Texas Restricts Transgender Student Athletes To Participating As Gender Assigned At Birth

On Monday, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 25, which will prohibit transgender athletes from participating in K-12 school sports teams that do not align with their gender identity, Allyson Waller of The Texas Tribune reports.

The bill, authorized by Republican state representative Valerie Swanson, requires all athletes to participate on teams consistent with the sex listed on their birth certificate. This law goes into effect Jan 18.

Swanson has also made previous statements in support of Title IX that aims to secure fairness for girls in sports.

"It's so very, very important that we protect everything that women have gained in the last 50 years," she said.

You mean to tell us that the folks who support having former men race against or punch women aren't actually pro-women? Who knew?!

Title IX, to which Swanson refers, was designed to help fund women's collegiate athletics. If transwomen were allowed to participate in women's sports, then all athletic funding would go to male sports and to those men who couldn't cut it against other men. It's almost too obvious that the people begging for trans athlete participation want biological women out of sports entirely.

By defending women's rights to compete against other women, Greg Abbott brilliantly falls in line with a move made earlier this year in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Go figure. All the red states are defending women.

And although this all appears to be a no-brainer, advocacy groups like Equality Texas will refocus their efforts to fight for trans rights in the state by fighting for things that don't improve human lives.

"Our organizations will also begin to shift focus to electing pro-equality lawmakers who understand our issues," Equality Texas CEO Ricardo Martinez said. "We will continue to prioritize representing the vast majority of Texans who firmly believe the discrimination against trans and LGBTQ people is wrong."

We agree. Our trans community deserves equality, but what does it really mean to be equal? Is participating in any sport with whomever actually worth fighting for as if this were the Civil Rights movement?

Not many Texans have "fighting for the rights of trans athletes" on their Christmas shopping lists. In reality, the only reason anyone's paying to this is because it'll wreck the futures of thousands of women. THAT Texans care about.