What Does Initiative 638 really do?
threatens girls, distracts voters from real problems
As a former school nurse and the parent of girls who were both very active in school sports teams, I am appalled that MAGA interests are playing politics with girls’ bodies and lives. Initiative 638 on our November ballot would require that girls in elementary, middle, and high school undergo sex verification, including invasive genital exams, just to play on an after-school team. This would be a new requirement for school sports physicals and I-638 applies to just girls, not boys. The misguided authors of this poorly written initiative clearly don’t understand how sports physicals work. Here in Washington State, doctors do not examine girls’ genitals for sports physicals because there’s no medical reason for it. As Dr. Gina Martin, a family-medicine physician said in a recent New York Magazine article on I-638, “This measure was clearly not written by somebody who practices medicine….Physicals focus on the two most important aspects of sports…musculoskeletal health — thinking about kids’ joints, bones, muscles, and tendons — and then cardiac health, looking into their heart health and finding out if we need to screen for additional cardiac risk factors….What is certainly not medically necessary is for me to do an exam and confirm somebody’s sex, either throughhormone testing, genetic testing, or a non-indicated genital exam.”
If approved, I-638 would change Washington state law to require medical sex certification as part of sports physicals for all girls, banning parents from using birth certificates instead. It would force tens of thousands of Washington girls each year to undergo invasive, embarrassing, and potentially harmful genital exams just to play sports. Free student sports physicals often occur in group settings in gyms, so this change would subject girls to greater embarrassment and possible harm while being forced to expose themselves to total strangers.
That’s why the WA State Nurses Association, WA Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse, and Moms Rising are opposing I-638. It does nothing to protect girls, and puts them at greater risk. Playing sports as a youth has been shown to build leadership skills, social emotional skills, teamwork and others. Depriving girls of this opportunity is not right. Any parent, teacher, school counselor, nurse or pediatrician can tell you, this measure would have a chilling effect, discouraging many girls from even trying to participate in sports. My two and a half year-old granddaughter already shows signs of athleticism. It’s horrifying that she would be required to undergo an inspection of her private parts, exposing the areas of her body we teach kids to protect, just to play tee-ball or soccer. The fact that this invasive policy would only apply to girls and not boys is offensive and discriminatory. Children who are questioning their gender are already at risk at a very vulnerable time in their lives. There are hardly any trans youth playing sports. LGBTQ youth are far more likely to face bullying, discrimination and other threats to their safety and wellbeing. In fact, researchers have found that states with laws that ban sports participation for transgender youth also saw significant increases (ranging from 7% to 72%) in the rates of suicide among transgender youth 13 to 17 compared to states that did not. Every child needs to feel supported in becoming their best self. When we create more barriers to something as healthy as playing team sports, we increase the risks of isolation, depression, inactivity, and other physical and mental health threats.
This initiative is not about solving the real challenges students face in our schools, it’s about distracting and confusing voters for political points. It’s outrageous in this day and age that so many girls and women continue to experience sexual harassment and violence. Putting up more barriers to empowering activities like sports will only disadvantage girls further, making them more vulnerable and less likely to grow up to be confident, strong, successful women.
The good news is that we voters can do something to protect our girls here in Everett and across the state. We can join the thousands of physicians, nurses, social workers, school counselors, coaches, teachers, and parents who are voting No on I-638 when we get our November ballots in the mail.
Katie Johnson is a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow, Johnson & Johnson School Health Fellow, as well as retired school nurse, a mother and grandmother, who lives in Everett.
