This morning I’m taking a ferry to Cape May, New Jersey, for my annual swim with my amazing friend, Barb.
On my mind is the Supreme Court’s decision in two sports cases it heard in January, which I covered here, here, and here. Rumor has it, the announcement will happen today. If not, then this week.
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The question in front of the Court is whether states can legally exclude boys from girls’ teams. The plaintiffs are boys who want to be considered girls. I wish the plaintiffs were girls demanding their right to all-female sports and spaces because then their voices, rather than boys’ voices, would have taken center stage. Still, this could be a very helpful decision.
If the Justices rule that yes, states have a right to exclude boys – as smart lawyers like Nancy Hogshead, JD, Oly and Kara Dansky predict they will – this would be good. Not great, but good.
Great would be a landmark decision. The Justices could clarify that in Title IX, sex means sex. Everywhere. Not just in the states that feel like giving girls equal access to sports. This is less likely.
Even greater would be a broader decision, beyond sports, more like what the U.K. Supreme Court did in April, when they ruled that the legal definition of woman is based on biological sex, not identities or ideas or feelings or medications or certificates. They could rule: Women are women, and men are not.
Now that would be huge. Unlikely, but huge.
Teen-Girl Astonishment: the realization that female bodies, including one’s own, will be judged, mocked, harassed, pornified, and shamed — in person and in the media.
Be on the lookout for the news and let me know what you think.
How the Media Will Cover It
Also watch for this: Most news reports will phrase it this way – that states are allowed (or not) to exclude “transgender athletes.” This is bogus, as I explained in this rejected New York Times article.
The term “transgender athletes” seems to encompass both boys and girls. But all the controversy is about boys. Why? Because girls always play in the female sports category, regardless of their gender identity. Why? They know that boys are bigger and stronger. As everyone does.
Since Girls Compete Against Their Own Sex, Boys Could, Too
Girls are fine competing against girls. It does not amount to psychological torture, as is implied in the case of boys forced to compete against boys. Girls can still dress in boys’ clothes and choose a boy’s name and ask people to call them he/him. They know they’re female, everyone else knows they’re female, and their teammates and opponents accept this new reality: That some of the girls – mostly the ones who used to call themselves gay – now call themselves nonbinary or transmasculine or trans men or something other than female.
These girls might be suffering, by the way. I do sympathize. Many girls hate the objectification and abuse that accompany living in a female body and intensify around puberty. And why wouldn’t we?
Teen-Girl Astonishment
This discomfort is not gender dysphoria. A better term would be Teen-Girl Astonishment: the realization that female bodies, including one’s own, will be judged, mocked, harassed, pornified, and shamed — in person and in the media. Apparently, Teen-Girl Astonishment can be ameliorated by latching onto this modern option:
I’ll pretend not to be a girl! Voila. Now I’m a boy. Stop bothering me.
Back to sports: Because all the girls join girls’ teams, we know all the boys could join boys’ teams. It would be better for their mental health if, instead of taking their male entitlement all the way to the Supreme Court, the boys who wear long hair and mascara and choose female names simply competed against boys. They’d have to accept their male bodies, which they’ll be stuck with their whole lives, and they would implicitly educate their male peers that it’s okay to be feminine boy. And/or gay. Which many effeminate boys are, by the way.
If We Win in a Limited Way
Back to the Court. If we win – if, at very least, states are allowed to exclude boys from girls’ sports – several problems will remain unsolved:
All the other states can legally allow boys to compete “as girls,” which about half the states do now. A limited Supreme Court ruling is unlikely to persuade them to start protecting girls’ rights. Boys will still steal girls’ first-place trophies, which has happened 6,251 times, according to HeCheated.org. And they’ll still compete in girls’ events — about 20,000 so far – events that are reserved for girls.
Boys will still disrobe in girls’ locker rooms, “swinging dicks” and all, as one judge famously put it during his dissent in Washington’s Olympus Spa case.
The extreme overvalued belief, as Mia Hughes described it – that people can and should “transition” to the other sex – will remain entrenched in the culture. For instance: Cambridge, Massachusetts schools now ask parents whether preschoolers identify as male, female, or nonbinary. The popular religion known as gender ideology is everywhere.
Grownups will still approve the use of hormones and surgeries on children, despite their devastating consequences on puberty, sexuality, and fertility.
Men will still be housed in women’s prisons, where they will continue to rape, assault, and intimidate women.
Impressionable children will still be introduced to the falsehood that bodies do not determine sex, but stereotypes do. Therefore, this illogic goes, if you’re a girl who enjoys playing football with the boys at recess, you’re a boy.
But if we win, even in a limited way, it will still be a big win.
We’re athletes. We like to win. We want to win. We’ll take the win.
Thoughts? I’m always curious. With love and courage, Mariah
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A lifelong athlete and feminist, Mariah Burton Nelson is the author of hundreds of articles and seven nonfiction books, including The Stronger Women Get, The More Men Love Football.
I still hold a kernel of hope that SCOTUS will go rogue and declare that Title IX means what it says and rule that no state can violate Title IX, thereby precluding any male in any state from competing in the W&G category in any sport.
A guy can dream, right?
I just wish this madness would stop now. Enough is enough! We all know this is wrong it hurts everyone involved. The girls being cheated of their reward for training hard for years, and the boys who are reviled for cheating - even though the adults (who should know better) enable it!