Tuesday, May 05, 2020

I Have No Idea,

How tennis is scored but I do know one thing trans athletes should be able to play on the team of their gender identity.
My Transgender Daughter Loves Tennis. Let Her Play It in Peace.
Jeff Gottlieb’s daughter Maddie loves to play tennis. Why are some states like Idaho so keen to curtail the participation of transgender children like her in the sports they enjoy?
The Daily Beast
By Jeff Gottlieb
May 03, 2020

My daughter came out as transgender a little more than a year ago. It was no surprise to me and my wife. We had thought it was a possibility for several years. Nearly all her friends were girls, and, at home, she sometimes wore my wife’s clothes.

Like most parents, we just want our daughter, who was then in the fifth grade, to be happy, productive and successful, and that hasn’t changed since she came out.
[...]
She’s also an accomplished tennis player, a sport she picked up on her own. In these days of isolation, my work is often interrupted by the rat-tat-tat of her smashing the tennis ball against our garage door. Sometimes, she says, the garage door wins. If Maddie stays interested, she’ll probably play in high school and maybe college. Like lots of kids her age, she dreams of turning pro.
But she was not the trailblazer, she walks in the shadow of Renee Richards…
Tennis in the 1970s had perhaps the most famous transgender athlete, Renée Richards. (Caitlyn Jenner never competed as a woman.) The U.S. Tennis Association tried to force Richards to take a sex chromosome test before she could complete in the U.S Open. Richards sued, and a New York judge ruled that she could play as a woman without taking the test.
According to the article the father contacted the USTA’s main office in Orlando, Florida to question them about their policy on trans tennis players and they had no problems with her playing tennis on the girls team.

Unlike what is happening up in Idaho.



The ACLU is fighting to make sports accepting of trans athletes,
Four Myths About Trans Athletes, Debunked
Upholding trans athletes' rights requires rooting out the inaccurate beliefs underlying harmful policies sweeping through state legislatures.
April 30, 2020

For years state lawmakers have pushed legislation attempting to shut trans people out of public spaces. In 2020, lawmakers zeroed in on sports and introduced 20 bills seeking to ban trans people from participating in athletics. These statewide efforts have been supported through a coordinated campaign led by anti-LGBTQ groups that have long worked to attack our communities.
[…]
FACT: Including trans athletes will benefit everyone.
MYTH: The participation of trans athletes hurts cis women.
Many who oppose the inclusion of trans athletes erroneously claim that allowing trans athletes to compete will harm cisgender women. This divide and conquer tactic gets it exactly wrong. Excluding women who are trans hurts all women. It invites gender policing that could subject any woman to invasive tests or accusations of being “too masculine” or “too good” at their sport to be a “real” woman. In Idaho, the ACLU represents two young women, one trans and one cis, both of whom are hurt by the law that was passed targeting trans athletes.
[…]
FACT: Trans athletes do not have an unfair advantage in sports.
MYTH: Trans athletes’ physiological characteristics provide an unfair advantage over cis athletes.
[...]
Trans athletes vary in athletic ability just like cisgender athletes. “One high jumper could be taller and have longer legs than another, but the other could have perfect form, and then do better,” explains Andraya Yearwood, a student track athlete and ACLU client. “One sprinter could have parents who spend so much money on personal training for their child, which in turn, would cause that child to run faster," she adds. In Connecticut, where cisgender girl runners have tried to block Andraya from participating in the sport she loves, the very same cis girls who have claimed that trans athletes have an “unfair” advantage have consistently performed as well as or better than transgender competitors.
[…]
FACT: Trans girls are girls.
MYTH: Sex is binary, apparent at birth, and identifiable through singular biological characteristics.
Girls who are trans are told repeatedly that they are not “real” girls and boys who are trans are told they are not “real” boys. Non-binary people are told that their gender is not real and that they must be either boys or girls. None of these statements are true. Trans people are exactly who we say we are.

There is no one way for women’s bodies to be. Women, including women who are transgender, intersex, or disabled, have a range of different physical characteristics.
I remember watching a news clip of a woman at a school board hearing to ban saying that the trans girl dressed like a boy in tee shirt, jeans, and sneakers, I remember seeing the mother who was complaining was dressed in in tee shirt, jeans, and sneakers and her daughter standing next to her was also in tee shirt, jeans, and sneakers!
FACT: Trans people belong on the same teams as other students.
MYTH: Trans students need separate teams.
Trans people have the same right to play sports as anybody else. “For the past nine years,” explains Carroll, “transgender athletes have been able to compete on teams at NCAA member collegiates and universities consistent with their gender identity like all other student-athletes with no disruption to women’s collegiate sports.”



Many young trans people are going Renee who?

My generation remembers her as a trailblazer she took the United States Tennis Association (USTA) for discrimination and won!
40 YEARS LATER, RENÉE RICHARDS' BREAKTHROUGH IS AS IMPORTANT AS EVER
Tennis.com
By: Steve Tignor
September 20, 2017

As Renée Richards walked through the winding, Tudor-lined lanes of Forest Hills, people from the neighborhood gathered around her to wish her luck. After seeing the ophthalmologist’s picture in the newspapers for months, the locals of Queens knew where she was going—the West Side Tennis Club—and the magnitude of what she was about to do.
[…]
When a TV station subsequently—and erroneously—ran a report that Richards was a man masquerading as a woman, she became front-page news. Richards set the record straight at a press conference. The attention died down, and the paparazzi moved on. But one set of reports continued to irk her.
[…]
Help came from an unsavory, if effective, corner: Roy Cohn. The legendarily vicious consigliere to Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump took Richards’ case. The tennis authorities never stood a chance. With a supportive affidavit from King, Richards won her suit.
Her lawsuit lead the way for trans athletes, she is one of the true trailblazers. At age 85 she lives a quite life in a small town north of New York City.

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