The president of the United States, Donald Trump, has issued an executive order to stop transgender athletes from competing in both gender sports.
Federal funding will not be provided to educational facilities that allow transgender people to play sports and use female locker rooms as per the order that was signed on Wednesday.
Additionally, the order directs government agencies to convene representatives of major athletic organizations and governing bodies to promote “policies that are fair and safe, in the best interests of female athletes,” as well as encourage sex-based female sports categories at international organizations.
According to Trump, “We are putting every school that receives taxpayer dollars on notice: You will face federal funding penalties if you allow men to invade your locker rooms or play on women’s sports teams,” he said in reference to a 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in education.
Trump vowed to put an end to “the war on women’s sport,” but his administration would not “sit back and watch men beat and batter female athletes.”
“We’re just not going to let it happen, and it’s going to end, and it’s ending right now and no nobody is going to be able to do a damn thing about it because when I speak, we speak with authority”.
Trump added that he would push for the International Olympic Committee to explicitly support sex-based participation before the Los Angeles Summer Games in 2028, which has traditionally been reserved for transgender athletes.
The US president said, “We want them to change everything about the Olympics and this ridiculous subject.”
Despite having a small number of athletes, trans women’s participation in sport has been a savior in recent US cultural wars.
National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) president, Charlie Baker, told a US Senate panel in December that he knew of fewer than 10 trans people competing among the 520, 000 athletes at colleges nationwide.
In light of recent high-profile scandals involving athletes, such as college swimmer Lia Thomas, who won the NCAA Division I national championship in 2022 before being barred from women’s events by World Aquatics, polls have suggested growing public opposition to trans women competing.
In a Gallup poll conducted in 2023, 69 percent of Americans believed trans athletes should only be permitted to compete on sports teams that are transgender, a seven-point increase over that of 2021.
Baker, NCAA president, welcomed Trump’s order for setting a “clear, national standard”.
“We strongly believe that clear, consistent, and uniform eligibility standards would best serve today’s student-athletes instead of a patchwork of conflicting state laws and court decisions”, Baker said in a statement.
According to him, “The NCAA Board of Governors is reviewing the executive order and will take the necessary steps to align NCAA policy in the upcoming days, subject to further guidance from the administration.”
The Association will continue to support student athletes’ experiences on campuses.
A transgender advocacy group, Athlete Ally, expressed sadness that trans people would no longer be able to experience the joy of being their fully authentic selves.
This day is likely to pass for a long time as this administration pursues straightforward solutions to pressing problems that frequently turn off the country’s most underrepresented communities, the group said in a statement.
We will continue to choose to create a future for sports where everyone belongs in spite of this executive order. When and where possible, we will work with sporting organizations to expand access to the life-saving power of sports.
GLADD, one of the biggest LGBTQ rights organisations in the US, condemned Trump’s order as “inaccurate and incoherent”.
The organization stated in a statement that “every woman and girl, including transgender women and girls, should be welcome to play sports if they want, be allowed to choose their own bodies, be hired for jobs they are qualified for, and be free from lawless attacks by extremists in elected office.”
In any discussion about protecting women and girls, anti-LGBTQ politicians with a history of abusing, bullying, and denying their health care have no credibility.
Source: Aljazeera
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