Opinion: Truth About Transgender Youth, Transitioning And How Sports Could Welcome Them

San Diego CA

08 March, 2021

5:03 PM

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By Gina Roberts, Times of San Diego March 8, 2021 Being transgender is a difficulty beyond the understanding of many people, it seems. It has been the biggest burden and at the same time the most liberating part of my life, and I would not wish it on my worst enemy. I was born in 1954, and there were some issues with my birth that I have not been able to verify. But something was wrong with me at birth. I spent time in surgery immediately after I was born. I have some indication and old scarring that it was to correct some genital issues. That being said, I knew at a very young age that I felt different. I didn't feel like I was right. I had loving parents, a great home, a decent brother and sister, a good childhood, but I felt "outside" like I wasn't right. By age 7, I felt like I wasn't a normal "boy," but I strived to prove how much of a boy I was. The bottom line: I knew at an early age that I had issues with my self-identity and had no idea what it was. In 1961, it was not a conversation you could have with your parents. I wish I could have explored that more then. That was when I started cross dressing. I found I was more comfortable as a girl, but my young brain knew even back then that I had to stay hidden. How does this affect my opinion about youth and being transgender? Simply, I state that children can be very aware of issues with their gender identity. With that premise, what is an appropriate way to deal with that? To me it's very important that these issues have a vehicle to be dealt with. Kids need to feel safe to express these thoughts. We need to give them the opportunity to express their needs, but we do not need to try and influence them to believe a certain way or convince that they should have certain thoughts. We don't need to have explicit conversations with them to convince them one way or another — they need to reach their own conclusions. It is their life. We need to provide opportunities that do not limit their activities or goals just because of their gender. We need to support our children in their decisions. However, we do not need to push them. We need them to work with medical professionals to help them understand their life. If a child is approaching puberty, we have legitimate and very effective options to delay the onset of puberty, using puberty blockers. The use of puberty blockers is a controversial treatment, but it gives the child more time to understand their needs without exposing them to the detrimental effects of hormones. Why is this important? I'll use male to female transition as an example. Testosterone levels form very distinct male traits, beard growth, deep voice, muscle and body shaping that are very hard to reverse. This reversal requires costly and actually quite painful medical procedures to change. Puberty blockers have some element of risk. So do the required surgeries. Puberty blockers are a valuable therapeutic tool to give people time to explore and determine their direction of life. I firmly believe that the irreversible surgeries need to be deferred until people have reached majority. Others should not make these decisions for these young people. If the changes are the right thing to do, they need to be made by the people whose life will be most affected, and they need to be informed and consensual decisions. The most important part of the treatment process is following the pathway to transition. Nearly all people that I'm aware of that "detransitioned" are those that did not follow the process set out in the WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) transition process. Please do not allow anyone to bypass this important process — it is not only to protect medical professionals but most importantly it also helps people understand whether they are truly transgender or if other conditions in their lives are being masked as being transgender. The process involves mental health, social and physical transition and has proven to be effective in determining the correct medical path for treatment. One more comment, then I'll leave this subject. Transgender surgeries performed on transgender youth — while I do not personally support them before majority age — do not rise to the level of "genital mutilation." Genital mutilation is performed to punish or limit youth; transgender surgeries are generally targeted to improve the lives of the children. A very large difference. The inclusion of transgender youth in sports competition is a complex issue that is being handled poorly by both sides of the political and LGBT spectrum. It is not an issue that can be handled simply with a broad brush stroke. There are many nuances and details in this issue. The two sides pro and anti-trans youth in sports are wrong. Let me examine the three phases of transgender youth in sports.First, there are youth sports in the pre-puberty time of life. There generally are no issues with this. It's a great time to learn teamwork and camaraderie in the team environment. There are minimal physical differences in strength and ability. It should be encouraged. There are generally no shared locker rooms, showers or other privacy issues. Let it happen. It's important to personal development and self-understanding. The third phase: post high school competition. Excellent protocols exist for participation in college level and Olympic level competition. This is not the issue. I will just say that if anyone cis (genetic gender) or transgender want to compete and meet the protocols, let them compete. The same applies to professional sports, and professional sports are controlled by a sanctioning body. The biggest problem: high school sports. After someone enters puberty, very large physical differences occur that create incredible differences in competitive capability. No protocols level or control these differences. After high school, testing protocols exist, but there are none in high school. There are medical privacy issues that require parental permission, and there is no standard to measure the effects of changing physical ability based on hormone related changes in post pubescent people. This creates a really unfair advantage to those that choose to transition after the onset of puberty. Simple facts. So what do we do about this? There are several potential solutions all of which have their own issues. The easiest one is to allow essentially anyone who self-identifies as the opposite gender to participate and claim legitimate victories in various gender segregated sports that test physical prowess. Awesome. But we've