Over the past five years or so, polls have repeatedly shown that most Americans oppose allowing trans-identified males (“trans women” or “trans girls”) to compete in women’s sports. I’ve written about this a lot, emphasizing that allowing such competition is unfair to women, for trans-identified males have a pronounced sex-based advantage in just about any sport you can name. And I’ve emphasized that I reject the claim that such a principle is “transphobic”, especially not for those of us who favor trans people having nearly every right as everyone else, with no discrimination in housing, employment, or other areas where discrimination doesn’t clash with anyone else’s rights.
The polls that were taken invariably showed that over 60% of Americans opposed team sports competition between people of different sexes, favoring team membership by natal sex only. (Those favoring this coed competition were usually between 20% and 35%.) You can find polls like that here, here, here, and here. For politicos, it usually differs by party, with Democrats more often favoring biological men competing on women’s teams.
On Tuesday there were four states with ballot initiatives asking voters to approve laws or constitutional amendments banning biological men from competing in women’s sports, with two of these allowing coed competition if there were teams that were explicitly coed (I don’t know is any of these in American middle schools or above, but certainly have no objection to the existence of such teams so long as they compete with other coed teams.)
In all four cases, the vote was to ban natal males from competing against biological women. Here are the states:
ARIZONA: Proposition 318
Requires all schools and athletic associations to designate athletic teams as male, female or co-ed based on the sex of the athletes as recorded at birth. Bars students, athletes, employees and others from joining sports teams or from using school and athletic association facilities, including restrooms, that are not designated for their sex assigned at birth.
The results from the NYT (note: the ballots do not have an “undecided” box to tick):
COLORADO: Proposition 134:
Requires student athletes to participate on teams that match their sex assigned at birth, and requires schools, colleges and athletic associations to designate sports teams as male, female or coeducational.
The NYT breakdown:
NEBRASKA: Initiative 442 (constitutional amendment):
Amends the State Constitution to require schools to designate sports teams as male, female or coeducational, and prohibits male participation on female teams.
The results:
WASHINGTON STATE: Initiative 638: an indirect initiated state statute:
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The election results from Ballotpedia:
Arizona is regarded as a “purple” or “wing state” Washington and Colorado are blue states (Democratic), and Nebraska is a red state (Republican). As expected, red Nebraska had the highest votes for separating sports by birth sex, purple Arizona still a substantial margin (about 18%), and Colorado and Washington passed the initiatives by 5% and 13% respectively. The votes were generally in line with polls taken previously, though the polls I cite above weren’t broken down by state.
“Over the past five years or so, polls have repeatedly shown that most Americans oppose allowing trans-identified males (“trans women” or “trans girls”) to compete in women’s sports.”
The majority of Americans believe that trans women are not women and that trans men are not men. Which is both the common-sense and proper scientific viewpoint. Unfortunately, too many have been cowed into silence.
So this legislation is essentially getting us back to a position that nobody would have questioned a decade ago. It is a “solution” to a ridiculous social contagion perpetrated by a minority of deranged activists.
The real issue is how we can prevent the next virulent social contagion.
And…if I was of a conspiratorial bent, I’d speculate that politicians secretly love things like the trans-issue. It is so much easier to “solve” problems like this rather than say…take on the national debt or grapple with the effects of AI.
These results are good news for common sense (& plain old sanity), but I’m genuinely dismayed at how high the “no” votes were. I honestly don’t understand what these people are thinking and how easily they can ignore any regard for women’s & girls safety, privacy and dignity as they virtue signal.
Yes, Tuesday was a bit of a mixed back. “West Virginia, South Dakota, Kansas, Alaska and Arkansas voters all approved constitutional amendments affirming that only U.S. citizens can vote in state elections. . . . Voters in Ohio, North Carolina and Nevada passed measures to add to their state constitutions the requirements that residents present photo ID when voting in person.” NBC News