A transgender high school wrestler in Ohio has quit his team after he claims his coach outed him and told him he was no longer welcome in the boys locker room.
Aiden Pogue-Krabacher, a freshman at Wilmington High School about an hour Northeast of Cincinnati, claims his coach, Kerry Tolliver, humiliated him and forced him to change in a guest women’s locker room, alienating him from his teammates and undermining his self worth.
“He made it very clear that he didn’t want me in there, and that I shouldn’t be in there because I’m a girl,” Pogue-Krabacher told Fox 19. And I told him I was not and he still proceeded to say ‘yes you are’ and he kicked me out.
Maybe even more important, Pogue-Krabacher and his mother, Sheila, claim that outing a transgender person is revealing privileged medical information. If that holds some water, Tolliver could face some serious legal repercussions.
We’ve seen many times before that people fail to understand that outing a trans person is outing someone. We saw with ESPN’s disastrous story about Dr. Essay Anne Vanderbilt — known as Dr. V — that outing someone who is transgender can have life-and-death consequences.
Texas high school wrestler Mack Beggs has been publicly out about being trans. In Texas, Beggs is forced to wrestle against girls against the wishes of him and the girls.
The school district is investigating what happened. If the coach did in fact out this young athlete, it should be he who leaves the team, not the victim.
