Cutting through lies about trans girls in sports

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Republicans have been in culture war hysterics, lacking any policies and trying to change the subject from the insurrection and white supremacy. They’re in the grip of Donald Trump, QAnon and religious nationalists.

One major line of attack has cruelly been attacking trans kids, and, in particular, trans girls in school sports. Some of these attacks have come as the Equality Act — which would add LGBTQ people to the 1964 Civil Rights Act — has been debated, having passed the House and now coming up for a vote in the Senate.

So I turned to Dawn Ennis, the executive editor of OutSports, a Forbes columnist and a former ABC News assignment editor, to help cut through the lies, interviewing her on my SiriusXM show this week. Ennis has been at the forefront of this issue. As a transgender woman she speaks from experience. And as a journalist she speaks in truths and facts. She’s also very engaging and helps make an issue some pose as complicated into something much easier to understand.

The assaults on trans kids have been coming for some time, with over 78 bills being pushed in the states against transgender people, many of them attempting to ban trans girls from school sports programs, though researchers say they are not backed up by science.

Chase Strangio @chasestrangio

On a human level. We are talking about punishing kids for being who they are. Taking away the outlets and joys available to their peers. On this @chrislhayes segment, you can see a father plead with lawmakers to let his kid live.

msnbc.com‘Catastrophic:’ GOP pushes at least 78 anti-trans measures in 25 states“You can’t tell someone that we will honor your identity, we will respect you until 2:30 p.m.—and then we are going to tell you that you are not who you know yourself to be,” says the ACLU’s Chase Strangio discussing legislation that would ban trans athletes from playing on sports teams.

In recent weeks Trump himself, who attacked transgender people throughout his administration, has joined in on the attack on trans girls in sports. He railed against “Joe Biden and the Democrats” in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando last month, claiming they’re pushing “policies that would destroy women’s sports. Trump claimed “young girls” who would be forced to compete against “biological males,” using the haters’ derogatory term for trans girls.

The GOP has grabbed on to this issue because — like the transgender “bathroom bills” of a few years ago — it’s one that many Americans have little understanding about, often believing lies and misinformation that is promulgated by transphobes. Even well-meaning people have bought into some of the distortions, including blanket claims that trans girls have an advantage over cisgender girls in sports.

I think it’s important for everyone to have as much information about this issue as possible, and to be able to argue with family, friends and co-workers who may be misinformed.

So listen to what Dawn Ennis has to say, and let me know your thoughts.