Democrats in the Kentucky Senate used a biological boy who is playing on a girl’s field hockey team but is not very good, to prove that boys don’t necessarily have an athletic advantage over girls.
Fischer Wells, a transgender boy, wore a pink coat and lipstick to testify at a hearing on the legislation limiting sports to biological sex, according to a video posted on the Louisville Courier-Journal website.
Wells has been playing on the girls’ field hockey team at Westport Middle School. The school does not have a boy’s team.
“Kentucky Senate Bill 83 would require schools to label athletic teams as either ‘girls,’ ‘boys’ or ‘coed,’ the Courier-Journal reports.
“An athletic activity or sport designated as ‘girls’ shall not be open to members of the male sex,” the bill reads.
“I really don’t want this bill to pass because that means I can’t play and that will be extremely detrimental to my mental health as well because I know that sports is a good way for me to cope with this, like, it’s just a good way for me to cope with things,” the 12-year-old said.
“It is disgusting that this bill is even discussed. It’s terrible,” he said. “I hope you don’t vote this bill and I hope I can play in eighth grade.”
The bill has been criticized as discriminatory, but the legislation’s proponents describe its purpose as protecting the gains made by women under Title IX.
Bill sponsor Sen. Robby Mills, R-Henderson, says the bill aims “to protect the many years of progress this country has made with the passage of Title IX, which was created to enhance athletic opportunity for young women.”
“As the father of a daughter and the grandfather of a granddaughter, this is personal,” Mills wrote in a locally published op-ed earlier in the week.
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