Although West Virginia has already imposed a law banning transgender girls and femme athletes, the state is not satisfied with its extent of transphobia: a bill by 10 Republican Delegates attempts to ban transgender girls and feme athletes from school sports by carrying forward a patriarchal femininity and toxic masculinity that’ll be detrimental to all youth.

In line with 75 copy-paste bills this year that attempt to ban – or have already banned – trans youth from sports, West Virginia’s bill attempts to reduce all student athletes to their bodies, through its categorization of what it means to be a ‘man’ or ‘woman’.

“The legislature finds that there are ‘inherent differences between men and women,’ and that these differences remain cause for celebration, but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual's opportunity,’” the bill states, in a clumsy attempt to defend a binary that has never existed.

The bill proceeds to irrelevantly go into detail about anatomy to dismiss women athletes, claiming that their talent, commitment and grit will never match up to men; and carries on the institutional erasure of intersex people through their unscientific and baseless claims about dividing young athletes in line with a binary that has never existed.

It would also 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. It lets 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.

Along with normalizing hate against youth who are being who they are, these bills are against 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.

WV HB 2734 is active.