More On: trans cheerleader
After being accused of choking a teammate, a trans cheerleader was kicked out of camp
A transgender cheerleader who was born a boy was kicked out of a Texas cheerleading camp and given a criminal citation for choking a female teammate.
"Well, guys, I'm no longer a cheerleader as of 5:30 a.m. last night. "A girl on the team was very rude and called me a man with a penis and said that guys shouldn't be on the team," Averie Chanel Medlock, a cheerleader, wrote last week on Facebook. "I stood up for myself, and she called her parents because she was scared that I would hurt her. Her father said, "She still has testosterone and a penis, and if anyone hurts my daughter, I will kill them."
According to Facebook posts from team members, the incident took place at Ranger College, where police were called to settle a fight between two team members. Medlock says that a teammate made racist and transphobic comments before the fight. Cell phone video shows other cheerleaders hiding in a room from an angry Medlock.
Medlock is accused of choking a girl, and the girl's father was called to the scene by his daughter. He is now trying to get police to release body camera and CCTV footage of the incident.
“I ask you what you would have done when receiving a phone call at 1 o’clock in the morning from your daughter stating they had locked themselves in the room with other girls,” the father, Mike Jones, wrote on Facebook. "I never said anything about your race or gender," she said.
Medlock says that the fight she had with the other cheerleader was just a joke, but the police gave the other cheerleader a ticket for assault and took Medlock off campus.
Transgender people are still being talked about when it comes to women's sports, most recently with the case of University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas.
Thomas was on the male swim team at his school from 2017 to 2020, but he switched to the female team for the 2021 season. Thomas was the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division 1 national championship in 2022. Since then, transgender athletes have been at the center of a lot of debate about whether or not they should be allowed to play sports.
Because of the controversy, 18 states have passed laws that ban or limit transgender athletes to their birth sex.
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