From age four to 20, I was a wrestler. My father had been a wrestler, and I fell in love with the sport both for the competition as well as the time it gave me with him. I worked hard, and over my 15 years competing, I won five state championships.
Above the door to my high school wrestling room, my coach hung a sign that read, “Every day I leave this room a better wrestler and a better person than when I entered.” And after every practice, each member of our team slapped that sign as an acknowledgment of the hard work we put in. Every day, our coach would say, “If you don’t think you became a better wrestler today, stay behind and we’ll work on some drills. If you don’t think you became a better person today, stay behind and we’ll talk through it together.”
I care deeply about sports and the lessons they offer. I am also transgender. And I worry whether other trans people like me will get to participate in sports and experience the joys and lessons that I did.
In the last few months, there has been mounting pressure on the NCAA to make a decision about sports participation for transgender girls and women. Recently, 400+ athletes, 300+ academics and scholars and 50+ civil rights organizations issued letters to NCAA’s Board of Governors urging transgender inclusion in their policies.
Those opposed to including transgender girls and women in sports often make the disingenuous claim that they are doing so for the good of girls and women. They want you to imagine hyper-masculine boys competing against helpless girls. They want you to imagine a caricature of a trans woman that is nothing like the reality of who trans girls and women are.
We are women in every aspect of our lives, whether in the classroom, the workplace or the playing field. Our bodies vary widely, just like all girls’ and women’s bodies. When we play sports, sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose. But never do transgender women overshadow cisgender women in the sports we’re allowed to play. In fact, a new study by the IOC shows that transgender athletes are often at a physical disadvantage compared to our cisgender counterparts.
The truth is female athletes face real barriers: from unequal pay for female coaches and players to unequal funding for women’s sports teams to high risks of sexual harassment and abuse. These are barriers for both transgender and cisgender women, and banning trans people from being able to play does nothing to provide solutions to these real problems. In fact, studies show that transgender-inclusive policies in school increases participation in high school girls’ sports across the board. When women elevate one another, we all benefit.
That’s why our nation’s leading organizations committed to women’s rights and gender justice all support transgender inclusion in sport.
We must acknowledge that bans on trans girls and women from sport are really about a wider goal of trying to erase transgender people from existence, by making it impossible for us to participate in daily life and to pursue our passions and dreams. Anti-LGBTQ extremists pushing to exclude transgender people from sport are the same ones seeking to ban health care for transgender people, ban books about LGBTQ people and people of color in schools, and make it impossible to even have classroom discussions about LGBTQ issues or for LGBTQ teachers to speak about their spouses in the classroom. The NCAA must not be persuaded by extremists whose clear end goal is seeing a whole community disappear.
I am no longer competing for trophies. But I carry the lessons I learned as an athlete with me every day, striving to become a better person in all that I do. It is that drive that led me to work in higher education. It is that drive that led me to run for elected office. And it is my gratitude for these lessons that calls me to stand up for transgender athletes.
Sports change lives — I know that from personal experience. But to experience the power of sports, trans athletes must be allowed to play.
Rep. Zooey Zephyr is a Montana state representative for the 100th House District and one of the only openly transgender women elected to office in the country.