When a Friend Slams the Door on Her Way Out
Abrupt Departures and Lingering Questions
Hi friends and welcome newcomers! Here’s a story some of you might relate to about a female friendship gone awry.
When my brother, Peter, was a pre-teen, he hung a sign on his bedroom door:
I thought of that sign last week after an old friend unilaterally terminated our friendship in a fiery email, blistered with blame and anger. Suddenly I understood the wisdom in Peter’s humorous message. When you go away mad, you redefine your legacy. Instead of being a person who will be remembered fondly, you become a person who will be remembered as one who slammed the door in someone else’s face.
“You’re transphobic,” my now-former friend wrote last week. And “wrong.” And “spreading lies. I’m saying goodbye.”
I disagree with all of that. Even the “good” part of “goodbye.”
What to do with unresolved feelings?
I’m angry and sad but after years of intermittent conflict, relieved. I’m left with questions not only about her leaving but also about my staying.
Our rupture began two and a half years ago. That’s when I started discussing my conviction that female athletes need all-female spaces in which to train, compete, and win. Which we used to have. Which is the whole point of women’s sports. Which I have dedicated most of my life to.
My door-slamming former friend – let’s call her Slammer – shut the conversation down. “We will not discuss this. There is no way I would ever debate you about these dear people's lives,” she said, referring to transgender people.
To me, friends are people who listen respectfully. Slammer wouldn’t. It’s not that I need to discuss women’s sports with all of my friends. Not everyone’s interested, and I care about other things and people, too.1 But while insisting I not mention my trans-related work, Slammer happily reported on her own trans-related advocacy – which felt restrictive and unfair. As our relationship disintegrated, marred by her censorship and my complaints about the censorship imbalance, we approached an impasse. I expected us to drift apart. Maybe we’d send a fond text or card now and then. That (or a phone call) would have felt so much better.
Trans people are her people. Female athletes are mine.
Slammer is a lesbian for whom the LGBTQ identity is paramount. Post-marriage equality, the predominant letter is now the T. She volunteers to visit transgender patients after mastectomies and genital surgeries. These are her people.
My people are female athletes of all ages and abilities.
Now that males who identify as transgender are insisting on access to women’s sports and locker rooms, our politics clash. But this never felt like a political conflict. It felt personal.
In my opinion, Slammer has grown attached to her identity as an ally for members of her community who seem vulnerable and victimized. To challenge any aspect of transgender beliefs or behavior is to threaten her core sense of self.
As for me, I’m attached to my identity as an athlete. I feel protective of all-female sports experiences that, as a child, saved me. Sports provided me with strength and confidence. They freed me from femininity straitjackets — offering warmup jackets as an attractive alternative. Meanwhile, gender-nonconforming, lesbian, and athletic girls are now the ones most likely to claim a trans identity, which worries me, and leads me to believe I Would Have Been Trans’ed.
Estrangement Number Two
Slammer and I used to be close. She was affectionate, insightful, fun, kind. Forty-five years ago, I paid her expenses for a months-long vacation in France when I was spending an unexpectedly lonely year there playing professional basketball. Five years ago, she and her wife flew from northern California to Phoenix to attend my mother’s memorial service.
I might have attended her parents’ memorial services too, except Slammer had severed our friendship during a ten-year period when her parents died. Yes, she is a recidivist slammer. Estrangement Number One looked almost identical, with Slammer cutting off all contact in a different fury of anger and accusation.
When she departed that first time, I told my mother about it. I was about 30. Mom noted, “Well, you can’t stay friends with everyone.”
After those ten estranged years, Slammer apologized and asked if we could reconcile. I hesitated, eventually accepting her back into my life after we agreed to one condition: She would never again depart in a huff.
I should have listened to Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Or even the second time. A few years ago, Slammer told me she had abruptly cut off all contact with a close friend after he made a remark that offended her wife.
