Right out of the gate, you should notice a discrepancy between the cover image and the title. The fact is, you can’t always make a point by addressing that point directly, especially if the topic itself is so supercharged in terms of politics and religion, which are not the subject of this post. (Also, please be sure to see the disclaimer on my website which disconnects my writing from the organizations I represent elsewhere).
Don’t worry, I’ll get to the bipolar man in a bit.
A friend on Facebook recently explained her take on the transgender athletic’s issue. As a quick summary, she positioned herself as someone who can weigh in on the topic – female, former athlete, mother of a female athlete, etc. She explained her position on the topic, a very common one, which is that she’s against what she called these “biological males” playing in women’s sports.
The main reason this person’s post is relevant is that she wrote, “please help me understand this logic.” Granted, that might have been rhetorical, but I had already been thinking about expressing myself on it, so this statement/question became the impetus for me sitting down to write it.
Let’s skip ahead. I think transgender athletes should be able to compete in the gender to which they identify. In the 2018-2020 timeframe, this topic became a theme of my post-basketball discussions with friends (and a couple of family members). Specifically there were 6 of us, 4 had opinions clearly contrary to mine, and one probably agreed more with me but was fairly quiet on the matter. So, basically our opinions weren’t that far off from what I read was about a 20% national opinion that aligned with my own.
To explain why I think that, I’m steering clear of anything related specifically to LGBTQ, religion, or any truly polarizing topics. Which is ironic, because I now present to you the bipolar man. His name was Kyle Efinger, and on January 1st, 2024 he had an episode which cost him his life. Without going into excessive detail – time and attention spans being what they are – I’ll give a quick rundown. He was at the Salt Lake City airport and he missed his flight to Denver. This clearly sparked a bipolar episode in which he showed up at the closed down gate in his socks, broke through that gate (there’s footage of the whole episode), ran out onto the tarmac, and literally crawled into the engine of the plane…which killed him.
I’m sorry for the gruesome part of that story. If you hadn’t heard about it, like I had not until this morning, it’s obviously shocking. But I’ve now arrived at its relevance to the point I’m trying to make. Take a look at one person’s comment on the story (below the grayed out story itself).
This individual read/watched a story about a man with a clear affliction getting so overcome with that affliction that he literally crawled into the engine of a plane…and the people he was concerned with were the delayed travelers. OK, sure, we can feel bad for them. But shouldn’t they be a 1pt font asterisk to the 30pt font outcome that is Kyle Efinger’s death? Like, even just allude to him first before you reference the passengers.
At some point in my life I was led to believe that the moral fabric of this country centered on protecting those that most need protection. Bringing this back to transgender athletics, I do not in any way, shape or form think that the cisgender athletes don’t deserve protection (one of the biggest concerns is their safety). I don’t believe that the inconvenienced passengers didn’t deserve to be accommodated as best as possible. But I do believe that the most protection belongs to those who need it most.
If having to play a sport in a gender to which you don’t identify causes severe emotional distress, then those individuals need the protection in order to alleviate that stress. . Yes, it might increase the challenges of others, coming in third place instead of winning, etcetera etcetera, but the protection of the most in need is where I believe we should direct our primary concern.
Quick side trip: I’m not unscathed on this topic. In May of 2020, in reaction to the George Floyd incident and the first days of the Black Lives Matter movement, I [in hindsight, what I consider horrifyingly stupidly] remarked to a colleague that “all lives matter.” Thankfully, that colleague was able to help me immediately course-correct, and I realized that my morals actually did align with Black Lives Mattering in the way that the slogan intended. My take on that literally moments after the realization, and the one that I’ve felt before and after, is that worth putting in quotes:
Of course “all lives matter.” We wouldn’t put that on a t-shirt or spray it on streets, because it’s so obvious. The reason we say black lives matter is that we need to make sure that everyone knows they do, because they have a history of persecution, and they require keeping that statement in the forefront of everyone’s mind.
The passenger’s lives also mattered. But Kyle’s was the one that mattered even more after he was driven so desperately by his episode to crawl into a jet engine.
My opinion on this topic has been the same since those initial discussions with friends in 2018. And as someone who works closely with the HR industry, I can without a doubt say that if there was a time in our country’s existence that specific demographics needed even more protection than ever, it is literally in February of 2025. My deeply-rooted, but unfortunately significantly affected opinion of the values for which country stands/stood, will not move my thoughts on the topic to the majority. Transgender athletes have an challenging, if not impossible, road staring them in the face. But hopefully one or two people have been “helped to understand” where the perspective originated, at least for me.