Republican Rep Believes Trans Sports Bans Will Make People ‘Switch Back’
A Republican Representative has openly shared his belief that enforcing further trans sports bans will encourage people to detransition, or “switch back.” Congressman Glenn Grothman was one of a number of representatives who spoke at Tuesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on Title IX guidance, which would protect trans student athletes’ right to participate in sports.
During his time, Grothman expressed a misguided belief that putting legal restrictions on trans student-athletes might push people who identify as trans to “switch back” to their gender assigned at birth. He addressed witness Sarah Parshall Perry of the anti-LGBTQ+ Heritage Foundation when he said: “I sometimes wonder if we normalize the idea of guys playing in women’s sports, are you kind of wondering if we are creating a system which would be tragic if it is true, that some of these guys will never switch back?”
He then blatantly spread misinformation by adding: “I think it would have been too bad if they would have been one of the 80 or 90 per cent who snap back but, because of this, they won’t.” Here, Grothman is seemingly referring to a widely discredited claim that 80 per cent of trans kids will eventually detransition.
In actuality, a 2022 study proved that 97.5 per cent of trans kids still identify as trans after five years, rather than re-transitioning to their assigned gender at birth. In response, Perry claimed that “playing on a team that you want specifically for your gender identity, not based on sex, is an entry into ultimate medical transitioning and gender identarian surgery.” She also falsely alleged that 75 percent of trans children “make peace with their natal biological sex” by the time they’re adults.
Grothman and Perry’s comments and false claims further prove Republican intentions to restrict trans student-athletes, not to protect women as they often suggest, but simply to make trans people’s lives more difficult. Elsewhere in Tuesday’s hearing, Democratic Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made this point, arguing that politicians who wanted to restrict trans athletes were putting all women in dangerous, vulnerable positions.
“Per usual, I don’t believe we’re sitting here in a panel of men that has actually thought about the biology and privacy consequences of all women, trans or cisgender, here,” she told the hearing. “We’re supposed to sit here on this side of the dias… and see a party that has voted against women’s access to abortion, voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act, voted against the Violence Against Women Act, voted against our right to have access to contraception, and also doesn’t even vote for equal funding, equitable funding in women’s sports and I’m supposed to believe this is who’s looking out for my best interests? I think not.”
It is estimated that there are 1.6 million transgender people in the US (less than one percent of the nation’s population) – very few of whom are actually participating in school sports that align with their gender identity. Grothman is among the concerning number of congressmen who have expressly displayed anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, whether it was voting against last year’s Respect for Marriage Act because of his opposition to same-sex marriage, or complaining that there weren’t enough “white guys who were not gay” being appointed as federal judges.
Last year, the Wisconsin rep. Made headlines when he complained about Pride flags being flown over US embassies during Pride month – or, as he put it, “gay month”. Grothman inexplicably decided that, by flying Pride flags at US embassies, it would give other countries the impression that being gay was “the secret to America’s wealth and prosperity.”
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