Editor’s note: This article contains transphobic rhetoric.
The Georgia state Senate has formed a committee that will issue findings and recommendations relating to the issue of transgender girls competing on girls’ sports teams in school.
Sen. Greg Dolezal was appointed Chairman of the Georgia Senate Special Committee on the Protection of Women’s Sports on August 2. The panel, which includes seven Republicans — Dolezal, Sen. Jason Anavitarte, Sen. Clint Dixon, Sen. Bo Hatchett, Sen. Billy Hickman, and Sen. Blake Tillery — and two Democrats, Sen. Freddie Powell Sims and Sen. Sheikh Rahman — will have until December 15 to make legislative recommendations regarding the allowance of transgender girls on athletic teams that align with their gender identity. Notably, only one of the nine committee members is a woman.
“As the father of three daughters, I have a firsthand understanding of how important it is to maintain the sanctity of women’s sports,” Dolezal said in a statement. “Biological males competing in women’s sports presents a clear and present danger to the physical safety of the athletes and the integrity of women’s athletics. I want to thank Lt. Governor Burt Jones for his efforts to protect women’s sports, and I look forward to working with my colleagues on the committee to ensure Georgia’s female athletes are allowed to participate in fair and competitive athletics.”
The parents of transgender children have different concerns.
“The problem comes with sports,” Jennifer Slipakoff, the mother of a transgender teenager, told Georgia Voice earlier this year. “… Trans kids can’t play on the appropriate sports team that aligns with their gender, so [my daughter has] been unable to play certain sports, and that has been really difficult. It’s impacted her in a really negative way, so we’re working through that.”
The formation of this committee comes more than two years after a vote from the Georgia High School Athletic Association’s executive committee to ban transgender athletes from participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identity and amid ever-rising instances of transphobia in legislation and political rhetoric. At last month’s Republican National Convention, former President Donald Trump voiced his support for banning trans women and girls from female sports teams — a proposal that has been included in the Republican Party’s official platform, along with plans to cut funding from “any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”
In 2024, 638 anti-trans bills have been introduced across the country, 44 of which have been signed into law and 126 of which are currently active. Two bills have been passed relating to trans students and school sports: HB1205 in New Hampshire requires schools to designate athletics by sex and bans trans girls from participating in female athletics, and HB0172 in Utah, which requires associations that oversee interscholastic athletics to collect student birth certificates or equivalent documentation to determine student eligibility.
“For you to force people like me to play with boys, I don’t know in what world you would be doing that and be respecting my gender identity at the same time,” a trans student said at a protest in New York City back in June against the anti-trans sports ban Resolution #248. “Those two things don’t go together.”
As Bella Cruz writes for Hoodline, the effectiveness of committees such as the Special Committee on the Protection of Women’s Sports in influencing actual policy “remains to be seen,” but its formation is regardless indicative of the rising politicization of and attacks on trans young people that continues to threaten their mental health and safety.