Sports are a concept almost as old as civilization itself. From the Olympics of ancient Greece, to the games of lacrosse and pitz played by indigenous peoples of the Americas, humanity has engaged in sport. Throughout history, sport has always been an integral part of our social experience. Participation in these physical pursuits has served many purposes, from simple exercise and play to forging and strengthening social bonds. Sports strengthen and inspire us. They encourage us to grow. Sport can be a battleground, both literally and figuratively, and in sport, conflict is resolved and statements are made.

There are many people today that bemoan the perceived politicization of sport – but politics and sports are inextricably intertwined and have been since their inception. When athletes make political statements, we listen to them. Politicians, coaches and commissions steer the conversation about what place sport holds in society, who benefits and how, and who is allowed to participate. The New York State Athletic Commission suspended the license of Muhammad Ali and stripped him of his heavyweight title for his stand against participation in the Vietnam war. More recently, the NFL blacklisted Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee during the national anthem as a form of protest to police killings of Black Americans.

And now, governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are spearheading the movement to prevent transgender children from participation in school sports. Under the guise of “safety” and “fairness” these politicians and the people they represent seek to deny trans children access to an incredibly important part of public life. Their arguments, however, deny scientific expertise and their intentions extend beyond supposed concern for women’s athletics. The same people insisting that excluding trans athletes is necessary for fairness and safety have no concern at all for the health and safety of trans people, and they demonstrate with their rhetoric who they feel deserves to be safe and who does not. Bills like TX HB 25, which was just signed into law by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, are blatantly discriminatory and are part of a broader effort to erase trans people from public life.

Advocates for this discriminatory legislation will claim that trans girls should be kept out of female sports categories, citing the effects of testosterone on their athletic performance, but the very same people have pushed for bans on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender students, including the puberty blockers that would make this issue irrelevant.

In the past year, over a hundred anti-transgender bills have been introduced in US state legislatures. These bills seek to ban us not only from participating in sports but from accessing healthcare and public facilities like restrooms and locker rooms. Taken in context it becomes clear that bans on transgender participation in sports are only a piece of the overall strategy pursued by the Republican party to demonize and politicize transgender identity. From mythical “bathroom predators” to imaginary domination in sports, the political right has crafted a convenient enemy to unite behind.

While open discrimination against Black people and other racial and ethnic minorities has become less politically acceptable, the same tired tropes and dehumanizing arguments used to exclude non-white identities have now been applied to trans people. The same disgraceful examinations of bone structure and density once applied to Black athletes have been cut and pasted into think pieces against trans athletes. The fairytale of transgender women preying on cis women in bathrooms has echoes of reactionary fearmongering towards immigrants and Black men before that.

This exclusionary and inflammatory rhetoric should be unacceptable in the halls of government and the pages of public media, but the political right perceives transgender people as an easy target. The fact is that we are statistically underrepresented in sports. There is no widespread transgender dominance in any sport anywhere in the world.

The intentions of rightwing politicians like Abbott and DeSantis are clear. They are using transgender children as scapegoat and compromising their health and safety to score political points with their party and their constituents. Trans kids deserve equal access to sports. Trans people deserve equal access to public life. We deserve love and safety and inclusion, and make no mistake: we will win this fight, and history will not remember dinosaurs like Abbott and DeSantis kindly.

• Alana McLaughlin is a mixed martial arts athlete

This article is a repost from The Guardian

Calvin was always a boy — but the world did not recognize him that way.

That’s the story in the new children’s book Calvin. Authors JR and Vanessa Ford show how their young protagonist navigates the complicated feelings of being a transgender kid and how he comes into expressing who he really is, with illustrations from Kayla Harren.

The Fords are also parents to two children, one who is trans and inspired this book. Ellie first raised the topic shortly after their 5th birthday — the family is now six years into their journey.

“That transition really was a labor of love and a labor of learning for all of us,” JR Ford says. “It really helped jump-start what we needed to do, you know, to research this whole new lexicon of terms and vocabulary as well as: What does it mean for us to continue to support Ellie in their transition?”

Though Calvin is inspired by the Fords’ child, the book is not entirely a fictionalization of their personal experience.

“There are pieces of what Calvin says that Ellie said to us early on,” Vanessa Ford says. “But we have a large network of families with many children who transitioned around 4 or 5 years old, and each one of these children have informed us of their own experiences, and we’ve grown up with them in our community of families with trans kids.”

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Interview Highlights

NPR’s Audie Cornish spoke with Vanessa and JR Ford for All Things Considered.

On parents using the word transgender with their children

Vanessa Ford: When we first were with our child when they were 4, there was one book out, and it used the word transgender. And we didn’t use that word for quite some time in reading the book to Ellie, to our child.

