June 7, Missouri state senator Holly Thompson Rehnder’s Bill #39 was put into action, preventing transgender student athletes from competing in leagues that don’t correspond with their official birth certificate. If a school doesn’t follow this bill, their public funding may be withheld. However, this legislation does allow female athletes to compete in male designated sports if no corresponding female competition is available.
“Biological males are bigger, stronger and faster than their female counterparts. The majority of women simply can’t compete,” Sen. Thompson Rehnder said, according to Missouri Senate News. “Allowing biological males to compete against females will wipe out women’s sports as we know it. We simply must protect the gains female student athletes have made.”
While this bill was intended to equalize the playing field for all athletes, Logan Crews, 2019 KHS alumni and an active protestor for trans-rights, disagrees. Crews said the decision was instead made with the intention to remove trans-people’s unalienable rights under a false idea of fairness.
“For years, transgender people have been scrutinized,” Crews said. “Now it’s more than that. Our bodies are [being used as] an obstacle to prevent us from doing what we love.”
Crews came out as a transgender male his junior year, when there weren’t any laws limiting his participation in high school sports or his access to transition treatments. Throughout his high school career, Crews said he and other transgender students faced a large amount of backlash.
“High school is hard for anyone, transgender or not.” Crews said. “I remember [other] transgender [students] getting bullied just for being themselves. Sometimes it was just rude comments, [other times] a death threat.”
Crews said this is something no one should have to go through, regardless of whether they are transgender or not. He believes that if this was the reaction he received, it must be significantly worse for any transgender person who plays a high school sport.
“[With the limiting bills today], I can only imagine how much harder it would be for transgender kids to feel comfortable transitioning in today’s society,” Crews said. “It’s not just sports, not just transitioning, it’s everything [to those kids].”
Crews said that “everything” involves more than just the physical attributes of a transgender person. It’s how they’re treated.
Throughout his transition process, Crews said that his biggest concern was how he could transition in a way to make people “hate him less.” At this time, Crews was also dancing competitively at a private dance company. He said that he lucked out that his main sport wasn’t through KHS, but that being such a marginalized group, transgender athletes playing through their school are more vulnerable to scrutiny.
“I don’t understand many of the so-called ‘problems’ that people say come with allowing trans kids to play sports as their own gender,” Crews said. “I think that we should just let people have fun.”
Dominic Pioter, English teacher and sponsor of the Gender-Sexuality Alliance club, said this topic has been brought up in past club meetings before as a controversial and continuously prominent topic. Pioter thinks that discussing topics like this in meetings is important as it helps people challenge things they disagree with in society.
“In the club, we saw [the bill] as complicated,” Pioter said. “But we know that the larger issue is that it’s a case of homophobia.”
Despite the low number of transgender students at KHS who participate in sports, Pioter said the GSA club believes this issue still affects the mental health of transgender students at Kirkwood. Pioter believes this is because it is still taking away transgender rights, which affects all transgender people whether they play sports or not.
“Creating restrictions but not acknowledging what facts we know [about trans people],” Pioter said. “[It] is also homophobic because it disregards trans people’s feelings.”
Jeff Bender, founder of clothing brand The Lion and the Owl, an online store, has seen the rewards of allowing transgender kids to play sports as their transitioned gender through his now 10-year-old daughter. The Lion and the Owl was founded by Bender with the hope of creating enjoyable clothing for all children. Bender said he was inspired to create genderless clothing after seeing his daughter struggle with finding clothes that fit her body type and made her feel comfortable. He said this issue was made more prominent to him when his daughter first started wearing dresses to school and growing out her hair at 5 years old, beginning her transition journey at a young age.
“For a while she played on a boys’ soccer team, it was visibly awkward for her,” Bender said. “[When] we put her on a girls’ team, the difference was night and day. The way she carried herself, her confidence, her grades in school.”
Bender said that moving his daughter to an all–girl team improved her mindset and that this is a change many transgender athletes need to be able to make. He said the only issue is that with the current standing of SB #39, transgender athletes are held back from doing the thing they love, and potentially the thing that can turn their lives around.
“Allowing transgender youth to play for a team reduces the rate of suicide in this highly marginalized group,” Bender said. “[It] gives them the ability to make more friends and release stress.”
Bender believes removing this opportunity from a group of kids who already struggle with identity is one of the most hurtful things that could have been done. Crews agreed by saying that taking away the right to play sports from transgender kids is definitely an offense that will not be overlooked by the LGBTQ+ community, and that a change will come.
“[Transgender] people have the best imaginations because we always have to keep hoping for [a better] future,” Crews said. “Because we know we cannot live in the world today.”
