Protect Women’s and Girls’ Sports, Safety & Dignity!

25 Serious Problems with Utah H.B. 11

H.B. 11 creates a legal pathway with a number of physical requirements for eligibility for boys to be considered as girls for the purpose of competing on girls’ sports teams.

H.B. 11 is based on a false assumption that children can “transition” and change their sex, which is a medical impossibility. A male can never be a female, and a female can never be a male.

H.B. 11 will allow boys to compete on girls’ sports teams, go into girls’ locker rooms and showers, and share overnight accommodations with girls, thereby undermining the right to privacy of women and girls.

A girl who is forced to share a locker room or shower with a biological male is most likely not going to feel safe.

H.B. 11 violates beliefs of people of many faiths and others who don’t want girls to be undressed in front of boys or boys to be undressed in front of girls.

Some legislators support H.B. 11 because it establishes a commission that will screen out and disallow males from competing as females if they have obvious unfair advantages due to their body build and physical characteristics. However, what such legislators are not taking into consideration is that H.B. 11 sets a very dangerous legal precedent for the state recognizing males as females, which will have many serious, negative repercussions, not only for women and girls but for society as a whole.

H.B. 11 suggests that the bodily advantage that males have may be screened for include “height, weight, body mass, bone density, flexibility, wingspan, hip-to-knee ratio, stride, oxygen saturation, or the extent of physical characteristics affected by puberty.” Can you imagine the ridiculousness of trying to measure all this to determine if a male is weak enough to compete as a female? How will they factor in the advantage of not menstruating?

H.B. 11 does not take into account the fact that males in Utah already can find sympathetic judges who will allow them to change the sex designation on their birth certificate with no trace of their true biological sex. And while the bill sponsors caught that and inserted the word “unamended” before “birth certificate,” how will they ever know if a birth certificate has been amended or not? In other words, transgender individuals can simply bypass the commission that H.B. 11 establishes to judge eligibility by simply getting a new birth certificate with the wrong sex indicated as the birth sex. Moreover, any person from another state that also allows sex designations to be falsified on birth certificates to indicate the wrong sex will also be able to bypass the commission screening for unfair advantages in males. This is a major flaw with H.B. 11. Since the bill bases eligibility for participation on female sports teams on birth certificates rather than biological sex, it can incentivize males who want to compete on female sports teams to find a sympathetic judge to change their birth certificate.

How would the commission justify, for example, screening out a male because of his height or weight while at the same time allowing a woman with the same height and weight to compete?

It is harmful to even suggest to children that some kids can be accepted as the opposite sex if they have the right body build.

Having a government-appointed commission determine which gender-confused child can compete as the opposite sex and which cannot based on physical characteristics will likely lead to children feeling devastated. One can only imagine how a gender-confused male who sincerely believed he was female would feel if he were deemed unfit to compete on a female sports team because of his physique, especially since one of the greatest desires of many gender-confused children is to be able to pass as the opposite sex.

If H.B. 11 passes, boys who want to be like girls may be more likely to take experimental puberty blockers (with unknown long-term side effects) to stunt their growth and development so they can compete as girls.

If H.B. 11 passes, girls may be more likely to take testosterone so they can compete as boys.

Each decision by the commission to allow a child to compete as the opposite sex will encourage gender confusion in that child.

For every male that gets admitted onto a female-only sports team, a female loses her spot and opportunity for athletic success. We already know of instances where men have won female competitions. How many more women will lose the opportunity to set records, receive awards or even earn much-needed female athletic scholarships because a male has been allowed to compete as a female?

If biological males are eligible to compete on female sports teams, by definition, women’s sports can no longer be women’s sports.

To give a gender-confused man the illusion that he can become a woman and compete on a women’s sports team is to encourage a harmful illusion that can lead to surgical genital mutilation and more.

No student in Utah (regardless of the gender they identify as) can be denied the opportunity to compete on their same-sex sports team on an equal basis with all others of their sex. Gender-nonconforming individuals can also compete on a same-sex sports team on an equal basis with every other person of their sex. Just because they may not want to compete on a team that corresponds with their biological sex doesn’t make it a right for them to compete on an opposite-sex team.

Will the commission be the ultimate judge as to whether a male is weak enough or small enough to be considered a female for the purpose of competing in sports?

H.B. 11 incentivizes transitioning for transgender-identifying individuals who might otherwise desist in their transgender identity and accept their own bodies as many former transgender individuals have done. (See SexChangeRegret.com.)

Competing on an opposite-sex sports team will not cure gender dysphoria nor curb a desire for more and more accommodations to be made. If history tells us anything, H.B. 11 is just the first step in a slippery slope of accommodations that will be demanded if it is passed.

H.B. 11 hurts the very individuals it aims to help as affirming someone in the wrong sex can lead a person to further reject their own body parts, thus exacerbating their gender dysphoria. Allowing males to compete as females is to collude with a lie. This is not healthy for anyone involved.

What message does H.B. 11 send to children about what it means to be male or female? It is one thing to say all sports are coed and to allow all to participate. It is another thing to have a bill that recognizes males as females before the law in any context.

The law is our moral teacher. It tells all, especially children, what our society considers to be right or wrong or true or false. A bill that would recognize males as females will create a confusing world indeed.