On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order barring transgender girls and women from playing as girls and women at federally funded schools, colleges and universities. Nearly all schools receive federal funds.
A day later, the NCAA, the governing association for college sports in this country, followed suit, barring transgender girls from competing in women’s sports. Only athletes who were assigned as females at birth can compete as women.
Susan Estrich
“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,” Charlie Baker, the president of the NCAA, said in a statement. “To that end, President Trump’s order provides a clear, national standard.”
Testifying before Congress last year, Baker estimated that there were fewer than 10 transgender girls playing women’s sports in all of the colleges and universities in the country.
All this to kick fewer than 10 athletes — of the some 500,000 who play college sports — off their teams.
Why?
The cruelty is obvious. Ten girls are singled out and kicked off. Who knows how many others — but certainly many more — are sent the message that they are not legitimate, are not entitled to be treated fairly, are not welcome. At an age when young women are particularly vulnerable, the most vulnerable of them all are castigated.
Is this really one of the great moral issues of the day, directly affecting as it does fewer than 10 of the 500,000 student athletes in America? Is this really one of the biggest challenges facing college sports, the one deserving of the attention of the president in his first two weeks in office?
Of course not. It is a cheap way to score political points. The campaign made that clear.
Probably the most successful advertisement of the campaign was the one run at the end, taking on Kamala Harris for supporting gender-affirming care in federal prisons. Never mind the fact that the policy began and was followed under Trump. It was an opportunity to remind voters that Kamala Harris represents “they/them” while Donald Trump represents “you.” It was a crude repeat of the Willie Horton ad of 1988, and its message that George H.W. Bush opponent Mike Dukakis was the candidate of Black rapists, while Bush represented you.
The Kamala Harris side did not respond to the transgender ad, presumably because they believed, rightly, that not many people would be voting the transgender rights issue. True enough, but they do vote based on whether you’re on their side or not, and Trump’s people cleverly played the transgender issue as a proxy for painting Democrats as the party of woke elites. The equivalent, in its way, of Black rapists in 1988. And that worked.
And when something works for Donald Trump — when he finds a scapegoat he can tar, to make common cause with people for whom he has nothing but disdain — he doesn’t let it go. It’s as ugly a tactic as you can find.
That’s why he’s kicking transgender people out of the military and off women’s sports teams. It’s not because they pose a threat to anyone. It’s not because they aren’t qualified to do the job. It’s because the very idea of them can be so easily manipulated to attract the loyalty of the insecure among us. At a huge cost.
The NCAA should be ashamed of itself. They know better. There was no need for a national policy. Individual schools should have been free to field their teams. The need was entirely political. And the price will not be limited to the fewer than 10 athletes who are excluded.
To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