In the book, Calvin’s parents introduce him to the term transgender.Penguin Random House

We skipped over it because we didn’t want to provide a word. However, when we finally used the word, Ellie’s breath took out all the air in the room and they said, “That’s who I am. There’s a word for who I am.” And so some of this is that our children may not have the language to describe how they feel or how they identify, and sometimes having that language can be incredibly empowering.

In one scene in the book, Calvin reintroduces himself to a classmate using his new name.Penguin Random House

On the scene where Calvin reintroduces himself to a classmate as a boy

Vanessa Ford: That’s actually one of the things we found on our journey — that kids are really open. They are accepting, interested and curious. It’s really adults and political figures who have taken the issue of trans kids and politicized it and put all this fearmongering out there, when in our experience and the experience of many people we’ve talked with, kids may have a few questions like Calvin’s friend did, but then it’s on to recess — what are we doing next? And when kids are able to be their authentic selves, it draws in others around them.

On what they would say to parents who aren’t ready to talk to their children about transgender identities

Vanessa Ford: I think right now is the time if there ever was a time. We have a political environment in which trans youth in particular are being targeted around the country. We have trans kids coming out every day in classrooms around the country. And I would just encourage them to take a risk. Your child is going to be open and eager to learn this, and it may help them be a better, empathetic friend to somebody in their class or their community. And I would say learn from our experience. We were scared. We were fearful of even using that word in the beginning when, in fact, our child found it so empowering.

JR Ford: I would also add that our kids aren’t a monolith. They are unique in every single way. And for parents and adults and caretakers, give them the opportunity to be themselves. At least, being able to listen to your kids is one of the things that we always try to promote. Listen to your kids. They know what’s best for them because they’re living their experience every single day.

Amy Isackson and Patrick Jarenwattananon adapted this interview for the web.

This article is a repost from NPR

Dr. Rachel Levine is once again making history, becoming the first openly transgender four-star officer to serve in any of the country’s eight uniformed services.

During a ceremony Tuesday, Levine was sworn in as an admiral — the highest-ranking official of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Levine’s appointment to the USPHS Commissioned Corps also made her the organization’s first female four-star admiral.

Previously she became the first openly transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate for a federal office.

“[Becoming a four-star officer] is very meaningful to me. I am so impressed by the dedication, the commitment and the expertise of the officers and the United States Public Health Service Commission Corps. And it is truly an honor to lead them and to serve with them,” Levine said in an interview with NPR.

She describes her appointment as part of the Biden administration’s commitment to diversity, inclusion and equity.

“I think this is symbolic of that commitment and for transgender youth and other transgender individuals that there are no glass ceilings and no limitation to what we can achieve,” Levine said.

In her role, Levine will lead a team of more than 6,000 officers who respond to public health crises and natural disasters.

“This is a momentous occasion, and I am honored to take this role for the impact I can make and for the historic nature of what it symbolizes,” Levine said during her speech at the ceremony.

Levine, who serves as the nation’s 17th assistant secretary of health, focuses on improving the health and well-being of individuals across the country — specifically working to help the U.S. overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before becoming a federal official, Levine served as Pennsylvania’s health secretary, highlighting several public health issues across the commonwealth: the opioid epidemic, maternal health and immunization rates among children.

She says her career has given her the chance to serve.

“First in academic medicine, to then serve my patients and students, then to serve in public health in Pennsylvania and even in Washington, D.C., as the assistant secretary for Health. Now with this role, this is just a further extension of that,” Levine said.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra described Levine’s appointment as a “giant step” forward toward equality in the U.S.

“This is a proud moment for us at HHS. Admiral Levine is a cherished and critical partner in our work to build a healthier America,” Becerra said in a release.

One of the eight uniformed services, the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps is dedicated to protecting, promoting and advancing public health in the U.S., HHS said.

This article was reposted from NPR

Girls in skirts and boys in trousers. This has been the strictly gendered story of school uniform since long before the days of Tom Brown putting on a top hat and tails to learn his times tables or the girls of Hamlet of Radcliff school pitching up in starched aprons with gloves (seriously). Now the rules appear to be relaxing, as 80 state schools across the UK, including 40 primaries, have introduced gender-neutral policies allowing girls to wear trousers (which, beyond the school gate, many of us have been doing for at least a century) and boys to wear skirts.

“We introduced the policy more than a year ago,” Paula Weaver, headteacher at Allens Croft primary school in Birmingham, tells me. The school is thought to be the first state primary in the country to make their uniform policy explicitly gender-neutral, changing the wording and linking in staff, governors and parents.

In practice, what does this mean? “That children are expected to wear uniform, but they can wear whatever part of that uniform they want,” is her no-nonsense answer.

