The Soul Surfer’s Transphobia Hurts All Women
Anti-trans policies don’t protect cisgender women. Rather, they do more harm than good.
Bethany Hamilton, the famous amputee surfer, has recently announced that she will not compete against transgender women and, as such, is boycotting World Surf League-hosted events. The World Surf League now allows trans women to compete in its competitions. Calling them “male-bodied individuals”, Hamilton went on to say that “male-bodied dominance” has been seen in sports like swimming and running. After that, Hamilton failed to provide any examples of this alleged dominance.
Before the advent of more flexible guidelines and efforts to include transgender and intersex athletes, various measures were put in place to ensure that they were, indeed, female. Physical exams, genetic testing, and hormonal testing as a form of gender verification have been put in place for nearly a century. However, these tests ended up hurting cisgender women by subjecting them to invasive examinations of their genitalia and medical history. Some are even coerced into taking medication and receiving surgeries.
It also is worth mentioning that sports are as a whole not a monolith and that any supposedly advantageous characteristics that trans women may retain after hormone therapy are actually…
