Although Tennessee has already imposed a law banning transgender athletes, the state is not satisfied with its extent of transphobia: Republican Senator Joseph Hensley is sponsoring a bill that encourages cisgender youth to discriminate against trans youth, and promotes transmisogyny.

Two bills in the house and senate attempt to specifically ban trans girls and femme youth from sports, through a violent and unscientific imposition of the gender binary that would be detrimental for all athletes, upholding white supremicist ideas of femininity.

These 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 bills would give 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.

They would 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.

This fear-mongering against trans athletes is highly misinformed: “There is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition,” according to a Sports Medicine journal reviewing 8 research studies and 31 sport policies.

The harm created by these bills extends far beyond sports – 85 percent of transgender and nonbinary youth said in a poll, that their mental health was negatively impacted by legislative attacks on their identities.

TN SB 1862 was passed on Second Consideration, and referred to the Senate Education Committee on 26th January, 2022.

TN HB 1894 was withdrawn on 31st January, 2022.