LABOR & COUNTRY CHAPTER XII - A letter to the office of Jonathan Lovitz

I wrote this letter during the initial barrage against our trans brothers and sisters, again unhappy with an incompetent and unimaginative government, letting legislature after legislature enact law, I am sure history will not look kindly on while barely putting up a fight.

Sir,

Your love for your community, and the people within it has moved me. It appears lawmakers now in Iowa, Idaho, Florida, Tennessee, and West Virginia would all see these young people forced by the state into a cudgeled identity so a bunch of middle-aged conservatives can feel more comfortable in their worldview bubbles. I have now had to read about multiple laws, steeped in this quiet brutality that the members of the Grand Old Party have come to be known to hang their hats on. I disagree strongly that members of the opposite sex need to be on teams that match their gender and believe this will eliminate the participation for these members in their communities, unable to find the feeling of belonging they seek.

I’ve felt a great sense of pride as our youth begin to stand up for one another across the country in relation to these issues of gender, sexual orientation, and sport. Still, there is quite the tornado of destructive policy that fails to address this situation around sport and our trans youth. This has led me to believe that this is only the beginning of a regimented encroachment of civil liberties and frankly outright national cruelty on behalf of a Republican Party that will fray communities to achieve political means.

However, there is a similar energy of puritanism within the liberal communities that believes biological men and women can compete against one another, even after transition, and think society, gaming organizations, and athletes alike should have no cause for issue.

Like all great political lies, there is a grain of truth when it comes to a disproportionate amount of natural ability, primarily in biological men that can be leveraged against the opposite biological sex when it comes to individual sports. This is the main component that lends itself to the destruction of a sacred game theory principle, reliant on trust and agreed upon set of shared rules.

Teams, games, sports, and underlying rule sets are critical elements both within our society and to our relationships with others. I’m Greek, so we’ve made a pretty big deal about it on occasion. However, we now have half the country believing in different sets of rules. This causes a disorder, as our population uses game theory and rules more broadly in our society, to make sense in a world of inherent chaos. However, I believe we can love and respect our trans communities while maintaining the principles of game theory.

I’m calling on leaders within your community to band together to form a new, focused, ferocious front against these lawmakers or I fear another generation of youth will remain underserved by our political class, pushed into the shadows in these conservative places. We will all continue to see cruel bills passed across the United States doing untold amounts of damage to the already precarious nature of the mental state that comes with gender dysphoria and being a teenager in general.

Great change comes to people usually matched by great trepidation. There is need for empathy all around including our aging population, continually undergoing change in the new millennia, magnified by ferocious right wing media machine. The Republican Party are ruthless and proficient tacticians in money, media, and messaging. Perhaps the only saving grace is a great incompetence in their political class. I’m continually surprised that such bills can be passed without significant political repercussions but dealing with these ideas in this way is untenable. The political class would continue to see the youth continue to be used as pawns.

With that said, I have quietly reflected about what it means to be a part of a team and athlete. As I’ve come to reflect on my own life, I look fondly back on the teams I was members of throughout high school. I grew up in a town known for football, so all the other high school sports were terrible! Winning, though strived for, was usually met with defeat simply due to the team and communities’ lack of interest and participation. And that is the way of the world.

I loved it. I look very fondly on those times of great camaraderie, playing, partying, and general antics a young people can get into. Even if met with losing seasons and a head coach always on the brink of a stroke. I’ve been thinking about our LGBTQ brothers and sisters and how important it is in these moments to have that.

Winning is not the most important thing we teach our children through sport, particularly when young. Community, teamwork, service, and most importantly, belonging is. I would ask the members of the trans community to think about an ability to participate and be a part of the team that matches their identity but simply not place or win trophies in individual sports and sit out matches in sports of more than one. I know this will be met with a gut punch of a feeling of unfairness, but it seems to be all that my simple brain can muster in this time of great transition.

I humbly ask you consider that being with the team is what matters most. Matches and competitions are important. However, it’s by far the absolute least amount of time spent as a team. Practice, travel, eating, texts, waiting around, jokes, tricks, working out and generally getting to know and love your teammates is what takes up 99.999% of the time. Wins in high school, as in life, come and go. The bonds and love between a team and within oneself due to the feeling of belonging must be the goal hope to be achieved.

Most importantly, this can give additional options to thwart and school the regimented cruelty acted out on behalf of lawmakers. There are millions of Americans that are rooting for this community to succeed, though there will be no easy answers to come. If you are to be a politician, its critical to understand how these issues can wedge Americans against one another, a primary feature of our existence in the American empire. These bills against the LGBTQ communities keep piling up and incompetent liberal politicians cannot seem to best these witless thugs in the field of politic. I’m sure the Supreme Court will strike down the laws but the damage they’ve wrought in the minds of our youth will be done.

These decisions should be made by the families and communities of the youth in the places they are a part of, not forced down the throat by the state. The American people have got your back, even if it seems our lawmakers think otherwise. Stay strong and keep fighting. You are an inspiration into the world. Working people stick together.