Brehm: The issue of trans students in sports is simply about fairness

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Back in the early 2000s, there wasn’t a lot of talk in the public square about America’s transgender community. So it admittedly caught me a little off guard when I went to work for Sen. Norm Coleman right after college and learned that the head of his state office, Susan Kimberly, had transitioned years before from a male identity.

Any uninformed discomfort I had quickly faded as I worked with Susan, who was wickedly smart, articulate, kind and held the senator’s confidence and trust perhaps more than anyone else on staff. She was very public about her transition — and even later wrote a play about it. But in the office, her gender identity was not an issue. Susan was simply our valued and admired colleague and friend. And she remains someone for whom I hold an enormous amount of respect.

Getting to know Susan and her life story gave me a great deal of empathy for what those who struggle with gender dysphoria go through. It can be a difficult path. Those on it certainly deserve to be treated with respect and dignity — always and by everyone.

Nevertheless, that does not mean, as Ellie Krug, a Minnesota school board member, has argued in these pages (“Minnesota is right, the federal government is wrong on trans participation in sports,” Strib Voices, Oct. 15), that transgender youth athletes should be able to compete in sports that align with their gender identity.

Certainly, Minnesota’s governing bodies have an obligation to protect the rights of the transgender community here. But women have rights too, including having access to the same athletic opportunities as men, and Minnesota has an obligation to protect that. It’s unfair to student female athletes and a clear violation of Title IX to force them to share locker rooms with and compete against transgender women. This isn’t discrimination, it’s common sense.

Interscholastic sports have always been divided into male and female categories, not because of prejudice or emotion, but because of a basic recognition of biological realities. Men and women, generally, possess distinct physical attributes — men tend to have greater muscle mass, bone density and cardiovascular capacity. Male puberty typically confers advantages in speed, strength and endurance. These self-evident differences are why we have separate competitions for girls and boys in the first place. If those bodily dissimilarities didn’t exist, girls and boys would always compete together in student athletics as they do in other high school competitions such as spelling bees, debate and chess, where the physical characteristics of the participants are irrelevant.

Women’s sports have historically been underfunded, under-promoted and undervalued. But Title IX and pioneering female athletes helped change that. Allowing trans athletes who enjoy undeniable and intrinsic somatic advantages to compete in women-only sports threatens these hard-won gains.

This is not a hypothetical concern. Just ask the United Nations. Titled “Violence against women and girls in sports,” a study released last summer found that by March of last year, “over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports.”

The report was created by U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, who noted in presenting it to the U.N. General Assembly: “As patriarchal structures continue to evolve, women and girls in sport are experiencing new forms of discrimination based on their sex … One glaring example is opening the female category of sports to males, further undermining their access to equal opportunities and the right to participate in safety, dignity and fairness.”

We saw some of this here in Minnesota last summer when a transgender high school student pitched her female opponents into oblivion and led her team to a state title. According to a news report, she threw five straight games in the playoffs and gave up only a single earned run in 35 total innings pitched — and mowed down 27 hitters with strikeouts. I certainly wish this transgender athlete well and hope she has a happy life, but this was not fair to her hardworking female opponents.