What Happens to Girls and Women in All-Female Locker Rooms?
Shampoo-Sharing in a Sacred Sanctuary
Hi friends and welcome newcomers!
Now we are 800+ strong. Thanks for joining, staying, participating, spreading the word. You’re telling me (and others) that this work matters, and I really appreciate it.
Action Step for Democrats: Please ask your Senators to vote yes on Senate Bill 9, the Protection of Girls and Women in Sports Act, which would restore Title IX to its intent. (Republicans are expected to vote for it.) Executive Order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” already specifies that Title IX and other federal policy forbid sex discrimination based on sex, not gender identity (you can’t do both; to protect gender identity is to nullify sex-based protections), but that is just a presidential order. We need a law.
Today I don’t feel like answering more questions along the lines of, “How the f*ck can you expect transwomen to use the men’s room? Don’t you know how unsafe they would be around all those men?”
I don’t have energy for another TV interview like the one I gave to WJLA, though it led to grateful messages from oodles of local mothers, one of whom had already told her story: how she walked into our locker room with her nine-year-old and saw Richard Cox, the trans-identified male sex offender, full-frontal naked, with a dozen mothers and children in the room behind him.
I don’t want to remind Arlington (VA) Public Schools that allowing males who self-identify as trans to use the women’s locker room violates the “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism” order mentioned above, and that no local or state laws can supersede federal law, as my friend Bev Talbott explains clearly in this testimony she gave to the California Interscholastic Federation.
I’ve already offered two mini-speeches this week, asking Arlington County, then Arlington Public Schools, Why should male desires to be affirmed as women take precedence over the privacy and safety of actual women?
Nor am I going to offer you recent examples of trans-identified male intrusions into other women’s locker rooms, such as the bearded male basketball high school player in Massachusetts who overpowered girls on the court and was suspended in April — but only after he remarked in the girls’ locker room, which many girls had already abandoned due to his presence, “Ooh, titties!”
Been there, did that 24/7 all last week and it wore me out – temporarily. Not permanently. I’m resilient.
Here on this swim team, with its separate category for girls, we are taken seriously as athletes — just like the boys. We notice. Society must have granted us this opportunity because we matter.
Last week’s column, Now It's Personal: Trans Sex Offender Exposes Himself in My Locker Room, generated tons of fan mail (thank you!) and hate mail (comes with the territory, and it was educational: I learned that Boomer is a slur, like transphobe and TERF). I spent all week thanking people and explaining things and answering questions.
Shout out to and Louis Hawthorne, who stepped in to respond to a particularly antagonistic antagonist on another platform.
My perhaps-overzealous or hyper-responsible responses and subsequent fatigue led me to conclude that on busy weeks like this I might need to take a step back, commenting less frequently or less loquaciously to save time for other things such as writing, research, advocacy, swimming, reading (Middlemarch, 32 hours of audio) and training, since as many of you know, I’m an aspiring cornhole champion.
Stronger Women is growing, and I’m delighted. I’m just learning out loud, with you.
Please keep commenting.
Please don’t mind too much if I don’t always reply.
I’m interested in your ideas and experiences and will absolutely keep reading everything and commenting as I can.
I love it when you respond to each other, sharing information, support, community.
Today I want to take a breather from locker-room conflict. Instead, I want to ask,
What Happens to Girls and Women in All-Female Locker Rooms?
Here’s one simple scene from a women’s locker room in an ancient, innocent era when we could not even imagine that males would claim a right to intrude. No trans-identified registered sex offenders. No boys “in the wrong bodies.” No males of any sort were permitted to enter that sacred female space because, as was obvious then, any Open Sesame policy would have scared and scarred and enraged the room’s rightful occupants, thereby ruining the female experience of privacy and safety: the entire reason for a separate women’s room.
Here in this all-female locker room, we receive the same message: We matter.
Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, 1966: My friends and I, competitive swimmers in the ten-and-under age group, sit squeezed together in a circle on the floor in one shower stall, our feet overlapping in the center, wiggling like happy puppies. Water lands on us and bounces, as if from a waterfall. Barb, whom you may remember from Recovery: A Love Story, is there, along with our friend nicknamed Gernie, and twins Jean and Joan. We wear matching team Speedos, black with green and white stripes. Our hips and elbows casually collide as we share shampoo, scrub chlorine out of our hair, rinse.
At ten, in 1966, we don’t have language for this yet, but we have noticed that the world is dominated by men and favors boys. The evidence is overwhelming in our families; schools; books; movies; the way grownups comment on our appearance rather than our accomplishments. We know it’s unfair.
But here on this swim team, with its separate category for girls, we are taken seriously as athletes — just like the boys. We can, if we work hard, be rewarded by placing first, second, or third in individual events and we can delight in relay-team adventures too, learning to wait, wait, wait until our teammate touches the wall before diving in. We notice. Society must have granted us this opportunity because we matter.
Here in this all-female sanctuary called a locker room, we receive the same message: We matter.
We giggle amid the bubbles and steam, relishing the waterfall until it gradually turns cold. Now, without speaking, we decide to swim again, clean hair notwithstanding. Because we’re swimmers. And kids. And want to.
Changing direction as suddenly as a murmuration of starlings, we rise and race out into the summer sun, sprint across the deck, and soar with our best racing dives, flying high over the cool water, far and forever like the strong, graceful athletes we know ourselves to be.
Selected Stronger Women stories about the need for female-only sports & spaces:
This is beautiful, Mariah.
Thank you, Mariah, for your rational words and sensible arguments. Alas, reason and sense have gone out the window for many people -- the loudest, most irrational, most obnoxious, most ILliberal people.
There are millions of us out here who support you and your stance against the unquestioning, misogynistic trans ideology that has taken over the country. I call it a national psychosis. Sooner or later, it will break, probably when thousands of lawsuits start rolling in (yes, I know some have already started) against irresponsible physicians who have mutilated children.
I also understand that taking a break from the fight is sometimes necessary. God knows you've earned it. So let me just say again, thank you, thank you, thank you.