Ted Cruz's Trans Attack Ad

Ted Cruz is running for re-election in Texas and has decided to make trans panic one of the features of his campaign. And it is just everything that's wrong with attempts to target teenaged trans athletes.

The ad shows images of female athletes at a track meet, while a caption says his opponent U.S. Rep Colin Allred has "voted to allow boys in girls sports." How messed up is this ad? Let's count the ways.

1) The track meet is taking place in Oregon.

2) Despite the implication of the caption, the girls are not trans.

3) Nobody with Cruz's campaign asked for permission to use the girls' images.

It's the hundredth iteration of how trans panic ends up causing trouble and trauma for actual young human beings. Over and over again. Like the time some disgruntled parents of second and third place winners filed a protest that they wanted the first place winner's gender checked. Or the various times that states have proposed bills that required winning athletes (female, because for some reason there is never concern about trans men) to submit to a barrage of tests to "prove" their gender. Or the nice folks in New Hampshire suing for the right to harass transgender teenagers. 

There are folks who are going to raise actual issues. What about the safety of players when a trans woman brings "extra" strength to the sport? I get that concern, but does that mean we will also establish some sort of limits on women's strength levels? You can only play a woman's sport if you're not more strong than X, regardless of your birth gender? 

We also hear about fairness, which is part of a larger conversation. Is it fair that one high school athlete's family can afford a personal trainer and coach and another cannot? What about performance enhancing substances-- how much enhancement should qualify as too much? 

All complicated issues, but in the meantime, attempts to use regulations and laws to somehow drive trans women out of any public place come down to trying to make miserable the lives of very specific, real, actual human teen age girls. You can't enforce any of this stuff without violating the privacy of teen athletes, both trans and not.

Cruz's use of actual young human beings as campaign props and additionally making them targets for harassment is just a particularly striking example, but this is what trying to "save women's sports" ultimately ends up being about. Ohio's Governor DeWine gets many things wrong, but when he was presented with a Save Women's Sports Act that promised more harassment of vulnerable teen athletes, he was right on the mark:

The welfare of those young people needs to be absolutely most important to this issue, whether that young person is transgender or not.

Sacrificing real human beings on the altar of political performance is inexcusable, I don't care how important you think that issue may be.