Since Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20 his policies on transgender Americans have been continuous with a total of four executive orders being signed since his inauguration. His most recent order was to ban transgender women from playing in women’s sports with the document titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” The short document was officially uploaded to the White House website on Feb. 5 with the following being stated “In recent years, many educational institutions and athletic associations have allowed men to compete in women’s sports. This is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”
After the document was released and things started to settle, people had mixed feelings and opinions “It changes day to day, week to week you know, the NCAA allowed trans women to play on the NCAA level and now they changed it.” said Louis Panzella, the women’s volleyball coach at LMC. “I see both sides. Yeah, that’s great for the women who may have not been offered a scholarship or couldn’t compete but what about the other side of it?” Panzella has been coaching for a long time with this being his 13th year at LMC, “I can’t remember the woman’s name from San Jose State, I believe they had one year left, where does that leave them? You are on a scholarship competing at the NCAA division and now the NCAA changes the rules, where are you?” Panzella brought up the recent controversies taking place at San Jose State, it was revealed they had a transgender player when a teammate decided to out them.
Other than coaches, Mali Wyatt, the president of the pride alliance at LMC had this to say “It’s a weird topic to focus on considering how much of a minority trans women are,” said Wyatt. “A lot of people who transition and especially since we’re focusing on trans women aren’t thinking about that as the first reason for the transition, they’re not thinking about like how can I put down another woman?”
Wyatt will be the new head of the Pride Alliance here on campus for the spring semester, the club’s goal is to provide a safe space for students identifying as LGBTQ+. “There’s so many things that they can focus on and there’s ways that they can create more spaces for trans women in these types of fields and completely cutting the options just seems like a waste.”
A common theme of the opinions of people on campus is where will these trans athletes go if they can’t play in women’s sports.
Wyatt said “States need to create more protections for trans women and just trans people in general because even though they’re hyper-focused on trans women these things also affect trans men and non-binary [people],” they stated.
Donald Trump continues to make changes reguarding the trans community with this executive order being his most recent move, states who are pushing back on these policies are being threatened to have their federal funding cut with the state of Maine verbally stating to the president “I’ll see you in court.”
States like Oregon, Minnesota, and Washington have recently filed a lawsuit against the president for his order to ban gender-affirming care for people under 19, saying that it is both “cruel and baseless.”
