The so-called “Save Women's Sports Act” by 16 Republican representatives, attempts to institutionalize white supremicist models of patriarchy and transmisogyny in Oklahoma as a twin copycat legislation of the state’s new law banning trans girls and femme athletes from sports.

Similar to Oklahoma’s new law from the Senate, this House Bill calls for a heightened a state of surveillance that will have detrimental impacts on all athletes, in its attempt to reduce them to their bodies: “Prior to the beginning of each school year, the parent or legal guardian of a student who competes on a school athletic team shall sign an affidavit acknowledging the biological sex of the student at birth,” the bill states.

Students who are 18-years-old and older, would sign the affidavit on their own, and anyone who is transitioning, would be needed to “notify” the school within 30 days.

The bill gives cisgender students the power to demand ‘compensation’ for playing with their transgender peers, and to get “relief” for “damages” from a school that calls out transphobia and attempts to create a safe space for trans athletes.

It would also let cisgender students sue schools that allows trans athletes to participate; gives schools the power to sue if their team competes with a team that has trans athletes; and safeguards anti-trans policies by not allowing government entities to challenge the ban.

These anti-trans bills are against science: they carry on the institutional erasure of intersex people through their unscientific and baseless claims about dividing young athletes in line with a ‘sex binary’ that has never existed.

The arguments upholding differences based on “biological sex” fall apart the more you dig into the details of how genes, gonads, and hormones keep sex subject to change: “The truth is, your biological sex isn’t carved in stone, but a living system with the potential for change,” Neurobiologist Dr. Simón(e) D Sun writes in the Scientific American.

As of March 31st, 13 states have banned trans athletes from playing sports in the United States.

OK HB 4245 passed the Oklahoma House of Representatives on March 23rd.