"Your decision has taken away a piece of her heart and her parents. This clip makes me emotional every single time I watch it. It's the reality so many transgender kids are now facing, even fifteen years after this video was taken. My dad said it ripped a piece of his heart and the family's, and he was right."
"I played soccer, flag football, lacrosse, and tennis growing up. It's how I made my best friends, gained resilience, and learned how to be part of a team. I was only eight years old when I was denied the right to play travel soccer. I was told I had a competitive advantage being assigned male at birth, but the truth was this was before male puberty, and I was one of the smallest girls on the team."
"No trans kid should be told you don't belong. We don't choose to be trans; it's just who we are."
Jazz Jennings released an emotional 15-year-old video of her father expressing devastation over her exclusion from a girls' soccer team at age eight, partnering with the ACLU to raise awareness about sports' impact on young people. Jennings was denied participation despite being one of the smallest players on the team, with officials citing a competitive advantage from being assigned male at birth—before male puberty occurred. Through her activism and the TLC series I Am Jazz, Jennings emphasizes that transgender children deserve belonging and inclusion. She advocates that sports provided crucial benefits including friendship, resilience, and teamwork, and stresses that being transgender is not a choice but an inherent identity.
Read at LGBTQ Nation
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