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For California Transgender Student-Athletes, a Chance for Dignity and Health

The Editor | Sep 9, 2013

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By Danielle Kaufman, MD

Thanks to Jerry Brown and some visionary California legislators, transgender student-athletes in that state now have access to opposite-sex sports teams and facilities based on their gender identity. (Read more about the new law here.) This new law makes the health, well-being, and dignity of children–all children–a priority.

As one who has fairly recently become a transwoman, I’d like to offers some insights.

My first day in public as Danielle, I was in Guerneville, California, a small community known for its gay population. On Gay Pride day, I used the men’s restroom at a well-known gay bar while in female dress because I was intimidated by the idea of using the ladies room. Fortunately, the male patron in the restroom was amused, not hostile, upon seeing a woman enter the men’s room.

That experience taught me that I absolutely have to use the restroom of the gender I’m presenting as (I’ve since become accustomed to using the ladies room as a woman–and I’m much happier there). Toward the end of the time when I was still presenting as a man, I used community men’s rooms and it felt disingenuous. Notwithstanding the issues of my appearance, I now use the ladies room because I’m a lady and I belong there. Our transgender kids in school need and deserve the same rights.

One can only imagine the confusion a transgender adolescent feels! The California law could go a long way to helping open students’ minds to the needs and rights of their transgender peers. I hope there will be fewer youth suicides over this now.

Thankfully, we as a society have come to accept, at least in limited form, that not everyone is born in a body that corresponds to their gender identity. Those of us who have a discordant gender identity desperately need to be able to live as our true gender. The literature tends to refer to this as our “chosen gender.” Given that this is very clearly not a choice, I would prefer to say “true gender.”

Opponents to the new bill have voiced concerns that male students would use this to their advantage in athletics, claiming to be female in order to dominate their female opponents. This fear is as baseless as the fears of insurance companies, who believe if they cover Gender Reassignment Surgery (GRS) as an allowable expense, there will be a flood of applicants.

My observation is that born men sincerely wish to hang on to their penises; there will be no rush for GRS. Also, there will be no flood of male students claiming to be female to use that to their advantage. Boys will be boys, absolutely and without deceitfulness. I doubt there are many school-age boys who would be willing to claim they’re girls for the physical advantage.

Before gay marriage became legal, it occurred to me that gay men could still get married if one of them would claim to be female. Since then I’ve observed that, clearly, gay men are men, they are happy to be men, happy to have penises, and not about to pretend they’re a different gender for some perceived benefit. To say that a gay man could claim to be female in order to get married is to completely deny the entire concept of gender identity.

Our society still, for the most part, believes that a person’s gender identity is just the sex of the body they were born in. However, there is increasing understanding that the two aren’t always congruent, as the recent California law verifies. Those of us with bodies that are incongruent with our gender identity need to be able to express who we are. I’ve observed that cis-gendered men and women (those born in correspondingly congruent bodies) generally don’t seem to think about this much. That’s because they don’t have to.

I can vouch from extensive personal experience that to be imprisoned in a body opposite your gender identity is incredibly painful. It’s the greatest pain I’ve known in 54 years of life. Fixing it is the greatest joy I’ve known in 54 years. One has to assume that to be an adolescent who is incongruent with his/her gender–and denied the opportunity to live as transgender–has to be incredibly painful.

Kudos to Jerry Brown and his fellow legislators for their courage and vision. It’s about time that our kids have the freedom to express who they really are.

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Danielle Kaufman MD, formerly David, is a transgender woman and the author of Untying the Knot—A Husband and Wife’s Story of Coming Out Together (Addicus Books, 2013). Dr. Kaufman is a board-certified radiologist at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa, California, where she is chief of nuclear medicine.