Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville has once again proposed legislation to codify discrimination. Since 2022, the former football coach has been pushing bills to target transgender girls and women in sports.
Despite overwhelming evidence that trans sports bans are solutions looking for problems, Tuberville has made transphobia his personal crusade. But the fact remains, there is no domination of girls or women's sports by trans athletes.
But that doesn't stop Tuberville from campaigning to get his latest bigoted bill passed using the "tell a lie often enough" strategy.
The MAGA Senator has repeatedly told news outlets about hordes of transgender girls and women participating in sports.
Making the same claim he did in February on Sirius XM's Megyn Kelly Show, Tuberville told Fox News on Monday:
"We're getting to a point now where women and girls sports are getting ready to be extinct."
"Because already in states across this country, we have high school teams that are made up of totally boys participating against girls."
You can see the moment here:
In response to his latest lies, X user Bob Weeks offered a detailed fact check for the Alabama Republican.
But Weeks' pointing out Tuberville's lies was flagged and suppressed by X for being "Hateful Conduct" according to a note placed on his post.
But you can see it in full here:
@Bob_Weeks/X
But on Bluesky, calling out Tuberville's lies wasn't suppressed as it is on Elon Musk’s X.
@lindsayhjones/Bluesky
@mbkplus/Bluesky
When appearing with Megyn Kelly on February 3, Tuberville stated:
"It is a very, very touchy subject. Do you know, Megyn, that there’s some high school teams in this country–in blue states–are totally biological boys? It is a disgrace, it is a disgrace what’s going on."
"And what’s gonna happen is we are going to end up not having women’s sports because parents are not going to allow their kids to dress in dressing rooms, take showers with biological boys—or they don’t want to compete against them because of it being a safety factor. But it is devastating what is happening..."
When asked to provide actual proof of his claims, Tuberville replied:
"Most of them are track teams. You’re going to have a few in volleyball, you’re going to have a few in basketball. But mostly the track teams, and they’re in blue states."
"We get calls all the time about this. Even the parents in the blue states are in an uproar about this, and it’s going to become a common thing if we don’t stop it now."
"You let this landslide keep going, we’re going to have huge problems getting this stopped. So it’s important we stop it now."
Tuberville spokesperson Mallory Jaspers later claimed:
"Senator Tuberville was referring to the fact that he has heard stories from hundreds of women and girls who have lost trophies, scholarships, and opportunities to men."
Republicans claim it's a serious threat, but the math just isn't mathing.
In 2022, a study by UCLA's Williams Institute found only 0.6% of Americans aged 13 and older identified as transgender. Of those, 38.5% identified as transgender women, while 35.9% as transgender men, and 25.6% as gender nonconforming/nonbinary.
That means only 0.2% of the population of high school age and older Americans identified as trans girls and women. And only 30% of high school girls participate in sports.
If every single trans girl and woman participated in sports, there still wouldn't be sufficient numbers to create entire high school or college sports teams. If trans girls and women participated at the average rate for their gender, then only 0.06% of athletes would be trans.
Entire states couldn't field a team of all trans girls or women, let alone individual high schools or colleges.
Tuberville's lies are statistically impossible and entirely unsupported by the real numbers.
The NCAA had over 520,000 student athletes in 2022. Fewer than 10 of them were transgender. 592 athletes competed for the United States at the 2024 Olympics. None of them were transgender women or men, and only three identified as nonbinary.
One of Tuberville's own allies, Save Women’s Sports—a conservative organization created to ban transgender girls from competing in girls’ sports—could only find five transgender athletes competing on girls' teams in school sports for grades K through 12 in the entire United States.
Instead of impacting trans girls and women, such laws and organizational rules lead to the harassment of and discrimination against cisgender women who meet the Republicans' requirements for "biological" womanhood, but not their gender stereotypes.
The harassment Algerian boxer Imane Khelif experienced during and after the 2024 Olympics is a prime example of the misogyny and ignorance driving crusaders like Tuberville.
Republicans—always ready with a solution in search of a nonexistent problem.
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