St. Augustine Civil Rights Lawyer Speaks Out In opposition to Trans Sports activities Ban

St. Johns County’s civil rights attorney, Rook Ringer, loved playing soccer as a kid, but gave up when she realized she just didn’t belong on the boy’s team. It never crossed her mind that she could even ask to play with the girls.

It’s a painful memory. But in a way, she said, it was easier then.

“I almost wonder if it was in some ways easier for me as a transgender kid in the early 90s when people didn’t know what we were, you know? Well, it’s like not only does everyone know what transgender people are, they’ve heard from us by now, but these adults are running on these crusades to make these kids out there seem like super robbers trying to do anything to destroy what they touch. “

Ringer is now a transgender lawyer herself and represents people in civil rights cases. She says a 2020 Supreme Court case, Bostock v Clayton County, has already ruled that transportation bans like the one in Florida are unconstitutional.

“Why is the Fiscal Responsibility Party spending what will end up being millions of dollars on the fight? [for] to fight this law, which the federal government has already announced [against]? “

The new law is one of many across the country aimed at protecting cis women in sports, with trans women invariably labeled as being stronger and faster than cis women.

Florida State Senator Kelli Stargel, who supported the Tallahassee bill, put it this:

“As a child, I always heard you run like a girl. And when you watch this video, it’s obvious. The competing trans woman or the self-identified woman ran very differently than the others in the competition. It’s physiologically different. Men are stronger, they have greater lung capacity, stronger muscles. ”

Some medical experts would make these statements difficult. Renowned trans health and medical expert Joshua Safer says that one major difference in the strength of testosterone levels, which varies between the sexes, but also within the sexes: some women have very high testosterone levels and some very low testosterone levels, and the same goes for men. “A person’s genetic makeup and internal and external reproductive anatomy are not useful indicators of athletic performance and have not been used in elite competition for decades,” he said in a recent lawsuit.

Dedreck Mose, a St. Johns County social media influencer who took estrogen supplements and testosterone blockers for two years, said the treatment made his body weaker than before.

“I didn’t do a surgical transition, but my body changed drastically,” he said. “The strength level has really dropped. I was super sensitive and my body was super fragile. ”

The physical changes were one of the reasons Moses decided to stop the transition in 2019.

Moses said he could understand the legislature’s reluctance to allow women to exercise women on male hormones, but said that once someone begins a hormonal or surgical change, they should be able to exercise with people of the same sex.

This is in line with the guidelines of the International Olympic Committee and the US Olympic and Paralympic Committees that allow trans women to compete in women’s sports as long as they are on testosterone suppression therapy.

“The NCAA and the Olympics, all of these other sports agencies had legitimate, science-based rules about who can compete and what requirements they must meet in order to compete for 10 years, and they never had any problems,” added Ringer.

But the pain the law will cause for trans kids is real, she said. And for these trans kids, Ringer has a message.

“I’m here for you, you know? I am happy to be with you and behind you and to support you, and I think most transgender women or transgender men who are adults feel the same way. We have your back. “

Contact Sydney Boles at [email protected] or on Twitter at @sydneyboles.