Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg reiterated his previous comments about transgender women athletes this week, saying that in order to “bring people together” on the issue, Democrats “need to take everyone seriously.”
During an interview on Substack Live with attorney and political strategist Aaron Parnas, Buttigieg briefly followed up on comments he made to NPR last week saying that trans women in women’s sports raise “serious fairness issues” that should be handled by sports leagues and local communities rather than politicians. “[People are] wondering, ‘Wait a minute. I got a daughter in a sports league. Is she going to be competing with boys right now?’” Buttigieg told NPR in the course of his remarks. “[J]ust taking everybody seriously.”
Buttigieg’s statement to Parnas followed largely the same template. The perennial presidential hopeful started off by expressing compassion for trans people and their families who he said are “being used as a political football,” and criticized those on the right who he said used trans athletes to “divide [and] hurt.”
Buttigieg then, once again, appeared to legitimize the notion that it is unfair for a trans woman to compete with her cis peers. “I think in order to bring people together on this, we also have to take everyone seriously,” Buttigieg told a nodding Parnas, echoing his remarks on NPR. “[P]eople who have questions or wonder what this means […] they’re going to have questions about how to make sure that’s fair, and we should take those questions seriously and face those together,” he continued, again reiterating his belief that those questions “should be handled by communities and by sports leagues, not politicians.”
One issue with Buttigieg’s framing, however, is that such “questions” are themselves shaped by Republican anti-trans propaganda, and are often significantly overblown. Though research into hormone replacement therapy (HRT)’s effects on athletic performance is still developing, a study published last year and funded by the International Olympic Committee found evidence that on average, trans women have lower oxygen consumption rates than cis men or women, and may be disadvantaged in competitions that involve metrics like lower body strength and vertical leap height. And although Buttigieg may place his faith in sports leagues to create science-based policies for trans athletes, the IOC study’s lead researcher Yannis Pitsiladis told OutSports last year that many leagues will likely continue to ban trans women from competition regardless of any new research.
“I suspect most [leagues] will follow the positions of the large federations to ban [trans women]. Also, it’s unlikely that those large federations will change their position as they are now too invested and they don’t really look at the science or evidence,” Pitsiladis said at the time. “Their wish is mainly to appease their membership and the decisions being taken are mainly justified by politics and dictates, rather than science.”
Though his comments have carried a tone of general compassion, Buttigieg is the latest Democrat to hew to the center on trans athletes as a political topic. Over the past several months, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has also made numerous statements arguing that it is “deeply unfair” for trans women to play women’s sports — so much so that Newsom has also walked back his support for gender-affirming medical care. Newsom’s comments have already been cited in right-wing bills and legal briefs to argue for further sports restrictions and rollbacks on trans civil rights.
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