A bill by Republican Senators Jennifer Kiggans and Frank Ruff attempts to ban transgender girls and femme athletes through a violent imposition of the gender binary in their attempt to fear-monger about a baseless ‘problem’ that doesn’t exist.

Republicans have been getting increasingly forceful in unleashing coordinated legislative attacks against transgender folks each year, through copy-pasted legislation that attempts to ban trans youth’s access to lifesaving healthcare, sports, and safe spaces.

This legislation self-proclaims itself as the need of the hour, spreading propaganda against transgender folks by saying that women who are trans are ‘dominating’ sports, or that trans youth are being drawn towards ‘experimental’ treatments.

Facts show that this fear-mongering is rooted in hate, not science: “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 misinformed notion that girls who are transgender have an ‘advantage’ because of testosterone levels, ignores the double standard of how 10 percent of women have polycystic ovarian syndrome (which elevates testosterone levels) but they still allowed to play sports, researcher Jack Turban explains in the Scientific American.

“Transgender girls on puberty blockers, on the other hand, have negligible testosterone levels. Yet these state bills would force them to play with the boys,” Turban writes.

West Virginia’s bill 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.

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.

These 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.

VA SB 766 was passed by indefinitely in committee on 3rd February, 2022.