For other schools it’s about removing references to a pupil’s gender in uniform dress codes. “This year we’ve gone from a girls’ uniform and a boys’ uniform to a skirt uniform and a trousers uniform,” explains Liana Richards, deputy head teacher at Uplands Community College, a state secondary in East Sussex. “It’s about recognising the rights of students who feel they might not fit into the binary genders. It’s less of a big deal to the students than you might think. We haven’t seen that much difference yet, although some girls have made the conscious decision to wear the trousers uniform, which has to be worn with a tie.”

The move is part of a government-funded drive to support LGBT+ children in schools and be more open to children questioning their gender or sexual identity. It follows the decision in January by the 170-year-old private school Brighton College to scrap uniform rules for trans pupils. Research by Educate and Celebrate, a charity giving LGBT+ inclusive training to school staff, found that 53% of schools don’t teach about LGBT+ relationships and 49% don’t teach the definitions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans+.

Allens Croft and Uplands Community College are two of a number of primaries and secondaries designated a “best practice school” by Educate and Celebrate for, among other things, its gender-neutral uniform policy. “It’s in line with the ethos of our school,” Weaver explains. “It ties in with our equality work around homophobic and transphobic bullying and eradicating the negative use of the word ‘gay’. We believe that children have the right to express their own identity in a way that is most comfortable for them.”

Has there been any backlash from parents? “None at all,” she insists. “The thing is, we’re not insisting on anyone doing anything. It’s not about influencing children. It’s about giving them choice.”

What about the pupils? Are they turning up in every uniform combination under the sun? Apparently not. “We still have the battle with children who don’t wear uniform,” she notes. “We still have more trouser-wearing across the board than boys wearing skirts. But that’s about what’s seen as acceptable in society and you know what? We need to work on that, too.”

-Article taken from The Guardian

Nine-year-old Stormi set out last month to sell cookies just like every other Girl Scout — with a sales pitch and a goal.

“I like to sell cookies because it’s very nice to sell cookies,” she told BuzzFeed News. Cookies, she said, “make people smile.”

But when Stormi, who is transgender, started knocking on neighbors’ doors near her home in Herrin, Ill., one man turned her away, saying: “Nobody wants to buy cookies from a boy in a dress.”

“It made me sad,” Stormi told BuzzFeed News. “Because I’m a girl.”

So, she said, she found a way to shut down her bully and sell more than 3,000 boxes of cookies.

[Girl Scouts choose transgender girls over $100,000 donation]

In addition to raising funds for the Girl Scouts, Stormi wanted to donate cookies to local foster children — because she is one. She went into Illinois’s foster care system about three years ago, her foster mother, Kim, told BuzzFeed, which did not use the family’s last name.

Attempts to reach the family through the Girl Scouts this week were unsuccessful.

BuzzFeed reported that Stormi decided to join the scouts last year; she recently told her foster mother that she wanted to give cookies to other children in the system.

But, her foster mother said, last month’s incident involving the neighbor was jarring.

“She was like, ‘Why am I not good enough?’” Kim told the news site. “We just started talking and she decided she wasn’t going to let him win.”

Stormi started selling her cookies through the Girl Scouts’s online portal, Digital Cookies, last week. She wanted people to choose the option “deliver in person.”

“My troop plans to use the money to help us go on trips,” she wrote online. “I have my own plans as well. At my request my family will donate boxes to local foster kids like me!”

She added: “I have learned that even though people can be mean I shouldn’t give up!”

Supporters have rallied around Stormi’s cause.

A New York-based comedy duo gave people who bought Stormi’s cookies free admission to a show. A California multimedia musical agreed to donate a box for every ticket sold.

An LGBTQ support group in Idaho sent out a call for support, too. “While out selling cookies,” a member from Idaho Falls Gender Community wrote, Stormi “was met with negativity, no orders, and even one less than kind person. … As a parent, this made me angry. As a parent of transgender children, this made me livid!

“I’m ordering all of my cookies from Stormi!”

Stormi’s project ended over the weekend.

[Selling Girl Scout cookies online can have a dark side]

Transgender Girl Scouts have struggled to gain acceptance.

After a troop in Colorado admitted a 7-year-old transgender girl in 2011,several Girl Scout troops in Louisiana disbanded in protest and a California teen called for a boycott.

“Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. … is not being honest with us girls, its troops, its leaders, its parents or the American public,” the teen said in a YouTube video, released by a Houston-based group called the “Honest Girl Scouts.” “Girl Scouts describes itself as an all-girl experience. With that label, families trust that the girls will be in an environment that is not only nurturing and sensitive to girls’ needs, but also safe for girls.”

