Donald Trump issues new ban on transgender athletes competing in women’s sports
Warning: This article contains discussion of discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community which some readers may find distressing.
Donald Trump took no time at all signing a flurry of executive orders following his inauguration last month (20 January), after being sworn in as the 47th president on the United States.
Many of Trump's executive orders are aimed specifically at the transgender community with the 78-year-old Republican leader, who is also the first convicted felon to assume the presidential role, previously declaring that the US government would recognise 'only two genders'.
And now, his latest executive order sees Trump issuing a ban on transgender athletes competing in women’s sports.
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Trump signed the order, which seeks to ban transgender athletes from competing on girls' and women's sports teams by denying federal funds for schools that allow it, earlier this week on Wednesday (5 February).
Speaking from the White House, he declared: "We will defend the proud tradition of female athletes.
"From now on, women’s sports will be only for women.
"The war on women’s sports is over."
Trump went on to claim the order in question was part of a 'sweeping effort to reclaim our culture and our laws'.
The order directs the Education Department to inform schools that allowing transgender athletes to compete will put them in violation of the federal law banning sex discrimination in schools.
Under the current law, which is known as Title IX, schools that discriminate based on sex are not eligible for federal funding.
Trump threatened that the order is putting every school receiving taxpayer dollars on notice that 'if you let men take over women's sports teams or invade your locker rooms', they will be investigated and risk losing federal funding.
"There will be no federal funding. So this will effectively end the attack on female athletes," he added.
Reuters has since reported that enforcing such a ban 'may be difficult to enforce' as current options for doing so 'range from looking at birth certificates, which can be altered, to inspecting the bodies of children, an alternative that most would find unpalatable at best'.
Chris Mosier, a transgender athlete and founder of transathlete.com, a website on school policies related to transgender athletes, says; "Anti-trans school sports bans are difficult to enforce because they rely on sex testing and body policing for implementation and enforcement."
Mosier continued: "An increased scrutiny on athletes' bodies creates serious harm to all women and girls who are perceived as 'more masculine' due to being queer, intersex, or otherwise out of alignment with narrow, white-centric norms of femininity."
Last week, Trump signed an executive order to protect children from 'chemical and surgical mutilation'.
The order, which is titled 'Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation', filed 28 January, states the US government will not 'fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called "transition" of a child from one sex to another'.
Section 1, titled 'Policy and Purpose', reads: "Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilising a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.
"This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end."
Defining a child as being an individual 'under 19 years of age', it continues: "Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding.
"Moreover, these vulnerable youths’ medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilisation."
The order defines 'chemical and surgical mutilation' as the use of puberty blockers to 'delay the onset or progression of normally timed puberty in an individual who does not identify as his or her sex', hormone treatment 'such as androgen blockers, oestrogen, progesterone, or testosterone', and surgical procedures 'that attempt to transform an individual’s physical appearance to align with an identity that differs from his or her sex or that attempt to alter or remove an individual’s sexual organs to minimise or destroy their natural biological functions'.
A study conducted by the JAMA Network in 2022 further says that transgender teenagers having access to hormone replacement therapy medications resulted in a considerably lower rate of depression, as well as a lower risk of suicide for school students.
The Stanford University of Medicine also found in another study that same year that transgender people being permitted to access hormone replacement therapy as teenagers - as opposed to later, as adults - resulted in a more positive mental health outcome.
Unfortunately for thousands of transgender Americans, however, Trump's new order directly prohibits federally run insurance programs - such as Tricare and Medicaid - from covering gender-affirming care, and adds that the Department of Justice would pursue litigation for anyone opposing this.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues and want to speak to someone in confidence, contact the LGBT Foundation on 0345 3 30 30 30, 10am–6pm Monday to Friday, or email [email protected]
Topics: Donald Trump, Celebrity, Politics, LGBTQ, US News, News, Sport
Rhiannon Ingle