House Democrats are preparing to actually do something about the state of our economy and the coronavirus pandemic by passing another stimulus bill, but Republicans have other plans.
While they're not busy gearing up to quickly confirm Trump's Supreme Court nominee before the presidential election, a group of Republican apparently set aside the time they needed to write a bill that would mandate discrimination against transgender students.
Republicans led by Senate Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) are sponsoring a bill to punish school systems that allow transgender girls to participate in sports.
Under the proposed “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” schools that allow “biological males” to compete in girls athletics could lose federal funding, according to a statement Tuesday by Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., the bill’s lead sponsor.
“Title IX established a fair and equal chance for women and girls to compete, and sports should be no exception,” Loeffler stated, referring to the section of the Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs.
“As someone who learned invaluable life lessons and built confidence playing sports throughout my life, I’m proud to lead this legislation to ensure girls of all ages can enjoy those same opportunities,” Loeffler continued. “This commonsense bill protects women and girls by safeguarding fairness and leveling the athletic field that Title IX guarantees.”
The language Loeffler uses to describe her bill is itself transphobic. She repeatedly refers to "women and girls," but it's inferred or implicit that transgender women and girls don't count as "women and girls" from her point of view.
It's ironic that Loeffler would invoke the Civil Rights Act to justify this attempt to make anti-transgender discriminate not only legal but required. The Supreme Court just recently ruled that "sex" includes gender identity and sexual orientation under the Civil Rights Act and that 6 to 3 decision was even written by conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch wrote that their ruling only applies to discrimination in the workplace, but there's no legal or even linguistic reason to think "sex" could mean one thing under one section of the law but not all sections. And don't take it from me; take it from federal appeals courts.
At the young age this legislation targets, there are significantly fewer biological differences between bodies dominated by either testosterone or estrogen and by calling for a ban on "biological males," Loeffler is more or less calling for requiring children to expose their genitals for inspection. Being transgender does not confer physical advantages (other than being extremely hot, right?) but even if it did it still wouldn't justify legal discrimination at school. Kids who are significantly larger or taller their than peers of their own gender are not discriminated against in sports and they have far more clear and significant advantages. Cisgender kids with physical advantages are encouraged to use them.
The purpose of introducing this legislation now just before the election is to scare voters into supporting Loeffler and other Republicans. The bill is explicitly aimed at transgender girls, not transgender boys who also exist. And this may be a bigger topic for another day, but what Loeffler is doing is exploiting her status as a cis white women to harm other women so she can maintain power under a patriarchy that places white women at the top of its social hierarchy. She is the 53 percent of white women who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because white supremacy is still good for them.