LB89, known as the Stand With Women Act, has advanced within the unicameral. Now, the bill just needs to advance through two more rounds of debate. On the surface, standing with women seems like a straightforward concept, but this bill is really an outright attack on transgender youth.
“Since 2016, you would be surprised to know that eight students, eight students in nine years, have applied to be considered to participate in transgender sports,” Senator Roybould said. Nebraska has had more school shootings than transgender athletes.
This bill aims to define “male” and “female” and would restrict access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams. For example, it would prevent those assigned male at birth from joining female sports teams and vice versa. Senator Kauth referred to this as “common sense.”
Here’s a riddle: Who is more likely to be assaulted behind closed doors—the large-bodied majority or the minority being stripped of their rights? I don’t need a master’s in public policy to answer that question, but apparently, our elected officials do. Spoiler alert: they still got it wrong.
This may be a controversial statement, but I have no interest in the genitalia of minors—something our state senate seems obsessed with in recent years. I also fail to see how this bill protects women from the issues they face most. The restroom choices of eight kids do nothing to prevent sexual assault, intimate partner violence, online harassment, inadequate maternal healthcare, human trafficking, the lack of women in leadership, or gender bias in education.
If women want to gain more rights and better protections, it doesn’t start with this bill. Attacking each other only distracts from more pressing issues. I don’t know how to explain that we should care about other people and protect and uphold everyone’s rights.
“There are those societal expectations that fall in line with gender norms that are couched in patriarchy about how women should present themselves. … From hair to makeup to clothing, to how tight [or loose] the clothing is, to the colors,” Carter-Francique, executive director for the Institute for the Study of Sport, Society and Social Change at San José State University said. “[All] so that they can be more in line with this notion of girlhood, of womanhood, of what is deemed femininity.”
If our government truly wants to “stand with women,” it should start by aiding women rather than attacking them.
