I play varsity high school girls basketball, and if I were old enough to vote, I would vote NO to stop ballot Initiative 638 from passing this November. 

To enforce excluding trans girls from sports, I-638 would require all girls to submit to sex inspections before being allowed to play any sport in elementary, middle, and high school. I outright reject claims by the MAGA mega-millionaire behind I-638, Brian Heywood, that this initiative is protecting my safety!

The people behind I-638 say they want to protect me from a tiny, vulnerable, and already bullied minority, transgender girls. I don’t need protection from my peers. I need to live in a community that includes, protects, and cares for all youth, regardless of gender identity. 

True protection for female athletes would mean safeguards from some adult male coaches, who use their power to groom and abuse girls on their teams. It would also mean less interference from people who make fun of girls on the courts, comment on our bodies, and deny us the same equipment and access that boys have. Did you know that girls drop out of sports at higher rates than boys by age 14? A humiliating exam or testing that inflicts financial burdens on families —they will not be covered by insurance—will certainly affect girls’ participation in athletics now and for years to come! 

To police all girls in sports, they want me to go through a new inspection during my sports physical to make sure I’m a girl by doing an invasive exam of my reproductive anatomy.  Parents won’t be able to use our birth certificates to prove our sex. 

Even little girls playing middle school sports (and some elementary school sports) will be examined. Boys who play sports are exempt from this new requirement. Tens of thousands of us girls are not.

Why are they putting us through this? To  enforce a cruel ban, the most extreme of its kind in the nation, to keep a handful of trans girls from participating in athletics.

I’ve been playing basketball since 6th grade and I’ve never, to my knowledge, played with or against a trans girl. The Washington Interscholastic Athletic Association says there are just 5–10 trans children playing sports, out of 1.2 million students, so the chances are very small that I’ll ever encounter a trans girl on the court and if I did so what?

Sports are for everyone and we should be encouraging more people to seize the opportunity to get out and exercise and compete. My basketball teammates are my sisters. We laugh, pick each other up, disagree sometimes and support each other through challenges. They’ve taught me how to resolve conflicts, overcome frustration, and put my own ego aside for the sake of the team. Excluding trans girls from the benefits of friendship and teamwork only makes things worse for a small group of kids who already face higher violence and rates of suicide.

The people behind I-638 are using a scare tactic by saying a boy will claim to be a trans girl just to walk onto a girls’ team. Life is already hard enough for trans girls who strive to pass and belong. Even the Seattle Times calls the tactic “fearmongering.” 

I-638 will discourage thousands of girls from participating in school sports, impacting the future of Washington girls’ sports for years to come. That’s the real danger to me and my teammates. I’m counting on all of you to vote against this harmful and exclusionary initiative. 

Jillian is a high school basketball player from South Seattle. Her last name is withheld to protect her privacy.

Nathalie Graham covers anything she finds fun, weird, or interesting. You can find a lot of that in her column, Play Date. Her work has also appeared around town in The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the... More by Nathalie Graham