on the state that they're in, because every state has different rules.

There are some states that won't require any sort of hormonal intervention. So in practice, that means that they could just start their social transition without any hormones and just jump from boys to girls team. So that means like physically, maybe you haven't changed, but you're identifying as a different gender. And now all of a sudden, you're playing on a different team. Right. And this is maybe something that scares a lot of Americans. And that's why polling is so in favor of banning trans athletes. This is the common perception of how this all works if you look at like south park did an episode on trans athletes and this is exactly how they claimed it is that

a man can show up at a weightlifting competition one day and claim to be a woman and set all these world records and go on living as a man now that i can compete as female i'm ready to smash the other girls. Is this also the plot of the movie She's the Man? Do you know when soccer trots start? Noon. You play? Absolutely.

Center forward. You know it, brah. Yes. And ladybugs. Oh, ladybugs. Oh, my God. I love that movie. Has that movie aged poorly? I haven't seen it in ages,

but I remember watching it on repeat as a child because I just wanted to do it myself. How do you do a fish? Well, he's willing to try. What? Could get him arrested. No, you're crazy, Chester. It'll never happen. Chester put a boy on a girl's soccer team.

How? Don't worry. If it's too tight, you'll get used to it. Huh? Meet our new ladybug, Martha. Give her a big ladybug reception, all right? After the game.

Is Rodney Dangerfield in that movie? He is. Oh, R.I.P. He's the coach. He's the one that comes up with the idea. He can't get any respect. But yeah, this is the common perception of how it works.

And in some states, you can actually do that. Like you have to take administrative steps to make this happen. You can't just show up and say, hey, I'm a girl for the tennis season. I think it works at younger ages and doesn't work as you sort of move up in age and level. There are other states that do require like a year of puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy before participating. So they'd have to take a year off from sports to make sure their testosterone levels are in line with the guidelines. So they're literally testing kids to make sure they're man enough or woman enough. Yeah. kids to make sure they're man enough or woman enough yeah that seems uncomfortable if not

reasonable does that solve the more moderate end of objections people have around trans women and sports or other are there other things to consider there are more like nitty-gritty sort of biological arguments that happen within this space as well. So you say, you know, you have people who go, well, even if we limited it to hormone treatment or hormone levels, there are still changes that trans women's bodies go through in male puberty that can't be reversed. I'm six foot two. I'm always going to be six foot two, but not all trans women are six foot two, and not all cis women are shorter than six foot two. So if you're going to be six foot two, but not all trans women are six foot two and not all cis women are shorter than six foot two. So if you're going to ban trans women from basketball and your

argument is, well, trans women tend to be taller, are you going to ban all the tall cis women from basketball too? That actually doesn't make sense to me. I talked with Joanna Harper, who is perhaps the leading scientist in the world on this issue. And she was talking about, you know, trans women's hearts tend to be larger than cis women's hearts, right? There's all these, like implications that come along with that. But she said, what people don't realize is that the refractory rate inside the heart also changes on hormone treatment. So when you start estrogen, you're like the muscles around your heart change, and they end up pumping less blood through your heart. So even though your heart is

larger, you're still pumping less blood. And what really matters in athletic performance is how much blood is your heart pumping. So like there are all these things that we just don't know about transition and trans women's bodies that we think we already do because we're making the assumption that they're, quote, biologically male, right? They get glossed over and sort of wrapped into these larger cultural assumptions, and it translates to bills that just want to outright ban trans girls from girls' sports. And for all the real estate this issue is occupying in our politics and culture right now, how many trans women athletes are out there? Do we have any idea? This is a two-sided answer because what I'm going to say is there's more than you think

and also there's not enough. And when I say there's more than you think, it's that the only trans athletes that ever get attention are the ones that find success. I mentioned the two Connecticut sprinters. There's also CeCe Telfer, who won a Division II Women's Hurdling Championship in college. There's Veronica Ivey, who won back-to-back world championships in one event of women's masters match sprint racing. These are the people that tend to get the gobs of attention and outrage, but you don't hear about just the everyday trans women and girls who are out there and are just completely average.

So you don't hear about the trans woman who tried to qualify for the Olympic women's marathon team last year and finished 200th place. Like you wouldn't look at her performance and go, oh my God, how dominant was that? Like you'd be laughed out of the discussion if you brought her up, right? It's like all the attention that you have

are on these handful of trans women who have won. And there was an article in the New York Times that reported that according to the NCAA, out of about 200,000 women who play NCAA sports in a given year, only about 50 of them are trans women. But you've only ever heard of CeCe Telfer, who won a national championship. So if you've only heard of CeCe Telfer, you're going to think all trans women are winning sports. If we allow more trans women to play, soon they'll be winning all of the sports. But you don't realize there are actually 49, I guess, trans women behind CeCe Telfer who aren't doing anything in their respective sport. And one other thing is that, you know, people don't realize that trans women have been allowed to compete as women in the Olympics in some form since 2004, and we've never had an out trans woman even qualify for the Olympics in any sport. So despite the amount of attention this is getting, there just aren't that many trans athletes out there. Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.

Do you think all the attention this is getting could actually lead to some greater understanding of this issue, or is it going in the opposite direction? I actually don't have a lot of hope on this issue. Yeah. I don't think the current social media environment that we have is conducive to having a fact-based conversation that would overcome the sort of outrage and common assertions that are made in this issue. A lot of it is driven by right-wing media. If you look at Facebook, right-wing media sources are literally driving hundreds of

thousands of comments on this, millions of comments even. It's just not an environment conducive to settling. What is really a nuanced conversation that really needs to be had? And where does that leave these trans kids? It leaves trans kids in front of their legislators begging for equal rights. Vox contributor Caitlin Burns. She hosts a podcast called Cancel Me Daddy. It's a show that attempts to demystify the panic around cancel culture. I'm Sean Ramos for them. This one's Today Explained. Thank you.