"We Do Not Consent to Playing with Men" (Part 2)

Unprecedented Boycotts by Female Athletes Double in Size

Hi friends and welcome newcomers!

I’d love to believe that the unprecedented boycotts underway by Division I women’s volleyball teams will turn the tide. That historians will look back on this year as the time when decision-makers arrived at this obvious, inevitable conclusion: Only female athletes should be eligible for female sports. No males.¹

But back in 1972, I believed that Title IX would be fully implemented by now. After all, it had become law. Fifty-two years later, 93 percent of universities and colleges still discriminate against female athletes, according to Champion Women.²

Now I believe that the forces aligned against equal rights for women are mighty and unyielding. Nevertheless, we persist.

Last week, I wrote about two women’s volleyball teams that refused to play against San Jose State University, which features a 6’1” male (trans) player, Blaire Fleming. This week, two other Division I teams boycotted SJSU games, bringing the total to four: Southern Utah,³ Boise State, the University of Wyoming, and Utah State.⁴

As my favorite podcaster Mandy Matney would say: That is a big deal.

Remember: Athletes want to play games. That’s why they practice, train, lift weights. It’s their raison d'être. Boycotting is a much bigger gesture than, say, taking a knee.

Why Women Are Boycotting

Men’s jumping ability is, on average, fifty percent higher than women’s. Male volleyball serving speed is 30 percent faster. Male spiking speed is 45 percent greater. Greg Brown, Professor of Kinesiology and Sport Sciences at the University of Nebraska, explained in a recent presentation by this name, “Males and females are different and that matters in sports!”⁵ Male performance advantages cannot be erased via testosterone suppression or surgery.⁶

Here’s a video comparing Blaire Fleming’s leaps to those of female athletes.  

Even beyond their jumping/serving/spiking advantages — and their taller height, bigger heart, bigger lungs, larger hands, and other advantages — males on a women’s volleyball court are playing with what is for them a miniature net: seven and a half inches lower than men’s nets.

We women’s sports advocates didn’t expect girls and young women to boycott their own sporting events.

We didn’t want that to happen. We wanted adults (the NCAA, the International Olympic Committee, Congress) to keep female sports female.

Twitter men kept recommending boycotts. “Those girls need to refuse to compete! That’s the only way this madness will stop!”

We scoffed at their “easy for you to say” solution. But boycotts and other protests by have begun, and to some extent, they’re working. A small sample:

• In October 2023, the entire women’s swim team at Roanoke College (VA) confronted a man who had been planning to swim with them. “I never expected to be blindsided by a teammate from the men’s team who now wanted to compete against me and my fellow swimmers and shatter our records,” said Bailey Gallagher, a captain. “We felt unheard and unseen by the NCAA, our school, and lawmakers who told us that we had to deal with it ourselves,” said Kate Pearson, another captain. They did deal with it themselves. The man withdrew.

  

  Roanoke women’s swim team at a press conference with the Independent Women’s Forum

• In April, five West Virginia middle-school girls refused to compete against a male (trans) athlete in their track events (shot put and discus). In response, the girls were kicked off the team. They were reinstated in May after a court order.

• In August, the female Olympic boxers who lost to the male gold-medal-winners held their hands up in a silent XX gesture that became a meme.

• In September, three New Hampshire parents and a grandparent filed a free-speech lawsuit after they were banned from girls’ soccer games for wearing pink XX wristbands in protest of boys on girls’ teams.

• Last week, five female soccer players from New Hampshire’s Hillsboro-Deering High School refused to play against a team led by a male named Maelle Jacques — who had already won the girls’ high jump state championship with a 5’2” jump, which was ten inches lower than the best boys’ high jump. In other words, a mediocre male defeated the state’s best female athletes. The soccer players are determined not to let him dominate soccer, too.

• And now four volleyball teams – 72 athletes and counting – are sitting out. And speaking out. And suing. Fleming’s teammate, SJSU volleyball player Brooke Slusser, on joining an ICONS lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for its transgender eligibility policy:

“It was an easy decision to join because it's something I believe in. All the support I'm getting: Ninety-nine percent of it is just love and encouragement.” – Brooke Slusser, Outkick.⁷

But SJSU was “only supporting Blaire, and they didn't seem to want to check in on us,” added Slusser. She and her teammates were told, “’You shouldn't be the person to identify Blaire's gender identity. That's something that Blaire needs to do, and not you. That's not your story to tell.’”

"But we all have a story, too. This isn't just something that Blaire's going through. This is something that I'm going through, too, and my teammates.”

Macey Boggs, a setter for the University of Wyoming, one of the boycotting teams, wrote on Instagram, “Protecting the future of women’s sports.”

“Standing for what’s right and protecting the future,” added her teammate, defensive specialist Sierra Grizzle.

Former college volleyball player Macy Petty, commenting on the SJSU boycotts, intriguingly introduced the feminist concept of consent:

“Women’s voices in college sports matter. We fought hard for – and deserve – the right to say no when we do not consent to playing alongside men.”⁸

When women do consent to play alongside men, that’s called coed sports.

Women almost never play on men’s sports teams, regardless of gender identity. They’re not good enough. Because males and females are different and that matters in sports. This is asymmetrical discrimination. All the women play women’s sports. And in more than 9,200 instances documented at HeCheated.org, men play “as women” too.

But male athletes are not being banned. They can play men’s sports, coed sports, trans or nonbinary sports, sports for males who adopt stereotypically feminine attire or take cross-sex hormones. Whatever. Any sports except women’s sports.

Women do not consent. Using our voices, gestures, boycotts, lawsuits, and every other tactic we can think of, women are saying — even screaming — no.

---

My new graphic story about the folly of denying age-related declines while clinging to an athletic identity: A Wild Swim, on amazon.

Some other Stronger Women essays about transgender athletes and women’s sports:

• Women Say No Again — This Time Louder — to Males in Women’s Sports

• Guest Column by Martina Navratilova

• “I Would Have Been Trans’ed”: A Gender Nonconformist Wonders What If?

• What Does Non-Binary Mean? Transgender Translations for the Thoroughly Confused

1. As Martina Navratilova wrote in a guest column for Stronger Women, “The word for people with XY chromosomes is male. Male athletes have an advantage over female athletes because of their maleness. Males who identify as transgender may dress as they please. They’re still male.”

2. Champion Women, “Schools Are Increasing The Gaps Between Men’s and Women’s Sports Opportunities,” July 17, 2023.

3. Southern Utah opted out of playing against SJSU in a non-conference tournament.

4. Dan Zaksheske, “Utah State Cancels Volleyball Match Against San Jose State, Transgender Player Blaire Fleming,” Outkick, October 2, 2024.

5. See Greg Brown, “Males and Females Are Different and That Matters in Sports!” October 2, 2024. Brown’s presentation, scheduled by Tewksbury Public Library in Massachusetts, was canceled after trans activists bullied library staff, according to the library. It was then hosted by the Women’s Liberation Front, and eventually rescheduled by the library as well.

6. See Brown’s presentation, above, and extensive research cited in this document: Our Position: “Female Sports Are for Female Athletes,” Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, May 24, 2024.

7. Amber Harding, “SJSU’s Brooke Slusser Speaks Out on Fight Against NCAA: ‘Title IX Exists for a Reason,’” Outkick Exclusive, September 30, 2024.

8. Macy Petty, “As a female athlete, I do not consent to playing alongside men in collegiate sports,” Fox News, September 30, 2024.