OPINION: Discrimination has no place in Alaska. Let the girls play.

Let the girls play.

I lettered in wrestling all four years of high school. Today, that is not groundbreaking, but back in the late 1990s, it was pretty radical. I went to a small school, so I definitely had notoriety, but for the most part, nobody blinked an eye when I ran out onto the wrestling mat.

During one of my first tournaments away from home, two boys forfeited matches against me because of their school’s policies. I remember being confused and frustrated. Looking back, I wish I had wrestled those boys because I’m pretty sure I would have won. However, I’m glad my coach was there to remind me that winning isn’t everything.

Now, some might argue that high school sports are about winning, but for most high school athletic competitors, winning isn’t everything. Participating in sports helps young kids do better in school, develop interpersonal communication skills, and gain valuable life experience along the way. Simply put, high school sports are about learning “integrity, respect, perseverance, leadership, teamwork, and inclusivity.”

Those are the values of the Alaska School Activities Association (ASAA), which is a nonprofit entity that operates Alaska’s public school interscholastic activities. ASAA policies follow current Alaska education practices of maximizing local control by allowing school districts to set athletic participation policies that best fit their communities. This results in a wide breadth of diversity within our school athletics. Unfortunately, local control over participation in school athletics might soon change. Currently, the Alaska State Board of Education is considering harmful and exclusionary changes to its long-established policy of nondiscrimination in competitive sports. The policy change seeks to override local control in favor of a big-brother approach.

What makes the proposed policy shift by the State Board of Education even worse is it actively discriminates against trans girls. Christopher Rufo, who is one of the major architects of the national campaign against trans people and trans athletes, testified last year in the Alaska State Legislature in favor of Senate Bill 140, which included a similar ban as the one being proposed by the State Board of Education. Rufo has been very public that he and others are using anti-trans bias to manipulate voters and public policy. Targeting trans girls depends on obfuscation of fact and manipulation of parental fear. If any of what the anti-trans movement was saying was actually true, then we’d have seen more reports than the one trans athlete in Alaska from 2016.

Women come in all different shapes and sizes. I know women with testosterone imbalances, women with chromosomal differences, women who do not have uteruses, women who do not have breasts, childless women, child-free women, women without ovaries, masculine presenting women and hyper-feminine women. If the proposed changes to interscholastic activities go through, every high school girl who doesn’t meet some arbitrary expression of womanhood will have her privacy jeopardized.

The anti-trans policy being considered by the Alaska State Board of Education and Early Development puts the very few trans girls residing in our state in fear of being outed and forced to wear the proverbial red T on their chests. Really, it puts every gender-nonconforming girl at risk. Does your daughter wear her hair short? Is she taller than all the boys? Well, it’s a slippery slope that we are headed down and it could have unimaginable ramifications for your child.

I’m dumbfounded that in Alaska, which has a right to privacy enshrined in the Constitution, we would allow for such a blatant violation of our rights simply to chase a problem that history, educators, and coaches say doesn’t exist. What does exist is the very real education crises of retaining our teachers, addressing falling math scores, supporting students’ access to mental health services, and really addressing the fiscal uncertainty of our public schools.

The women who came before me didn’t fight for my right to vote, determine my own future, or even wear my hair short just so I could turn around and hold down those who came after me. It is my responsibility to fight for every person to be who they are where they are. But more importantly, it is my privilege to use my voice to defend the freedom of every Alaskan to express themselves however they choose.

Discrimination and hate have no place in Alaska. More importantly, waging a war against a group of very vulnerable, highly marginalized Alaskans is wrong. Please help me by speaking out against the proposed trans girls’ sports ban. Let the girls play.

Sen. Löki Gale Tobin of Anchorage is the chair of the Alaska State Senate Education Committee, serves as the Pride Foundation board secretary and is a Ph.D student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

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