Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

On its face, the legislation is absolute rubbish. Trans women and trans girl and nonbinary folx are incredibly underrepresented in academic athletic programs. All this fuss and bother to pass these bills in Republican controlled states is such an obvious attempt to delude voters into thinking they are protecting children while actually not attending to legislation centering working families and children.

Do you really want your elected officials to invest all this time and energy into a non-issue at the expense of addressing your healthcare, your bridge repairs, your bus driver shortage, your ability to earn a decent wage in a safe work environment, and yes your pot holes? Not to mention our shared humanity.

The state’s House Education Committee moved the legislation forward on Tuesday in a 15-9 vote. The legislation says that “athletic teams or sports designated for females, women or girls … may not be open to students of the male sex,” according the bill’s text.

According to the bill, “sex” refers to the “biological distinction between male and female based on reproductive biology and genetic make-up.”

The legislation would affect community colleges, state universities and public schools, among others. 

The Hill

Pay attention to this bit – Three local representatives signed on as co-sponsors of the bill: state Reps. Valerie Gaydos, R-Moon; Carrie DelRosso, R-Oakmont, and Eric Nelson, R-Hempfield. Governor Wolf has promised to veto the legislation. Currently, Pennsylvania sporting rules allow principals to make decisions. It is case by case.

But it is incredibly harmful that each day we wake up to the relentless drumbeat of Republicans willing to literally destroy trans lives to accomplish their legislative goals. That human beings like Valerie Gaydos don’t care even though just miles from her local offices, FOUR trans BIPOC young people were murdered in 2021. What about protecting them? Murder is a rather divisive issue, especially when one of the homicides has not been yet solved. What is Gaydos doing to keep other trans youth from a similar fate in this region?

Nothing. She’s just making it worse because she must be an awful human being with a soul riddled with pockmarks for each puppy, baby, and trans person she kicks in real life with bonus malevolence for sprinkling her malice and ugly deck into social media. She probably has zero actual feelings about gender identity, but lots of big feelings about the Big Lie, her beloved would-be-dictator, and the real potential to lose Toomey’s Senate seat to a Democrat.

Anything that gets people fired up and turns them out to the polls for the midterm election is worth it, in her book.

Trans women and trans girl athletes have no inherit athletic advantage tied to their gender identity. Hormones and other medical treatments are not magic pills that automatically give everyone an enhanced athletic body. They are like everyone else – varied in their physical stature, strength, stamina, etc

For Preston Heldibridle, the executive director of the Pennsylvania Youth Congress, these proposals are spreading “misinformation” about transgender youth holding any advantage over other cisgender students, or students who identify with their gender assigned at birth.

“The truth is that trans girls and trans women are just as varied in size, in shape, in hormone levels as any cisgender woman,” Mr. Heldibridle said during a press conference after the vote. “There is no singular advantage that trans women and girls posses that cisgender girls and women do not. This does not harm cisgender youth.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

So must we now take every step possible to stop this legislation now, not wait for it to be vetoed. Please for the love of everything decent in this world, contact your State Representative and tell them what you think of this. Contact your Senator for good measure.

If you know someone who lives in these three districts, please contact them and ask them to stand up for trans women and trans girls and trans folx in general.