USWNT star Megan Rapinoe slammed anti-trans bills in an interview with Insider.- In a House hearing, Rapinoe had a strong, quick response to Rep. Scott Franklin's transphobic questions.
- Rapinoe vowed to "stand with my
trans community and with all marginalized people."
As dozens of states move to pass legislation that would ban transgender children from participating in girls' youth
The US Women's National Team star attended the House Committee on Oversight and Reform's "Equal Pay Day" hearing, where she issued a strong rebuke to Rep. Scott Franklin, a Republican from Florida. Franklin drilled Rap ino with a transphobic line of questioning about "the potential impact" of allowing transgender people to participate in
"As a member of the LGBTQ community, I firmly stand with the trans family and that whole community. And as someone who has played sports with someone who is trans, I can assure you as well, nothing is spontaneously combusting."
Rapinoe was referring to
"We do know, though, is that people are continuously marginalized by gender - we know that in equal pay, we know that in the workplace, we know that with LGBTQ," Rapinoe added. "So I think that we need to continue to fight for equality. We need to continue to protect people who have suffered from discrimination and inequality because of gender, and that really needs to be at the forefront."
-NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 24, 2021
Rapinoe, who also visited the White House while in DC, has long been a vocal ally for fellow LGBTQ+ folks. The latest legislative attempts to prohibit transgender kids from partaking in girls' and women's sports, she told Insider, are "just a way to propagate hate and to continue to discriminate."
"Every single person who wrote every single one of these bills - none of those people have been in a locker room," Rapinoe said while discussing her campaign with Schmidt's, which is aimed at undermining "gender norms and stereotypes" in with cosmetics industry. "None of those people have played on a women's sports team."
"I have," she added. "I've been in a locker room with a trans person."
Rapinoe said that from her vantage point, Quinn is a great teammate and fantastic player. And when it comes to their gender identity in the locker room and on the field, she added, "nobody cares."
"[Quinn is] there to do their job and to play a sport that they love and to be their full selves and to be accepted for that," Rapinoe said, then delivered a message for the lawmakers who drafted the proposed transphobic bills. "You're trying to speak on behalf of a lot of people that don't feel that way and don't feel threatened."
"It's quite the opposite," Rapinoe added. "It's been actually really dope being on Quinn's team for the last couple of years and to see their transformation. To see someone just like living their full life the way that they want to, I always feel like is really inspiring and beautiful."
Rapinoe said her experience as Quinn's teammate makes it even easier to debunk the notion that transgender people could pose a threat to women's sports. Now, she explained, she can "not only just use my platform to be an ally and someone who's going to speak out about it, but also to say I'm in the locker room with Quinn and I know Layshia [Clarendon] personally, so it's just BS."
Clarendon, a basketball superstar who plays for the WNBA's New York Liberty, came out as trans via Instagram in December 2020. Both Clarendon and Quinn are fantastic athletes, but neither dominates the competition in the way many politicians have warned could happen if trans athletes are permitted to play in women's leagues.
"It's just totally false hypotheticals of what could happen, when actually you have no idea what happens in that locker room," Rapinoe said. "You have no idea the effect that it's going to have on trans kids and trans people period, and just the damage and how destructive and how hateful that is."
"You actually don't even know what you're talking about," Rapinoe added, again addressing the lawmakers behind these bills. "Do you even watch women's sports? Yeah, probably not."
Despite Rapinoe's and other professional athletes' opposition to bills aimed at excluding transgender youth from athletics programs, more than half of states in the union currently have legislation in motion to "protect women's sports," as former President Donald Trump recently put it.
According to the ACLU, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia all have some form of these anti-trans bills on the docket.
Rapinoe said that because "99.9% of people are not going on to play professional sports," the supposed threat of unfair competition from trans kids is completely illegitimate.
"Ultimately sports is such a great outlet for kids to learn so much," she said. "So to ban people from that benefit just for the purpose of hate is totally ridiculous. Middle fingers to all these trans bills - it's just super harmful."