![]() ![]() “This is the worst legislative session in history for LGBTQ+ Americans, in terms of the number of bills we've been fighting,” says Anne Lieberman, the director of policy and programs at the sports advocacy group Athlete Ally. According to Freedom for All Americans, in Texas, legislators introduced 19 anti-trans sports bills, one of which was signed into law in October, forcing kids to play sports on public school teams with whichever gender matches the gender on their birth certificates. In 2021, bills were introduced in 36 states that would prohibit trans students from playing sports with cis students of the same gender at their schools. What's happening in South Dakota is happening all across the United States. But then last year, legislators passed yet another bill, this one aimed at students playing sports, and were partially successful-while the bill was vetoed by Governor Kristi Noem on technical grounds, she later issued two executive orders barring trans girls from playing on girls’ sports teams in public schools. Thankfully, neither bill came to fruition. (He later said he regrets the comparison.) Another bill would have prevented trans students in South Dakota public schools from using the correct bathroom and locker room for their gender. (While such interventions remain controversial to much of the general public, doctors and researchers say they're critical in addressing gender dysphoria: One recent study found that transgender and nonbinary youth who received gender-affirming hormone therapy reported lower rates of depression and suicidality.) The bill was introduced by a vehemently anti-trans state representative named Fred Deutsch, who told The New York Times he got the idea after surfing the internet one day he referred to gender-affirming surgeries as a form of “mutilation” and a “crime against humanity,” comparing them to medical experiments carried out by Nazis during the Holocaust. One would have prevented doctors from performing gender-affirming surgeries or prescribing puberty blockers or hormone therapy to anyone under age 16. ![]() Over the past few years in South Dakota, several bills have been introduced targeting trans kids. After the game, he goes home to his dad’s house, takes a shower, and heats up a cup of ramen. Kris is not one for celebration, but he’s happy. “This feels so good, to just rub this win in their face. “You have no idea,” Kris tells me after the game. Which doesn’t matter on the field on this game day, except in the sense that it makes it feel all the more worthwhile to beat the crap out of O’Gorman. But pesky to some people with a lot of power to cause a lot of problems in Kris’s life, because Kris is trans. It would all be unremarkable, except for one pesky fact-not pesky to Kris, or to his family, or to most of the people in his community. A 14-year-old boy who, like millions of others, lives a mostly conventional American life-playing video games and listening to rock and roll, messaging friends on Discord late into the night, getting home from football practice sweaty, fantasizing about old-school cars (in Kris’s case, a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz). Which confused Kris and angered his family, because Kris is a boy. But they wouldn’t let him they insisted he run cross-country with the girls instead. “I don’t really pay the crowd any mind, because I already have a job to do,” he says. Click-click-click.ĭuring the game, Kris is all focus, like any athlete who takes the task seriously. He turns to his dad and the other hundred or so people in the stands and flashes a peace sign. ![]() ![]() Your quintessential middle-American field, on which your quintessential American boys tackle one another and learn camaraderie and confidence.Īnd one of these quintessential American boys is Kris Wilka, 14 years old, standing in his maroon Harrisburg Tigers football jersey and metallic gold pants, helmet on, pads on, mouthguard in, greasy and smeared eye black below both eyes. In the center is a modest grouping of stands, which tonight are packed with parents and fans. And behind that, a football field-flat and unassuming, a short chain-link fence and running track surrounding it. About seven miles from downtown, right past a Walmart and some corn fields, sits Harrisburg North Middle School, a low-slung brick building that could be a stand-in for any American school. It’s a mild late-October evening in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. ![]()
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