feature image photo by Heather Diehl / Staff via Getty Images

Among the many cases taken up by the Supreme Court this week were two on the issue of trans athletes participating in women’s and girl’s school sports. The court indeed chose to uphold state bans on trans athletes, likely paving the way for more districts and institutions to write and enforce new policies excluding trans women and girls from playing the sports they love.

One of the two cases before the court concerns West Virginia teen Becky Pepper-Jackson, whose main athletic activities are shot put and discus. She was removed from her school’s track and field team by the state when the West Virginia legislature passed HB 3293, a total ban on trans girls from girls and women’s sports that applies to middle school, high school, and college and at all levels of competition, including intramural and recreational sports. Pepper-Jackson had begun her transition before puberty. She is the only trans girl known to have sought participation in girls’ sports in West Virginia.

The second case concerns Lindsay Hecox, a trans runner from Idaho who wanted to join the women’s track and cross-country teams at her university. She tried out but didn’t make the team, and thus was playing at the club level when her state passed HB 500 (I’m intentionally not referred to these bills by their colloquial names, which play into conservative ideas about what these bans do). HB 500 was the nation’s first statewide total ban on trans women and girls in athletic programs at all public school levels from elementary school to college.

The Supreme Court ruled that their respective states did not discriminate against Becky and Lindsay by preventing them from participating on the sports teams that reflect their gender.

We have published many pieces on Autostraddle about why these bans are unfair, cruel, and often rooted in bunk or nonexistent science. I’m actually not even all that concerned with the various nuances and details of Lindsay and Becky’s cases, especially because I’m not convinced the justices in the majority of this decision were either. The point has never been to create a fair playing field for athletes in women’s and girls’ sports; the point has always been to make it harder for trans people to be a part of public life and society. You cannot tell me that a ban aimed at elementary school students could possibly be well-intentioned or designed to create fairness. Elementary school sports are not even meant to be competitive endeavors, they exist to keep kids active and teach them about team-building while learning what their bodies are capable of.

The cruel irony of this legal battle to push trans women out of sports is just how often I hear from trans athletes about what athletics have done to help them feel more confident, embodied, and confident in their transness. My friend Cammie, an incredible tennis player who should have gone viral for her absolutely killer progress from a complete beginner to a serious force to be reckoned with on the court, instead went viral because she was kicked off a recreational league.

As a recreational multi-sport cis athlete myself, it is my firm belief that if you as a cis athlete feel threatened by trans players, you’re weak. You’re not just a loser; you’re a bad athlete.

As I write this, I’m preparing to watch Serena Williams’ return to grand slam tennis, an incredible feat that’s nonetheless difficult to balance with the news of the day. Earlier this summer, she made her debut post-retirement at a tournament that previously did not have a women’s division for fifty years. Can we really marvel at these feats in women’s sports without acknowledging that women’s sports can never truly progress when these trans bans become the law of the land across the country?

Tennis, the sport I happen to know the most about in terms of rules and regulations since I play it, has a spotty track record with trans women’s inclusion, which is increasingly true of all sports. In a very cowardly move last year, the USTA—the national governing body for both recreational league and professional tennis—effectively banned trans women from participating in their tennis leagues. The decision was announced quietly mid-season for many leagues last winter in an eligibility update post that directly cites Trump’s anti-trans Executive Order as the basis for the decision, borrowing its limited definitions of sex and gender.

On one screen, I’ve got Wimbledon playing and on another, I’ve got the World Cup. FIFA doesn’t currently have a formalized ban on trans women playing in the Women’s World Cup, but Trump has of course been pressuring the institution to follow the lead of the International Olympic Committee, which decided this year to bring back genetic sex-testing to all women’s sports categories.

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What I’m getting at is that there’s no way to engage with sports—at any competition level!—without encountering the impact and harm of trans-exclusionary policies. The attacks are being mounted at all levels of athletic competition and even in non-competitive just for fun realms of physical activity, like recreational sports and sports for children.

Women’s sports are becoming a site of deep discrimination—and not in the usual ways they have been throughout history. A fight for women’s sports to be taken as seriously as men’s sports ends up defanged if it isn’t coupled with a fight for trans girls and women. I understand why so many in the queer community advocate for women’s sports to be more resourced and platformed, but that advocacy has to include loud criticism of anti-trans policies and rhetoric and also more explicit consideration for flaws in the sports-industrial complex. At the professional level, the focus should not be on just fighting for women’s sports to be exactly the same as men’s sports, which are corrupt as hell and increasingly inaccessible to fans. We can imagine something different for women’s sports. We must fight for that, and it must include space for trans athletes.

Of course, it’s especially frustrating that the majority of those fighting for and upholding these discriminatory bans have no interest in supporting women’s sports in any other capacity—they’re not even watching women’s games, let alone fighting for those female athletes to get equal pay.

Under the false promise of saving women’s sports, these bans are making women’s sports less welcoming and less safe, and we all need to be paying attention.