This is in response to the Op-Ed, “Protect Title Nine from unfair competition.”

First of all, trans lives matter and transgender people deserve to play sports. The legislation proposed in Kansas to ban trans women from playing sports is part of a wave of transphobic bills across the United States to limit participation and control bodies.

Across the U.S., state legislators introduced some 35 bills throughout the country that limits or prohibit transgender women from competing in women’s athletics.

These hateful and transphobic bills speak to the issues of assigning gender at birth and the fraught social construction of gender than the fairness of sports. This is not some “transgender thing” but discrimination and devaluing humanity. It is not the case that a “male thinks he is female,” they are women.

Gender is a social construction, meaning gender refers to characters that vary over time.

Gender is most often assigned at birth based on biological sex, though sex is far more complicated than the reductive binary it becomes and sex is not the same as gender.

Cis-gender refers to those who align with the gender they were assigned at birth, and transgender for those who do not identify with their assigned gender.

Transgender is also often used as an umbrella term for those who are genderqueer, agender, gender nonconforming, non-binary, and more. Simply put, gender changes over time, and people can identify with whatever gender they desire.

These anti-trans laws discriminate and produce unnecessary and excessive monitoring of bodies. Transgender youth face high rates of violence and discrimination as it is, and more gender-affirming policies and practices are needed to save lives.

Sophia Ford is a former resident of Wilson who now is a PhD student at the University of Oregon in environmental studies and geography.