Disconnectors and Connectors
“What I see is that she’s a disconnector and you’re a connector,” offers
, one of several friends I’ve kept since elementary school. “You have an unusually large capacity for staying connected with people – including me, Barb, Gernie. You build and keep relationships.”That echoed something else my mother once said: “When something is amiss in a relationship, you work hard to resolve things.”
Doesn’t everyone? I thought. But I accepted it as a compliment.
Maybe I tried too hard to resolve things.
I wonder, though, if that strength might also be a weakness. Did I try too hard, or for too long, to repair our friendship? After all, you can’t stay friends with everyone.
In our final phone conversation, I asked Slammer, “Can’t old friends express anger and talk it through?” Then came her email: Hell no.
I can only reconnect with myself – and maybe you.
Now that my antagonist has disappeared (and I will not reconcile again), the only person I can reconnect with is myself.
That’s why I write. For me, it’s essential. I write to metabolize my life, inhaling experiences and exhaling stories and ideas that bring clarity. I find pleasure in transforming chaos into art.
I also write to connect with you, my readers.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.
Thanks to Debra Babcock, Judy Catterton, and
Some other female friendships (my own and others I hear about) are also strained by these emotionally-charged questions: Who qualifies as a female athlete? Who even qualifies as a female? Such rifts can be painful. I encourage all of us to seek ways to keep the doors to conversation, and the doors to our hearts, open.
I have a few friends like this one too; one just went away angry last week. You describe the imbalance well. That's the part that seems so unfair and so cult like. It is not just that they disagree with you, it's that they don't want to hear your position ever, likely for fear it might contaminate them. Somewhere at the way back of their minds they know they are participating in an act of blind faith that they are doing the right thing. They are unwilling to accept that the people they are defending might be flawed in their thinking and in their demands on society, specifically on women. At some point the people they are protecting may betray them by becoming so unreasonable even they will see it or maybe the person they are protecting changes their minds about their gender journey. This issue is in itself a journey, moving towards an inevitable point of bad ends.
When I started speaking out in 2019 and my gay friends gave me grief for it I knew that it would only be a matter of time before their faith would be shaken by the population they were attempting to protect and the inevitable loopholes that would be exploited by legislation put in place to "protect" trans people from material reality. That the premise that trans should be treated equally based on their delusion would not satisfy them or make them happy because inevitably the nagging feeling that they are a fraud would have to be reconciled. Those who do reconcile that they are never going to be the opposite sex tend to be much more reasonable about respecting women's boundaries.
What then is the endgame of these allies? Do they come around in increments as boundaries continue to be trespassed. Some of mine have. Do they double down to protect "their person". Yes, those are my most vociferous and tenacious people trying again and again to argue that trans rights don't harm women and if they do, it's only a little bit and the ultimate goal of liberation for all is the greater gain. Those who argue that women have not trained well enough to compete with trans as one did who argued that a boxer should be sufficiently trained to take a blow and not melt down in tears like a stereotypical woman was really reaching for it. She did allow me to voice a different opinion because I've been at it for so long she said. I think she was hoping that I would hang myself in my comment in front of 56 of our colleagues. Remains to be seen.
That little bit of sacrifice of our sex class is already becoming visibly challenging as the way things are now for girls and women everywhere. Without media coverage this takeover by trans will not be seen and we will have to wait even longer for a critical mass of people to be personally witnessing the takeover. That's why the Olympic boxing was such a watershed moment because it was live.
I didn't mean to write such a long comment, but I see that I needed to metabolize my experiences too. So thank you for creating the space.
Mariah, I really connected with this piece. This has happened to me in the past, but it was more like what we call "ghosting" now. It's hurtful and confidence damaging as you rack your brain trying to figure out what you did wrong. Several people have told me over the years "it's not you, it's them." So whether getting cut off quietly or loudly, it's likely we are better off without these people in our lives. On another note, I support your advocacy for women's sports and spaces. You are a great advocate and outline the issues clearly. There is a difference physically and mentally between men and women and we need to protect our spaces.