And indeed, last month, a teen female athlete in Utah had to be put under police protection due to harassment after a school board member questioned on social media if the girl could be transgender.Ĭlearly, these bills have little to do with protecting women and everything to do with hurting queer and trans people. This leads to the inevitable situation in which cisgender girls get accused of being trans because of their talent. “Women’s rights” bills rely on a misogynistic logic that claims that any “abnormally” skilled female athlete must be transgender because a girl could never be so strong or fast or talented only a boy could be. In a recent article, Gaines offered a supposed justification for these bills, saying, “It’s important to send the message to young girls that they do matter and their privacy and equal opportunities and their safety-they’re worthy of those things.” However, the truth is that these bills guarantee neither equal opportunities nor privacy in fact, they put woman competitors under a sexist microscope.
One of the most high-profile voices in this movement is Riley Gaines, a University of Kentucky collegiate swimmer who says she is a “leader defending women’s single-sex spaces” under the reasoning that she is “standing up for women’s safety, privacy, and equal opportunities”-a mission that emerged after tying in fifth place with trans swimmer Lia Thomas in a 2022 NCAA championship match.