A bill by five Republican representatives attempts to ban transgender youth from sports in Indiana; gives cisgender students the power to potentially be ‘compensated’ with up to $1000 for playing with trans athletes; safeguards anti-trans policies by not allowing schools to challenge them.

This is one of at least 53 bills this year, that is adding to a legacy of normalizing and inciting hatred towards trans folks, through tired-old stereotypes that cast a lens of deception on trans people who are living their truth.

Following the theme of these copycat anti-trans sports bans, this bill attempts to further institutionalize transmisogyny and anti-Black racism by disguising itself as a ‘savior’ of womanhood.

The sex and gender binary are social constructs that restrict everyone regardless of their gender identity. And this bill is a gatekeeping of womanhood that creates pathways for transmisogyny to be rewarded by law.

Excluding trans girls and femme youth from participating in sports has negative outcomes for all youth. It reproduces patriarchal concepts of toxic masculinity that associate femininity with fragility.

Researchers Jack Turban and Jules Gill-Peterson describe how the refusal to acknowledge that trans women are not cisgender men, is an attack on science: “Unlike cisgender men, transgender women face dramatically elevated rates of bullying, harassment and subsequent anxiety and depression -- all of which make it difficult to train and succeed in athletics from a young age. In short, these anti-sports bills don't just deny scientific and social reality, they pretend to reverse it,” they write.

The harm created by this bills extends far beyond sports – 85 percent of trans youth said in a poll, that their mental health was negatively impacted by last year’s legislative attacks.

There is no equity if gender is defined by patriarchal systems that are designed to restrict everyone, regardless of their gender identity. There is no equity if it doesn’t include women who are trans. These bills are an attack on all youth, women and sports.

IN HB 1041 was read for the first time in Senate and referred to committee on 7th February, 2022.