Rep. Andrew Gray, who won his seat with the help of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, distinguished himself with a question to Rep. Jamie Allard, sponsor of House Bill 183, which seeks to protect girl athletes from having their competitive sports taken over by boys identifying as girls.
Gray used the gender slug “cis-gender” to refer to biological girls, when he asked for proof, during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill.
Allard said there was plenty of proof, but she referred to Riley Gaines, the swimmer who was forced to compete against a male swimmer known by his transgender name as Lia Thomas, during her collegiate swimming career. Thomas, who is 6-foot, 1 inches with broad shoulders and masculine upper-body musculature, stole the trophy from an actual woman swimmer during the NCAA Division I national championship, winning the women’s 500-yard freestyle event in 2022. Thomas had competed as a male just two years earlier. While on the men’s team, he ranked 554th in the 200 freestyle.
Read Swimmer’s World analysis of Lia Thomas’ undeniable physical advantages.
Gaines spoke to the House Judiciary Committee by teleconference, reminding the committee that at no time has the committee considered the unfair advantage of girls competing in boys’ divisions, because everyone knows that doesn’t occur, which is why it is not controversial.
While the Alaska Board of Education and Early development and the Alaska School Activities Association have banned boys from competing in girls-only athletic competitions, HB 183 expands the ban and puts it into state law. Private schools with teams competing against public school teams would be covered by HB 183.
“Do you have any studies that show that trans-women have physical advantage over what I’m gonna call cis-gender girls, what you call biological girls, in sports?” Trans-women are men who have taken chemicals to suppress their male hormones and who typically have undergone surgeries to make themselves look more feminine. They typically maintain their stronger bones, muscles, and physique that goes along with athletic prowess.
Watch Gray ask the question and hear Riley Gaines’ answer in this video clip of the committee hearing:
Gaines pointed out to the committee that in basketball, the ball is smaller because women’s hands are smaller. In golf, women’s clubs are shorter and the women tee from a different spot to account for the difference in ability to drive the ball for the same distance.
One study showing the athletic superiority of men over women is found at the National Library of Medicine at this link.
The study shows that “without the sex division, females would have little chance of winning because males are faster, stronger, and have greater endurance capacity. Male physiology underpins their better athletic performance including increased muscle mass and strength, stronger bones, different skeletal structure, better adapted cardiorespiratory systems, and early developmental effects on brain networks that wires males to be inherently more competitive and aggressive. Testosterone secreted before birth, postnatally, and then after puberty is the major factor that drives these physiological sex differences, and as adults, testosterone levels are ten to fifteen times higher in males than females. The non-overlapping ranges of testosterone between the sexes has led sports regulators, such as the International Olympic Committee, to use 10 nmol/L testosterone as a sole physiological parameter to divide the male and female sporting divisions. Using testosterone levels as a basis for separating female and male elite athletes is arguably flawed. Male physiology cannot be reformatted by estrogen therapy in transwoman athletes because testosterone has driven permanent effects through early life exposure.”
Gray wrote of his thinking: “Yesterday in house judiciary I attempted to table Rep. Jamie Allard’s dangerous HB 183 which could require genital exams on our children before they can play sports. Unfortunately, I was ruled out of order, but I will not back down.”
