UT: Cisgender Student Under Police Protection as Trans Panic Rages On

Another cisgender girl in Utah has been accused of being transgender, leading to fears for her safety in the midst of an ongoing moral panic over transgender participation in sports.

by Evan Urquhart

Only two weeks ago Assigned Media shared a story originally reported by the Salt Lake Tribune about a junior varsity cisgender basketball player who’d been publicly accused by an enraged parent of being trans. Last night a new story in the Salt Lake Tribune, about an entirely different cisgender athlete, shows the escalating violence of the moral panic over transgender participation in sports.

A picture of this student was shared by a far-right state school board member, Natalie Cline, who insinuated she was transgender, which in turn incited threats against the girl from Cline’s follower base. She is now under police protection, and the post has been removed.

screenshot from the Salt Lake Tribune

The Salt Lake Tribune’s story explicitly notes that this cisgender girl who has been subject to violent threats after her appearance didn’t pass muster with the anti-trans hate mob is different from the cisgender basketball player who was subject to unfounded accusations of being trans by an irate parent in late January, whose story the paper also covered in depth.

The fear and humiliation these cisgender girls are being subjected to is real, and deserves to be addressed. However, it also underscores the threats of violence that are increasingly darkening the lives of transgender people, particularly transfemmes, nationwide. If the mere possibility that a girl might be transgender is enough to spur such an extreme outpouring of rage the danger an actual transgender girl would face in similar circumstances is hard to overstate.

The “debate” over transgender women and girls’ participation in sports is not a debate, and it’s not about protecting women and girls in sports. It was the thin end of the wedge of hatred, used to smuggle extreme views past the US mainstream. Now that the extremists have been emboldened by anti-trans rhetoric and legislation targeting the trans community such as sports bans, the true danger of their rhetoric has been exposed. Is it too late to turn back from the pathway of anger, suspicion, and hate we’ve landed on?

Only time will tell.