The Trump administration is wrong about trans athletes

Animating the federal government’s push against transgender students is the Trump administration’s dictate that there are only two genders — male and female — determined at birth and which supposedly are immutable. In other words, with the stroke of a pen, the president sought to erase an entire category of humans who number in the millions in America. However, like it or not, transgender people — including trans children and youth — are real. We exist because of neurobiology and how our brains are wired. That same kind of wiring makes some people left-handed or introverted or attracted to someone of the same gender. We certainly didn’t “choose” to be transgender, and instead, it is all about the natural variation that comes with being human. Yet, inherent in the debate around transgender athletes is the idea that being transgender is somehow a “choice.” As the argument seems to go, non-transgender (“cisgender”) athletes and their parents shouldn’t have to go along with that “choice,” especially when the transgender athlete has some kind of supposed advantage in height or strength. But what if a cisgender student athlete is has a distinct advantage because they are abnormally tall or strong for their age? They didn’t choose that, and no one would argue that the student athlete should be penalized as a result. How about a cisgender student athlete who is older by virtue of being one day too young to start kindergarten — meaning that they would be nearly a year older and more mature (and stronger or faster) than the youngest student athlete in their cohort. Again, the older student didn’t choose that advantage. The list of advantages enjoyed by some student athletes — created by biology or brain wiring or circumstances they don’t control — could be endless. No one is talking about holding those student athletes to different standards. The same should be true for transgender student athletes.