South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem signed the first anti-trans sports bill of 2022 into law on Thursday, banning transgender girls and women from participating in sports as part of a coordinated wave of legislative attacks by Republicans on trans youth.

In line with the common theme of Representatives attacking trans youth to gain political clout, Noem promoted the ban in her re-election campaign: “In South Dakota, only girls play girls sports. Why? Because of Governor Kristi Noem’s leadership,” the ad started.

Noem’s law will let cisgender students sue schools that allows trans athletes to participate. It also gives schools the power to sue if their team competes with a team that has trans athletes, and safeguards anti-trans policies by not allowing government entities to challenge the ban.

The law disguises itself as a movement to ‘protect women’s sports’, but accomplishes the opposite – excluding trans girls and femme youth from participating in sports has negative outcomes for all youth through policing of gender by racist and invasive tests that’ve been used against Black athletes like Caster Semenya.

These bio-essentialist ideas perpetuate white supremicist-patriarchy that molds cisgender women and girls into a category that needs ‘protection.’ The systemic transmisogyny reproduces the idea of associating femininity with fragility through toxic masculinity that casts cisgender men as superior to all others.

Arguments attempting to uphold differences based on “biological sex”, fall apart as you dig into the science of how genes, gonads, and hormones keep sex subject to change: “The truth is, your biological sex isn’t carved in stone, but a living system with the potential for change,” Neurobiologist Dr. Simón(e) D Sun writes.

Most sponsors behind anti-trans sports bans, don’t know any trans athletes in their states, and Noem’s law follows a repetitive theme of erasure in these legislative attacks: it doesn’t use the word “transgender” even once, and perpetuates false narratives in its binary understanding of “biological sex.”

South Dakota joins nine other states that’ve passed laws preventing trans girls from participating in sports.