Transgender Wrestler Highlights Birth Certificate Flaws

UPDATE: This post has been updated to include a video interview of attorney Jim Baudhuin, and updated information in SportsDay's article, regarding the identity of the plaintiff in the lawsuit against the UIL.

Meet Mack Beggs. He's a junior at Trinity High School in Euless, Texas. He wrestles in the 110-lb. weight class for Trinity's wrestling team. He finished his season undefeated, 44-0. As reported by SportsDay, he captured the University Interscholastic League (UIL) Class 6A Region II chamionship last Friday, February 17, 2017. His next competition is for the state title. Seems like a normal elite high school athlete. But that's where normal ends for this athlete. Mack is the subject of a fiercely tense debate, and a lawsuit against the UIL. For Mack Beggs was born a female.

Beggs began his transition from female-to-male two years ago. As is normal for female-to-male transition, he takes testosterone treatments to raise his Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) levels into the normal range of a male. These levels are how a female's musculature, shape, hair growth, etc., enable Beggs to have the build, look, and feel of a male. These are normal, typical treatments. As such, Beggs is exempt from the athletics rule banning steroids, because they are medically necessary, and he is under the care of a physician during this lengthy process.

The athletic steroid ban is the reason for the lawsuit filed, two weeks before the match, by attorney Jim Baudhuin, the parent of a Coppell High School wrestler, on behalf of plaintiff Pratik Khandelwal, whose daughter also wrestles for Coppell. Both Baudhuin's and Khandelwal's daughters would not have competed against Beggs, as they are in different weight classes. Baudhuin urged the UIL to suspend Beggs for steroid use, but Beggs' treatments are exempted from the rule under a "safe harbor" clause. Come last Friday, Beggs won his championship match on Friday because his opponent, Coppell's Madeline Rocha, forfeited the match.

And Baudhuin emphasized that his complaint was not that Mack was transgender. He was fine with that. It is that Mack's treatments give him an unfair advantage against female opponents. The argument has merit. Why, you might ask, doesn't Mack just wrestle on the boys team, where the testosterone levels will be on par, and not an advantage? Good question. Beggs, with the help of his mother, Angela, tried that. They couldn't get the UIL to budge from the rules stipulated in Paragraph g and h of Subchapter J, Section 360 of the UIL Constitution and Contest Rules, which states:

(g) Boys may not wrestle against girls, and vice versa. This prohibition is only applicable when the contest is held in Texas or in any other state that sponsors wrestling programs for both boys and girls.
(h) Gender shall be determined based on a student’s birth certificate. In cases where a student’s birth certificate is unavailable, other similar government documents used for the purpose of identification may be substituted.

Parents may be dismayed at the physical disadvantage their daughters face, and many are worried that the disadvantage is unsafe for their daughters, and rightly so. And it seems that the frustration of parents, as well as the focus of the lawsuit, is aimed at the UIL and not not Mack Beggs. But when the UIL proposed to formalize the gender policy (it had informally already been in use to that point), according to a Oct. 2015 Texas Tribune article, "the 32 member legislative council on Monday passed on an opportunity to vote on the proposed rule. Instead, the council decided to send it to the superintendents of member districts — with a recommendation that they approve it." So the rule formally went on the books at the approval of district superintendents, not the UIL. The UIL just adopted the rule and enforces it. So it's likely that the lawsuit needed to include the superintendents to have any legal weight to change the rule. Buidhuin may find that out for himself in court.

From a social equality standpoint, this situation is fantastic. Mack isn't "taking advantage." He doesn't want to compete with the girls. He's being forced to. He's being forced by an association rule, that is engendered by obtuse legislators at the state level, who want to force their version of "societal norms" on people who are outside of those norms.

And not for nothing, Mack won't have this problem once he graduates. In 2010, the NCAA adopted the "NCAA Inclusion of Transgender Student-Athletes," adopted by the Office of Inclusion in August 2011. It states:

The following policies clarify participation of transgender student-athletes undergoing hormonal treatment for gender transition:

1. A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who has received a medical exception for treatment with testosterone for diagnosed Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for purposes of NCAA competition may compete on a men’s team, but is no longer eligible to compete on a women’s team without changing that team status to a mixed team.
2. A trans female (MTF) student-athlete being treated with testosterone suppression medication for Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for the purposes of NCAA competition may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.