already stated that some transgender youth will have tremendous physical advantage and, thusly, have a much greater chance of victory over genetic or "cisgender" students. This I'll call the "Gender does not matter model." The second solution is to deny the participation in gender segregated sports to those that were not assigned that gender at birth — called the "Genetic birth model." This creates problems like those of Mac Biggs, a female to male transgender young man who wrestled in high school, who was forced to wrestle with the girls due to state athletic rules. He wanted to compete as a male, but was forced to wrestle with the girls and he won easily because of his muscle development caused by testosterone use. The media vilified Mac. But in reality, he was forced to wrestle in the wrong environment. He has since transitioned to the college environment and the last time I checked he was doing great and competing on a level playing field. Third, deny transgender kids the opportunity to participate in high school sports. This is certainly an option. However, it also isn't a very fair option. A child has the right to be involved in sports. So it certainly negatively effects the opportunities that a transgender student gets in school. There is an extension of this process in that transgender kids are allowed to participate but are not allowed to claim victories and "prizes" or "honors" or "scholarships" as a function of "winning" should they win these competitions. The latter is an interesting solution, but also can be seen as lessening the perception of the capabilities of the "cis"-gender athlete that actually "won" the competition but visually appeared to "lose." Fourth, eliminate gender segregated sports all together, and require blended teams — or some other formula. A possibility, but the corporate inertia for this change would be hard to overcome, and it still wouldn't work for individual sports. So what do we do? It's obvious that none of the above options will work for everybody. It is also obvious that transgender kids deserve the right to participate in school sports, but they do not deserve the right to dominate a particular sport due to their transgender characteristics. I submit that the proper protocol is to allow transgender kids to participate in sports only after they have been in hormonal transition for a period that will allow the residual levels and effects of their natural hormones to level to the point they mimic cisgender competitors. For male to female transition, this may require at least a year. It would be incumbent on the transitioning competitor to provide documentation from a medical doctor and endocrinologist to certify: 1) that the athlete is on a medically supervised transition, and 2) their hormones levels conform to the standards for their target gender and have been for an appropriate time.During this transitional time, they would be allowed to practice with the team of choice but not compete for "prizes." Additionally, to insure the privacy of all students, the transgender athlete should have appropriate separate facilities at their disposal. Imposing anatomically diverse people into a gender segregated facility is inappropriate, and causes disruption in the eyes of the some students, but also their parents or guardians. So what does this solve? I highly suggest that we stop treating this issue with an everything fits in this box approach and actually have a dialog that considers the complexity of the situation and complies with the intent of the Title IX equal sports opportunities for the genders. The question I have been asked most in my life as a transgender person is: "What bathroom do you use?" My smart-aleck response has always been "what restroom would I most likely get beat up in?" For me, it is likely neither, but the problem is blown way out of proportion. Transgender people are not a threat in the restroom. Anyone that would pretend to be transgender to enter a restroom to do indecent or lewd things is likely to do them anyway and there are hundreds of laws to punish people for doing illegal, indecent and lewd acts in a restroom with anyone.That being said, I fully support the use of individually private facilities by transgender people in restrooms, showers areas, locker rooms, etc. Privacy is the key. If you are isolated from others by visual screens and privacy curtains or walls, there is no problem. The problem exists when there is no privacy available and you have anatomically diverse people in a gender segregated facility. This is a problem — possibly only in the United States with its level of sexual and gender prudishness — but it is inappropriate, and forces your condition on others and can cause emotional harm to them. I believe if you are not anatomically consistent with the people you are sharing a facility with, the transgender person needs to be magnanimous and allow the privacy of others to guide their actions, so a separate private facility is appropriate. I think the best answer is to provide privacy for all. I honestly know of no one that really likes sharing non-private facilities with others. Gina Roberts is a member of the San Diego Republican County Central Committee and Executive Committee, a delegate to the California Republican Party, President Emeritus of the Log Cabin Republicans of San Diego, Board Member at Large of the Log Cabin Republicans of California, a Tea Party member, a California Conservative Caucus member, president of the Escondido Republican Women, Federated and founding board member of the San Diego County Gun Owners PAC. She has met with the previous federal administration and Department of Education on the subject of transgender children in schools, sexual assault response and transgender people in sports. She was an original commission member of the San Diego County Leon L. Williams Human Relations Commission and is seeking reappointment. She is also a member of the LGBT Center Leadership Council representing Log Cabin Republicans. She recently represented Log Cabin Republicans at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida. She has worked with people of all political leanings in the effort to come to workable solutions for the problems facing our society, and has actively worked to improve the acceptance and understanding of LGBTQ people in the more conservative political and religious circles. Times of San Diego is an independent online news site covering the San Diego metropolitan area. Our journalists report on politics, crime, business, sports, education, arts, the military and everyday life in San Diego. No subscription is required, and you can sign up for a free daily newsletter with a summary of the latest news.