Mack Beggs, a transgender senior from Euless Trinity High School near Dallas, Texas, has won the Texas girls’ Class 6A 110-pound division for the second year in a row. Beggs was born female but is taking hormone supplements, including small doses of testosterone, to transition to male. Video showed a mix of cheering and boos from the crowd following Beggs’ win. The controversy aptly demonstrates one of the side-effects of the transgender issue — how kids compete in sports — and also shows an underlying inclination to favor traditional views of gender.
Last year, as Beggs has been taking steroid-therapy treatments while wrestling girls, the wrestler tried to opt out and wrestle against boys; to Beggs’ credit, the student seems to realize the competitive advantage of testosterone while wrestling girls. Beggs was not allowed to enter the boys’ tournament because the rules for Texas public high schools require athletes to compete under the gender on their birth certificate, and that still says “female.” So, for the last two years, Beggs’ very role in the tournaments has stirred debate about what transgender students are allowed to do in sports and what is fair to other students.
ESPN reports “Kayla Fitts, who lost to Beggs in the semifinals, told the Morning News she did not believe that having to wrestle Beggs was fair and she had not anticipated ‘how strong he was.'” Last year, two wrestlers forfeited wrestling Beggs in the regional tournament because they feared injury; this year, only one did. In an interview, it was clear the testosterone had already taken effect: Beggs’ voice had dropped and wisps of facial hair are obvious.
Beggs’ role in the tournament presents a controversy. On the one hand, it does not seem fair for girls to have to wrestle a girl who has been taking enough testosterone to begin to change the wrestler’s physical makeup. On the other hand, if Texas high schools changed the rules about birth certificates, that could pave the way for boys and girls opting out (or entering in) to all kinds of sporting events unfairly claiming they too “identify” as a different gender.
It’s unclear if the portion of the crowd booing Beggs was due to the wrestler being transgender or wrestling a gender with which he no longer identifies. At the least, even if the crowd is not discriminatory, most people want girls to compete against girls and boys to compete against boys, because the physical differences are obvious and can, at times, create advantages or disadvantages depending on the scenario.
While the Obama administration clarified (or codified, according to some) that transgender individuals have protection under Title IX, last year, the Trump administration rescinded those. Still, that doesn’t mean the issue is going away — in fact, it seems to be more present than ever. Eventually, as these cases continue to crop up, the issue will need to be confronted, either on a state-by-state basis or at the federal level.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
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