Kindergarten girls targeted for invasive exams by new GOP-led ballot measure

https://www.rawstory.com/anti-trans-sports-measure/

Washington State voters will decide the fate of a ballot initiative that would require girls from kindergarten through high school to undergo sex-verification testing before playing school sports — a measure critics call the most extreme of its kind in the country.

IL26-638 would bar transgender athletes from girls' teams by mandating that a health-care provider certify a player's sex assigned at birth, using genetic screening, testosterone testing or an examination of reproductive anatomy as part of the annual sports physical every young athlete already undergoes, reported The Cut.

58 points · 6 comments · view on lemmy.world

6 Comments

sunbrrnslapper@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 29d

GROSS.

amio@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 29d

Skipping the middleman and just put kiddie diddling down in the law, huh? Can't say I'm surprised in any way

CombatWombat@feddit.online · 19 pts · 29d

Unsurprising that the testing required doesn't actually exist and doesn't actually help protect kids playing sports in any way

“This measure was clearly not written by somebody who practices medicine,” said Dr. Gina Martin, a family medicine physician who offers sports physicals to her patients. “Physicals focus on the two most important aspects of sports. First, musculoskeletal health — thinking about kids’ joints, bones, muscles, and tendons — and then cardiac health, looking into their heart health and finding out if we need to screen for additional cardiac risk factors.”

“What is certainly not medically necessary is for me to do an exam and confirm somebody’s sex, either through hormone testing, genetic testing or a non-indicated genital exam,” Martin added. “I don’t even know how it would work because I’ve never run those tests on a patient.”

JcbAzPx@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 29d (2 replies)

Sports should be combined at least up to the fifth grade. Preferably any time before high school. The physical differences that cause unfair competition don't exist that young.

HubertManne@piefed.social · 5 pts · 29d

yeah we had mixed gym in gradeschool and like some of the best kickball players were girls at that point.

Nollij@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 29d

There are legitimate reasons to separate them that aren't about physical differences. Same for mental competitions like chess. In many cases, it's to increase interest among the girls who would otherwise avoid it. Having a girls'/women's team makes it feel more open to them.

Of course, whenever the purpose is transphobia (or rather, oppression of transgender people), logic and evidence aren't the point. Laws like this have nothing to do with "leveling the playing field", that's just an excuse that people can understand.

frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io · 1 pts · 29d
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