“Now the state is saying I’m not girl enough to compete,” said a 13-year-old transgender swimmer in Utah. “And that really hurts. Because I am. I am girl enough.”
, R-Morgan, the bill sponsor, framed the effort as a way “to preserve the integrity of women’s sports.”The 13-year-old is tiny, skinny, the shortest girl on her team. Even her colorful swimsuit is a little big, hanging off her small shoulders. Her pink robe swallows her.“That’s what they’re trying to use,” she says, “that because we started off as male and went to female, we’re going to be bigger and stronger and stuff. But that’s not true. It’s really not.
But unlike Thomas, many transgender girls now are making decisions about their bodies at a younger age, choosing to delay puberty or start hormones earlier. As high school athletes, they do not have the alleged “scientific benefits” of a larger body. But never a first, her coach notes. She also hasn’t broken any state records. She has no dreams of going to the Olympics . It shouldn’t matter if she did want to compete on that stage, her coach adds, but “the fear mongering is around athletes that look and compete like Lia Thomas. And that’s not what we have here.”, who are on different teams but practice at the same facility.
She wasn’t swimming to disrupt the sport or shatter records, she says, or even to make a statement. She was there to work on herself and compete with friends and coaches, her support system.Her daughter jumps in. “… beautiful, amazing, the best. There, I filled in the blanks for you.” She swam with the boys until she was about 8 years old. Then, feeling she didn’t belong there, she ducked under the buoyed lane marker and joined the girls. Starting so young, it made her the first transgender athlete to compete in Utah.
, a private entity that oversees school athletics within the state for those ages 14 to 18, has been seeing more complaints, says David Spatafore, a lobbyist for the organization.
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