In 2015, a Girl Scouts troop in Washington was handed a $100,000 donation — as long as the girls agreed not to use the money to support transgender children.

The Girl Scouts of Western Washington returned the check.

“Girl Scouts is for every girl,” Megan Ferland, the Girl Scout council’s chief executive, told Seattle Metropolitan over the summer. “And every girl should have the opportunity to be a Girl Scout if she wants to.”

As an organization, Girl Scouts of the USA supports LBGTQ children.

“Placement of transgender youth is handled on a case-by-case basis, with the welfare and best interests of the child and the members of the troop/group in question a top priority,” the organization said on its website. “That said, if the child is recognized by the family and school/community as a girl and lives culturally as a girl, then Girl Scouts is an organization that can serve her in a setting that is both emotionally and physically safe.”

Kim told BuzzFeed the support motivated Stormi to fight back against discrimination.

“This is something I have been trying to instill in her for years,” Kim told the news site. “How worthy she is; who she is is okay. For her to be able to read all these messages that people are sending from around the world to support her, the love is just overwhelming.”

[Girl Scout Cookies boycott sought by teen after organization admits transgender child]

Jay Strobel, spokesman for Girl Scouts of Southern Illinois, called Stormi’s effort “amazing.”

“She decided to donate boxes to something close to her heart — which is foster care,” Strobel told The Post. “She took something that wasn’t so pleasant and she turned it into a positive experience.”

Stormi said donating Girl Scout cookies to foster children is a tradition she wants to continue.

“I want kids like me to know they are perfect just the way they are,” she told BuzzFeed. “There are people all over the world that love you. Never give up because it does get better.”

Original Article from The Washington Post. You can view the original article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/02/transgender-girl-scout-stands-up-to-bully-who-wouldnt-buy-cookies-from-a-boy-in-a-dress/

TIME Magazine just declared that “The Gender-Neutral Bathroom Revolution is Growing.” This week, San Francisco joins Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Austin, Seattle, Santa Fe, and New York City in requiring all businesses and city buildings to designate single-stall restrooms as all-gender. While transgender and gender nonconforming people have the legal right to use restrooms that correspond to their gender, this kind of legislation is still a relief for people with disabilities, trans and gender nonconforming people, and families with small children — not to mention women simply tired of waiting on line for the women’s restroom while the single-stall men’s bathroom stands empty.

The new legislation introduced by San Francisco Supervisor David Campos and crafted with the support of Transgender Law Center will be the most comprehensive of its kind in the country, with robust enforcement mechanisms and a requirement for new buildings to include an all-gender option.

Read the powerful speech that Jennifer Orthwein, TLC Volunteer Staff Attorney, shared at the SF press conference about the difference an all-gender bathroom can make:

“When I was born, the doctors told my parents I was a girl. And from then on, the expectations of how I should dress and behave began. I never felt comfortable presenting as a girl or a woman, but never really felt I was a boy or man either. I never really understood, and still don’t, why, because of my body, I have to use specific spaces, particularly when using them subjects me to harassment and sometimes violence.

One of the most traumatic incidents occurred while searching for a wedding venue with my fiancé and mother. I exited the women’s restroom of a hotel and as I approached them, someone grabbed my shoulder and spun me around – it was a man with his fist clenched and raised. I don’t remember his exact words, but I knew why he was about to hit me so I threw up my hands up and shouted, “I am a woman.” Once he heard my voice and those words, his fist relaxed and he responded, “Oh, I’m sorry.” I looked into my mother’s eyes. They expressed so much fear and as he walked away my whole body just shook and I began to cry.

Experiences like this are not uncommon for people like me. Other experiences include having a security guard kick and bang on a single-use restroom door, threatening to break down it down and remove me while I was using it. I have also had groups of women in the restroom line harass me in an attempt to redirect me to the men’s room.

People seem to feel justified in policing gendered spaces and they do so based on their assumptions of a person’s gender. No one should fear being assaulted or harassed for using something as basic and necessary as a restroom. It is my hope this ordinance will increase restroom access for everyone and reduce the anxiety and fear people like me often experience when forced to choose between sex-segregated facilities that may not be consistent with how others perceive us.”

This Article originally from Transgender Law Center. You can view the original here: http://transgenderlawcenter.org/archives/12358

Victory for Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Youth in California Schools!

Governor Jerry Brown recently signed into law AB 1266, which is a further extension of civil rights to transgender and gender-nonconforming students.

Here’s what you need to know, quoted directly from the bill itself:

“Existing law prohibits public schools from discriminating on the basis of specified characteristics, including gender, gender identity, and gender expression, and specifies various statements of legislative intent and the policies of the state in that regard. Existing law requires that participation in a particular physical education activity or sport, if required of pupils of one sex, be available to pupils of each sex.