Editor’s note: The following is an open letter from the Vashon School Board regarding pending changes around Washington State high school athletics. The Beachcomber is reprinting the letter in full so the community can review it. Check the news section of The Beachcomber this week for more reporting on the topic.
The Board of Directors of Vashon Island School District (VISD) believes that athletics support joyful movement, good sportsmanship, collaboration, positive competition, and many other facets of healthy youth development.
We want our school sports programs to be fun, affirming, and safe for all athletes. In the face of growing public misinformation campaigns and fear-mongering around transgender and genderqueer youth, our school governance team remains unequivocal in our unwavering support of all athletes — indeed all students — regardless of their gender identity.
The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), is the statewide nonprofit organization that supervises and administers interscholastic athletics and arts across the state, among both public and private schools. VISD is a WIAA member participating in the Nisqually League.
The 2023-24 WIAA Handbook expressly supports all students having the opportunity to participate in “athletics and/or activities in a manner that is consistent with their gender identity” and “Athletes will participate in programs consistent with their gender identity or the gender most consistently expressed.” We applaud WIAA’s current policies and encourage them to hold fast to their principled and equitable stance.
Unfortunately, several schools in Washington have proposed amendments to the handbook that would limit or prohibit transgender girls (in particular) from participating on sports teams that align with their gender identity. The WIAA Representative Assembly will discuss this issue at the end of this month and vote on proposed amendments in April.
The two amendments currently under consideration:
Amendment 7: Participation in girls’ sports would be limited to students assigned female at birth.
Amendment 8: Athletic programs would be offered separately for boys, girls and transgender students.
These proposed policies are discriminatory and shortsighted remedies to a non-existent problem. In a hearing before Congress, after sharing that there are 510,000 athletes in the U.S. in NCAA schools, when asked “How many transgender athletes are you aware of?” NCAA President Charlie Baker said, “Less than 10.”
Not ten percent. Ten athletes. Out of 510,000.
The vitriol and misinformation regarding transgender people extend far beyond student-athletes. According to the first-of-its-kind U.S. transgender population health survey, TransPop: “A lack of societal recognition and acceptance of gender identities outside of the binary of cisgender man or woman and increasing politically motivated attacks on transgender individuals, increase stigma and prejudice and related exposure to minority stress, which contributes to the high rates of substance use and suicidality we see among transgender people.”
Regarding rates of suicide and suicidal ideation, the report goes on to say: “Among transgender adults, 44% reported recent suicidal ideation, 7% reported a recent suicide attempt, and 21% reported recent non-suicidal self-injury.“
In a recent interview with National Public Radio, the president of research at The Trevor Project, Ronita Nath, referenced extensive research on attempted suicide in states that enact anti-trans legislation. “Trans and non-binary young people are not inherently prone to increased suicide risk because of their gender identity,” she says. “They are placed at higher risk because of how they’re mistreated and stigmatized by others, including by the implementation of discriminatory policies like the ones examined in the study.”
There is so much work to be done to support and celebrate our transgender and genderqueer students. Transgender and genderqueer students don’t want to just get by or survive, they want to thrive. Members of the Gender Queer Affinity Group at Vashon High School report. “We’re a bigger chunk of the school population than a lot of people think and we should feel safe and included the same as everyone else.”
They suggest opening up more sports for co-ed participation: “The discourse around gender and gender queerness in sports is very uncomfortable and the system would work a lot better if there was less separation by gender in sports.”
All too aware of the burden on our trans and genderqueer youth to prove their humanity and be seen as fully valued and celebrated members of their community, Vashon Island School District stands with all student-athletes. We stand with all students.
Lucia Armenta, Jessica Adams, Martha Woodard, River Branch and Juniper Rogneby make up the Vashon Island School District Board of Directors.