SPORTS AND THE DANGERS OF EXCLUSION

It was the top of the bottom half of the 10th inning at Truist Park on April 10. The Cincinnati Reds had just scored a run, so the Braves needed two to win. With Austin Riley on second (as extra innings now start with a player on second base to make them go faster), Sean Murphy was first up to bat. With his first swing, he hit his first home run of the season, clinching the Braves a 5–4 win.

With more than 150 games left in the season, this was a relatively unimportant win for the Braves. And yet being there to witness it felt magical to me. It was poetic, a so-perfect-it-could’ve-been-written ending to a tense game. But the whole experience was also somewhat uncomfortable. Even though it was an incredible moment, being at that game felt like I was somewhere I didn’t truly belong. It felt like I was in high school again.

I hated sports in high school. On one hand, it felt to me like sports embodied everything I disliked: they were heavily gendered (which meant a general antiwoman bias, as all gendered things tend to exhibit) and valued body over mind. On the other, more real hand, I was severely unathletic. I was gangly, awkward, and asthmatic; my lack of athleticism was so obvious it became a running joke among my friends. Freshman year, before I wrote sports off as an option for me, when all my friends signed up for powderpuff football, I did too. I performed so poorly in practices that the “coaches,” boys who played football for the school, completely overlooked me and only played me for a couple minutes in the actual game because I told them to. It was so profoundly embarrassing that even now it’s painful to remember.

There were no rules keeping me from participating in sports. There were no organizations dictating whether people like me were allowed to play against my peers. And still, just the perception of exclusion was enough for me not only to write off sports altogether, but also to hate myself and my body even more than I already did. My experience with sports as a teenager left such a bad taste in my mouth that I’m still having a difficult time allowing myself to truly enjoy sports almost a decade later.

I will never pretend to know what it’s like to be trans. But I know what it’s like to be a young person seeking acceptance, and how painful exclusion feels. I know my experience with sports was not as exclusionary as I felt it was. I know I was just experiencing the heightened insecurity and awkwardness of adolescence and that I am perfectly safe to enjoy sports as much or as little as I want to now. I wish I could say the same is true for trans kids. We who care about and love trans youth know the impact bills banning them from sports or empowering their peers to misgender and deadname them will have. They will have detrimental mental health impacts, if not outright leading to an increase in suicide. These kids will feel like they don’t belong because there will be systematic rules in place explicitly telling them they don’t.

I wish that it would help to convince the lawmakers championing these kinds of bills of the harm they will perpetuate if passed. But it won’t because they don’t care. They don’t give a fuck about trans kids. I would say they care more about holding the hands of cis kids (especially cis girls) so that they don’t lose to the big scary trans kid than they do about the humanity of that trans kid, but I don’t even believe that’s actually true. These lawmakers literally do not care about anything other than maintaining their own power and the status quo that granted them that power to begin with. They’re more than happy to paint literal children as freaks unworthy of protection if that means they get votes.

Sports are fun. They foster community and connection with your peers and a healthy self-esteem. Those benefits should not be reserved for only some people. Sports should be for all of us, and queer people who love sports know that. This issue is dedicated to the people carving out a space for us to be our true selves and serves as a reminder, especially to trans kids and their parents, that regardless of what the greater society thinks of us, LGBTQ people will always take care of each other. We will create whatever space is necessary for us to experience the acceptance and love we all need and deserve.

Read these stories and more online at thegavoice.com

Transgender Woman Ashley Burton Fatally Shot in Southwest Atlanta

A transgender woman was found fatally shot at an apartment complex in southwest Atlanta.

37-year-old Ashley Burton was found at the Elite at City Park apartments on Fairburn Road on April 11 morning, according to 11 Alive. Officers said they were called at 4:22am and found the victim on the breezeway outside the unit. Police believe the victim was shot inside an apartment and collapsed where she was found.

Police believe it was a domestic-related shooting.

“She ran out of the house, hollering and screaming, beating on doors,” Burton’s cousin, Ivory Carter, told 11 Alive. “This got to be personal. You shot her in her house, then you followed her outside and shot her.” Anyone with information that could help the investigation is urged to call the Atlanta Police Department at 404-5778477. Homicide detectives are investigating the murder, but no suspects have yet been identified by police. Carter told 11 Alive that she hopes Burton receives justice.

“I’m tired of all these incidents with transgender women just being pushed up under the rug,” she said. “We are human beings.”

40 Prominent Athletes Urge Congress to Drop Proposed Trans Sports Ban

A group of 40 prominent athletes including soccer player Megan Rapinoe and boxer Patricio Manuel signed a letter Monday urging lawmakers to drop a proposal introduced by House Republicans to ban transgender and intersex women and girls from playing on school sports teams.

The letter was issued by Athlete Ally, a nonprofit group that works towards creating more LGBTQ-inclusive athletic environments, just as momentum seems to be building for a federal proposal modeled after statewide bans that exclude trans and intersex women and girls from competing.

“Right now, transgender and intersex human rights are under attack,” the letter states, “with politicians in Washington, D.C., pushing forward H.R. 734, the so-called ‘Protection of Girls and Women in Sports Act,’ which would stipulate that Title IX compliance requires banning transgender and intersex girls and women from participating in sports.”

“If this bill passes, transgender and intersex girls and women throughout the country will be forced to sit on the sidelines, away from their peers and their communities,” the letter continues. “Furthermore, the policing of who can and cannot play school sports will very likely lead to the policing of the bodies of all girls, including cisgender girls.”

According to the Movement Advancement Project, 20 U.S. states now have laws barring trans students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity.

Record Number of Anti-LGBTQ Bills in 2023

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is tracking 452 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S., according to data the organization has compiled through April 11. These bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the U.S. since January and represent a new record — already more than twice the number of such bills introduced all of last year.

Education and health care are the main focuses of these bills. The ACLU says they are being advanced in state legislatures at unprecedented levels. The bills include bans on access to gender-affirming health care for transgender youth and so-called parental rights bills that regulate curriculum and libraries in public schools, including any discourse on gender identity and sexual orientation. Nearly 300 education-related bills have been introduced in 2023, which is more than twice the number of similar bills in 2022, according to the ACLU data.

The ACLU notes that “new bills are filed nearly every day and the landscape is changing quickly.” In 2023, state legislatures have introduced four times as many healthrelated anti-LGBTQ bills and twice as many education-related bills than they did in all of 2022. Drag performances also are under heavy scrutiny for the first time.

Twenty-four of the more than 400 bills introduced in 2023 have already been signed into law in 11 states. A majority of these are healthcare and education related. Two of the signed bills ban drag performances in public spaces, while at least 39 bills targeting drag performances have been introduced in legislatures in 2023. This was not a category previously, according to the ACLU, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has added drag shows to his list of banned events and been very vocal on the issue.

More than two-thirds of the healthcarerelated bills introduced in 2023 intend to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth. Ten of those bills have been signed into law so far this year, according to a CNN review of state legislation and ACLU data. While 10 seems a benign number relative to 452, that’s more than triple the number of bills passed in 2021 and 2022 combined.