Florida’s state athletic board fined a high school and put it on probation Tuesday after a transgender student played on the girls volleyball team, a violation of a controversial law enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature.
The Florida High School Athletic Association fined Monarch High $16,500, ordered the principal and athletic director to attend rules seminars and placed the suburban Fort Lauderdale school on probation for 11 months, meaning further violations could lead to increased punishments. The association also barred the girl from participating in boys sports for 11 months.
The 2021 law, which supporters named “The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” bars transgender girls and women from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes identified as girls at birth.
The student, a 10th grader who played in 33 matches over the last two seasons, was removed from the team last month after the Broward County School District was notified by an anonymous tipster about her participation. Her removal led hundreds of Monarch students to walk out of class two weeks ago in protest.
When I was in school, there was only girls volleyball and no boy’s volleyball team so I have a question, say the person in this article wasn’t transgender but it was a boy (born with male genitalia and identifying as a male) who wanted to play volleyball. If there were no boy’s volleyball team at the school, would he be allowed to play on the girl’s team? I only ask because isn’t that how Title 9 has been interpreted?
This is anecdotal but I played hockey in high school and wrestled one year, we had a girl on our hockey team because we had no girl’s hockey team, she was a lot better than me too, I also remember one of our wrestlers wrestling a girl from another school because there was no girl’s wrestling team. There were no issues in either of those cases.
Regardless of all that, if there’s only one volleyball team at the school and it’s an all women sport, if a boy or transgender girl wants to play, it seems to me they should be allowed on that team if there’s no other opportunities for them to play.
I’ll finish this by saying: I am one person and these are my thoughts not a strong opinion that I’m going to live or die by so I don’t want to start an argument , just a discussion.
Yeah, I worked at a school where a cis girl played on a football team where all the other players were boys. It was never a problem.
Way before women’s football or soccer if anyone prefers girls would have had to play on boys teams because there were very few girls teams/clubs and honestly ten year olds aren’t going to give a shit if a girl wants to kick a ball around with them.
Yes, that literally has never been the problem.
I’ve heard some roller derby teams doing this when their attendance numbers are low. They just ask the team and have a vote to see if people are comfortable or not. According to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX
You would be allowed.
I think this has always been the case when there is no other team. Its hard to say though as I cannot imaging a boy trying to play on the girls team when the boys is an option. high school is hard enough as it is.
I’m hopeful these ideals are changing for the better with gen z
yeah I don’t think they were ideals really but if gen z has somehow eliminated peer pressure and bullying then I suppose.
If people are interested, it’s easy to find a case by case solution, which fits best the given situation - but some people are just asholes or populist so others have to suffer.
Im in Australia, but we had three girls join our under 16 rugby league team years ago because there was no girls teams. Noone had a problem with it as far as i remember.
Nope you’re right. We had a girl on our high school hockey team too. High school sports have been put on some kind of pedestal in parts of our country. Like it’s the Olympics or something. It’s literally just supposed to be another avenue of teaching and socialization. Building confidence and the ability to work in teams effectively
Honestly we should go to the other extreme. Stop even keeping score in high school sports.
Edit - At risk of dating myself I do want to point out, this was 20 years ago. Just to show how made up this issue is now.
Conservatives think that every girl athlete is inferior to every boy athlete.
They think that trans girls aren’t girls; they’re just boys who have been convinced by some evil liberal plot to pretend to be girls.
So they think a trans girl gives some sort of advantage that the other girl athletes can’t possibly overcome.
Of course, more than five years ago or so they didn’t give a flying fuck about girl’s or women’s sports (and they still don’t insofar as they can use them for vice-signalling political wedges.)
I wanted to play volleyball in high school, but they just looked at me like I was a nut.
Why would you think girls being on boys’ team is the problem here? This is about the weaker gender being protected from the stronger one.
Having a girl on our team wasn’t a problem, she was a great player and was as good or better than many of the guys on our team including me. So how was she the weaker sex?
Because women as a group are the weaker sex in many physical ways. This seriously cannot be this difficult a concept.
I don’t think Title IX ever specifically mentions “women”, it’s just about sex-based discrimination of any sort.
Because Volleyball is famously a contact sport?
Also it’s High school. Nobody cares except a few parents who take it way too seriously.