It is shameful enough for the president of the United States to launch a barrage of insults at a fellow adult and issue not-so-veiled threats.
But a teenager? A 16-year-old whose biggest concerns ought to be her upcoming finals and choosing a topic for her college application essay is now in harm’s way because of Donald Trump’s latest effort to gin up his base.
Trump targeted the transgender teen as part of a social media post Tuesday threatening California Gov. Gavin Newsom over the state’s law protecting the participation of transgender athletes. (Ask Maine how well that’s going to go.) Though Trump did not mention the young woman’s name, her high school or even which events she’s won, it only takes a quick spin of the Google machine to find all that out — along with when she’ll be competing at this weekend’s state championships.
If you don’t think that’s a threat to her physical safety, if you can’t imagine how Trump’s screed might encourage one of his followers to take matters into his or her own hands, you must have been under a rock on Jan. 6, 2021.
Hernandez has shrugged off the hysteria from the anti-trans activists, telling Capital & Main, “I’m still a child, you’re an adult, and for you to act like a child shows how you are as a person.” But there’s quite a difference between Karen from Chino trying to make you disappear and the president of the United States bringing the full weight of his social media following to the fight.
And, as usual when it comes to transgender participation in sports, facts are irrelevant.
Trump claimed that Hernandez ‘won ‘everything’ at last weekend’s southern California regional championship and “is practically unbeatable.” This despite her finishing fourth in the high jump at what was not even a statewide meet.
Hernandez did win titles in the triple jump and long jump, but even in those events she is not close to being “unbeatable”. Her personal best in the triple jump is 41 feet, 4 inches, which is almost 2 feet behind the nation’s best this season. Two feet! And Hernandez didn’t come close to that Saturday.
It’s similar in the long jump, where the 19 feet, 3.5 inches Hernandez jumped on Saturday doesn’t even crack the top 25 for best performances nationally this season. Heck, it isn’t even the best result in the state this season.
“I don’t think you understand that this puts your idiotic claims to trash. `She can’t be beat because she’s biologically male,’” Hernandez told Capital & Main after an earlier meet, where she won the triple jump but was third in the long jump and eighth in the high jump.
I don’t know how many times this needs to be said, but there is no reputable science showing a competitive advantage by transgender women. Nor are the performances of cisgender men an appropriate comparison or predictor for transgender women because the two are not the same.
Transgender girls and young women have been competing for years now and, last time I checked, they aren’t overrunning the podium or taking all the roster spots. They don’t pose an existential threat to cisgender women or women’s sports.
Stories about belonging across the country: Sign up for USA TODAY’s This is America newsletter.
Are there some transgender girls and young women who’ve beaten their cisgender opponents, as Hernandez did in the triple jump? Sure. But it’s not because they’re transgender. It’s because that’s how sport works. You line up, you compete, and somebody wins and everybody else loses, and the reasons for that are as varied as the people involved. Physiology. Coaching. Experience. Work ethic. Nutrition. I could go on.
But the transgender community, and transgender women athletes in particular, have become a convenient punching bag for opportunistic politicians and mean-spirited grifters, often as a cover for their own failings. These people have made the few dozen transgender athletes — yes, that’s really all there is across the levels of youth sports — into bogey men and women who will be the ruin of our society, and too many Americans have fallen for the con.
It’s craven and it’s cruel. And in the case of Trump’s post Tuesday, it’s dangerous. The discourse over transgender athletes has gotten so out of hand, devoid of all reality and decency, that it’s only a matter of time until someone gets physically hurt.
Or worse.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.