Keep Transgender Women out of Women’s Sports
A third team just announced it will not play San Jose State in women’s volleyball and that won’t be the last, believe me. Teams are fleeing from San Jose State. And they are right to flee. If I were in charge of a women’s college volleyball team I’d also forfeit against San Jose and accept a loss. San Jose State and the NCAA need to know how wrong they are.
Why? Because San Jose plays a transgender person on its women’s volleyball team. I don’t know if this person is still a man who reduced his testosterone level or has been sex reassigned, and I don’t care. This person went through male puberty and has a tremendous advantage in strength over women. In volleyball, strength matters when people whack that ball over the net at speed. Someone is going to get hurt by this person.
That’s why three teams have forfeited to San Jose rather than expose their players to injury, and I am on their side. This person should not be allowed to compete for San Jose’s women’s volleyball team.
I can hear dissenters with their usual argument, or should I call it an excuse? It goes like this: It’s unfair to the transgender player not to be allowed to play. She worked so hard for this opportunity and it’s hurting her feelings and self-esteem.
I’m sure it seems unfair to the player and maybe to San Jose not to let her play – although no one seems to be talking about the feelings or self-esteem of natural women who must face this transgender player and others like her. I take that back. One co-captain on the San Jose women’s volleyball team has joined a lawsuit to get this player off her squad.
We are facing two kinds of unfairness here. What’s unfair to the transgender player and what’s unfair to the rest of San Jose’s women’s team, not to mention their opponents, and not to mention women’s sports in general. I’m more interested in the self-esteem of women athletes after being forced to face transgender women than the feelings of this one San Jose player and other players like her. I’m more interested in what’s fair to women than what transgender athletes consider fair to them.
Call me unevolved.
In swimming transgender participants have taken awards natural women might have won. I’m thinking of the transexual swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school on the wrong side of many social issues.
I want transgender women to live happy and productive lives. I don’t want them to be discriminated against. Banning them from women’s sports is not discrimination against them. It is commonsense. If these transgender women want to compete, let them compete against the men where they belong. Or let colleges create a third category for transgender athletes where they compete among themselves. That seems equitable. And give them their own locker rooms and bathrooms.
I am appalled that transgender women have invaded women’s sports and ruined them for so many women. I am against this invasion. My heart goes out to women who lose to transgender men or suffer injury from them.
This bleeding-heart catering to transgender women at the expense of women who were born women needs to stop now. It sure needs to stop at San Jose State.
Hi Lowell,
I am a fan of your writing and respect you and the perspectives you bring as a journalist.
On this issue, I dissent with the sentiments written here and wanted to share the perspective I have (in a limited post mind you, might not be the best medium to present this).
I disagree on the merits that the health care (I.e. hormonal therapy) trans people have to go through for years to become who they want to become actually brings them a lot closer (if not on the same level) to their cis counterparts. This is because, for example, testosterone is a major factor in building and retaining muscle, and when suppressed, that muscle does degrade and is much more difficult to maintain for a high athletic level such as at the collegiate/Olympic level. This is what the science says.
Now, there is no doubt that transphobia is rampant in our society and in our politics, and is mostly due to the lack of information people are exposed to about trans people. Humans are naturally resistant to change and tend to dislike the “other”. Why bring this up? Transphobia, just like any other form of blind hatred due to the lack of information people have about a group of people, is an enemy of rationality. When blind hatred persists, the science and reality of things are difficult to discern. I trust the decisions of bodies like the IOC and other sporting decision boards to make rational decisions for their respective jurisdictions based in science to protect those that compete their whole lives to make it to big stages. Those that have the authority to allow or disallow certain substances to enter athletes' bodies and certain groups of people in or out of the sport have specialized in these decisions their whole lives, and I trust their authority over the sentiment of society who unequivocally have blind hatred toward these individuals whether they know it or not.
I am not here accusing anyone of being “transphobic” or “stupid,” I simply want to share a perspective in this hot-button issue in sports that is not normally shared out there, that’s all. Like I said, I am a fan of your writing, and I will continue to read what you put out, and I hope everyone can approach this perspective civilly and with an open mind, just like I approached this article even though I might disagree.
Sorry in advance for my terrible grammar and/or writing prowess 😂
Well said. And in “this fucked up day and age,” as Tony Soprano would say, it takes balls to write this. Kudos