8 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | NEWS
Qsaltlake.com |
ISSUE 321 |
MARCH, 2021
Utah bill restricting trans females from playing girls’ sports in schools passes committee A bill aimed at prohibiting transgender female athletes from participating in girls’ sports passed through the Utah House Education Committee on Feb. 11. The bill moves on to be debated on the floor of the Utah House of Representatives. The bill is one of many being introduced in state legislatures across the nation by conservatives. Montana’s bill is modeled closely to the Idaho bill that passed last year. Also titled the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” the bill would require public school athletic teams to be based on “biological sex.” A similar bill in Idaho passed last year. Legislatures in North Dakota, Mississippi, Utah, and Tennessee have passed through committees, and Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and New Hampshire have bills waiting to be heard. A federal judge ruled in August 2020 that Idaho’s law was likely unconstitutional and passed strictly due to animus against transgender people, prompting him to grant a preliminary injunction that stalled HB500’s implementation. House sponsor Rep. Kera Birkeland introduced the bill to the committee and couched her arguments for the bill as a fight for the underdog — girls in sports — saying that the history of females participating in sports is a short one which is on the brink of being lost to transgender females. “Females will be left as spectators in their own sports,” she warned. “Across America, there are stories of individuals who identified as male at birth competing against our female athletes. These individuals who identified as male at birth are breaking records that no female will be able to reach. They are taking championships, titles, and scholarships from our female athletes,” Birkeland testified. Birkeland even said that it isn’t fair that girls must compete against transgender girls while experiencing menstrual cramps.
Competing agains trans athlete ‘bizzare’ Haley Tanne, who runs track at Southern Utah University, was introduced by Birkeland and testified about competing against a transgender woman in track. “While inclusion is important in sports, it will come at the cost of fairness,” Birkeland said.
“The first time I had to run against a biological male was bizarre. I felt like I was running against a giant. Not only was this athlete thicker boned and generally larger, but also reached a height well over 6 feet and towered over the female athletes. I couldn’t believe that this was okay and deemed as fair,” Tanne said. “Competing against a biological male running as a transgender female is hard. While you watch her effortlessly pass girls, winning heats, and crossing the finish line as if she just ran a moderate workout, it makes you feel sick inside,” Tanne continued. She said the experience brought her “anger, sadness, and confusion.” According to records of the only NCAA championship in which Juniper “June” Eastwood competed, she did, indeed, win one race — the Women’s 1 Mile Run. She came in 4.5 seconds faster than second-place Mikayla Malaspina. Malaspina went on to win first place in the Women 5000 Meter Run and the Women 3000 Meter Run, a race in which Eastwood placed 15th. Tanne placed 16th in the 1-mile Run and 26th in the Women 3000. The headline on SaveWomensSports. com — created to push legislation across the country — reads, “Man Takes Home NCAA Conference Championship in Women’s Mile.” Asked about fairness in competing against biological females, Eastwood said that’s a mixed bag. “When you’re talking about a sport like distance running, there’s a lot of different factors, and I’m going to have advantages and disadvantages,” she said. “My height and being a little heavier are disadvantages. I’m running against people with less weight, and I’m more injury-prone. In my case, I’m comparatively slower after the transition than I was before. It comes down to a lot of reasons — being heavier and taller — and honestly, because I have less testosterone than almost all of the women I compete against because the medication almost annihilated my testosterone.” As an example of the physical difference after testosterone depletion, Eastwood said she covered 1,500 meters in about 3
minutes, 51 seconds before hormone treatments. She believes her 1,500 now would hover around 4:24 – about a 13 percent speed decline. Asked if it would become common for students assigned as male at birth to transition to female to win races, Eastwood calls the notion “absurd.” “That’s unfathomable to me,” she told 406 Mt Sports. “If you’re comfortable in your body already, there would be no reason to transition. I don’t think anybody would ever do that to win some race or have a competitive edge in sports.” “Even if it was the case, it seems like a very serious outlier.”
Is there a need? Rep. Carol Spackman Moss asked Birkeland f there have been any cases of transgender girls wanting to participate in sports in Utah high schools. Birkeland answered that a few transgender girls in the state have considered playing but chose not to do so. Moss also asked if cisgender females who are taller and more muscular will be the next targets, as they may have an unfair advantage over other girls. “There will always be those differences,” Birkeland answered. “But at the end of the day, we’re both cisgender females. We have that similarity. The competitive advantages isn’t there. I’m not requesting that we just say they [transgender girls] cannot just play sports at all. I just don’t know that we know the data. Is it one year [of hormone therapy]? Is it four years?” “I think until we can get that figured out, we need to pause,” she continued. “while we work out the science and the data.” Moss lastly asked about what tests the bill would require in the case of more masculine or taller girls. “I think [requiring a girl to submit to a physical test] is just wrong and illegal,” she said. “These are some of the unintended consequences of this bill.” “We can’t require every high school girl to submit to testing,” Birkeland answered. “and it would be discriminatory to ask someone to submit to additional testing because of their identity. So if we don’t want to require extra testing, it’s impera-
