Gillian Branstetter is a trans rights activist who works at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project and Women’s Rights Project. And this week, she shared some eye-opening truths about the transgender athlete controversy that has engulfed the nation over the past few months.
During an interview with The Guardian, Branstetter referred to the recent transgender sports controversy as “manufactured panics on the right” and pointed out that the anti-trans movement is in no way proportional to the number of actual transgender people there are in the United States.
“Nearly 500 pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation were introduced this year. If you didn’t know anything else about the US, you’d presume there is an army of transgender people who are swiftly taking over the country,” Branstetter said.
Branstetter pointed out that contrary to all the anti-trans legislation, there are actually very few examples of transgender athletes competing in K-12 sports. In fact, there are four times as many states that have banned transgender athletes as there are openly transgender athletes in the United States.
“One ‘save women’s sports’ group could only name five examples of a trans girl participating in K-12 sports. Twenty states have banned trans athletes. There are more states with bans than there are openly trans athletes. West Virginia appealed to the supreme court to try and kick one 12-year-old girl off her track team. So it’s important to remind folks of the upside-down nature of the actual stakes,” Branstetter said.
It’s certainly a brutal truth to those who insist that transgender athletes are a grave threat to the country.
