TOPEKA — Lawmakers unrolled a new bill that would bar transgender women from female-only spaces under the assumption that biological women tend to be naturally weaker and more vulnerable to violence than men.
Senate Bill 180 was given about 30 minutes of discussion at Wednesday’s Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee hearing, a time frame that critics have said is woefully inadequate to address all the bill’s implications. The bill has been called a women’s bill of rights, a designation that bill opponent Caroline Dean rejected.
Dean, a pastor with the Kansas-Oklahoma Conference of the United Church of Christ, and spokeswoman for the Kansas Interfaith Action, said the bill didn’t actually recognize any rights for women.
“The irony of this ‘Women’s Bill of Rights’ is that it doesn’t enumerate any actual rights, instead focusing on weaponizing the rhetoric of rights to erase protections for transgender and nonbinary people,” Dean said. “But I can name some rights that women need: the right to pay equity. The right to be free of gendered violence and sexual discrimination. The right to have affordable childcare, and to have access to healthcare when I or my children are in need.”
SB 180 would define “female” as people with biological reproductive systems that are developed to produce ova, an definition critics have said excludes intersex women and alienates women without ovaries.
The bill states that separate accommodations based on biological sex aren’t unequal, and that biological women sometimes need women-only social, educational, athletic and other spaces to ensure safety. This would include domestic violence shelters, restrooms and locker rooms.
One part of the bill says that “male individuals are, on average, bigger, stronger and faster than female individuals,” as justification for biology-based separation. Similar legislation has been introduced in North Dakota, Oklahoma and Arizona, among other states.
Former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who has made numerous national appearances in support of transgender sports bans, said she had personally experienced unfair competition.
Gaines swam competitively at Kentucky for four years and was a five-time SEC champion, 12-time NCAA All-American and two-time Olympic qualifier. She swam against Lia Thomas, the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship in swimming. In the 200 freestyle final at the NCAA championships, Thomas and Gaines tied for fifth place.
Gaines referenced the competition, saying people like Thomas were taking over female sports spaces at an “alarming rate,” across all athletic levels and ages, though there is little evidence of widespread competition from transgender athletes.
In an interview after the hearing, Gaines told the Reflector that the media wasn’t doing a good job of reporting on biological males competing as females but that there were many cases of it happening.
In Kansas, only two public school students across the state would be affected by a transgender sports ban, according to the Kansas State High School Activities Association.
Proponents speaking in favor of this bill and other anti-trans legislation have been mostly from out of the state, or from national organizations.
During a Tuesday hearing about effectively banning gender-affirming care, national anti-transgender activists were flown in from North Carolina and California to give their testimony.
Gaines said it wasn’t important that she had no Kansas connections because her religion and nationality qualified her to speak on the issue.