Any transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatment related to gender transition may participate in sex-separated sports activities in accordance with his or her assigned birth gender.

• A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who is not taking testosterone related to gender transition may participate on a men’s or women’s team.
• A trans female (MTF) transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatments related to gender transition may not compete on a women’s team.

So if Mack wants to complete in college, he will be required to compete as a man, because he takes hormone treatments. If Mack decides to try out for the Olympics, they have specific rules as well. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) held the "IOC Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism" in November 2015. Since 2003, transgender athletes have been allowed to compete with their respective genders provided they had undergone sexual reassignment surgery, the prevailing theory being that the surgery would have required the hormone therapy. At this meeting, the IOC agreed "the following guidelines to be taken into account by sports organisations when determining eligibility to compete in male and female competition:"

1. Those who transition from female to male are eligible to compete in the male category without restriction.
2. Those who transition from male to female are eligible to compete in the female category under the following conditions:
   1. The athlete has declared that her gender identity is female. The declaration cannot be changed, for sporting purposes, for a minimum of four years.
   2. The athlete must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition (with the requirement for any longer period to be based on a confidential case-by-case evaluation, considering whether or not 12 months is a sufficient length of time to minimize any advantage in women’s competition).
   3. The athlete's total testosterone level in serum must remain below 10 nmol/L throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category.
   4. Compliance with these conditions may be monitored by testing. In the event of non-compliance, the athlete’s eligibility for female competition will be suspended for 12 months.

So Mack can even try out for the Olympics, with the caveat that the IOC may monitor his testosterone levels to ensure they don't exceed normal levels for male athletes. He will never be able to compete with women again, and that will suit him just fine. The point is that at all upper levels of athletic competition, transgender athletes are able to compete, with their identified genders. And the lawsuit against the UIL isn't asking that Mack be banned altogether - just that he can't compete with girls. And it's a reasonable request.

And take a close look at Mack, because it speaks to the larger societal problem. Is there anything in the photo above that looks female? Of course not. But THAT is what girls will see in their restrooms in schools and public facilities, if transgender males like Mack are forced to use female restrooms. The argument is always framed in the guise of "criminals" and "pedophiles," who will dress up like women and infiltrate female restrooms and rape little girls till their heart's content. It is a fake argument, being that female public restrooms are all closed-stall. Women won't even know if a transgender female is in the restroom most of the time, because they are typically behind closed doors. It is a ploy based in fear, bigotry and false equivalence. Conversely, the rules - as the legislature wants them - will make interactions that do happen with transgenders a lot more awkward and worrisome, because they won't wonder if the girl next to them is a guy. They'll see what is, quite obviously, a guy standing next to them and wonder if he belongs there. And if that guy worries them, and they report a guy in the women's restroom, are they saying it's okay for authorities to yank the guy out of the restroom and pull his pants down to verify there's a vagina? Always on their high horse, the people shouting the loudest about transgenders in restrooms, in states like Texas and North Carolina, are ignorant to the consequences of getting what they want. Transgenders don't use restrooms matching their gender to inflame paranoia. If anything, in addition to being how they are most comfortable, they do it to make everyone else feel less awkward. Somehow, lawmakers have ignored the reality that the rules they want to implement are counter- intuitive to the safety, security, and peace of mind they claim to be fighting to ensure. Politicians, always good for fanning the flames of their own failures...

Mack undoubtedly has no desire to become the poster-child of the transgender debate. He just wants to wrestle - with the guys. But the hand being forced in this situation belies the true effects of preventing transgenders from being who they are. Mack is wiping the floor with the girls in his wrestling district. He likely will do the same thing at state. And the parents, teachers, associations, agencies, and legislators, who refuse to see reason, can sit and watch as he wipes the floor with them - it's their fault it's happening.