Anti-Trans Furor Refuses To Die In Women's College Volleyball
Honestly, we'd rather be talking about Gothletes.
Just over a week ago, Erin In The Morning reported on Boise State University’s volleyball forfeit against San Jose State University. Unfortunately, what started with Boise State has refused to die as other member schools of the Mountain West Athletic Conference cancel match after match with SJSU, raising a number of questions that need discussion, not least of which are “What, exactly, is the problem here?” and “Who really cares about all this anyway?”
When Reed first wrote about this, she neatly skewered the hyperbole about trans athlete Blaire Fleming playing volleyball:
For instance, Must Read Alaska describes Blaire as "a physically imposing transgender player" who "is 6'1" and towers over opposing teams." However, a quick glance at the San Jose State University (SJSU) website shows that 7 out of 25 players on the team are 6 feet or taller. Additionally, 11 of Boise State’s players exceed 6 feet in height, with many taller than Blaire. None of these athletes are accused of possessing an unfair advantage, despite their bodies being very similar to Blaire’s in appearance and size.
If there really were safety or competitiveness problems with Fleming, one might legitimately wonder why they haven’t been issues before now. She played for University of South Carolina for two years before transferring to SJSU as a result of the state’s new law banning her participation. No known problems date back to those days. Fortunately, when the Boise State Broncos announced that the team would be forfeiting its match against SJSU, the university administration released a statement detailing its concerns:
"Boise State volleyball will not play its scheduled match at San José State on Saturday, Sept. 28. Per Mountain West Conference policy, the Conference will record the match as a forfeit and a loss for Boise State. The Broncos will next compete on Oct. 3 against Air Force.”
So, yeah. Piercing critique and rigorous academic analysis there, BSU administrators!
IdEdNews.org also noticed the fact that politicians are speaking more about the cancelation than the school, including Idaho Governor Brad Little’s statement crediting his own executive order for the move, as well as the response of an actual honest-to-goodness volleyball coach turned legislator. Don’t hope for much, though, she’s still an Idaho Republican:
Rep. Barbara Ehardt praised Boise State for acting on principle and courage. “If we want this to stop, then we need to stop it,” the Idaho Falls Republican wrote on Facebook. “Please let BSU know they did the right thing! Courage is contagious.”
“Stopping this” is, of course, stopping trans participation in sports, not the demonization of gender minorities, because that’s how things roll in Idaho politics. Meanwhile, IdEdNews.org also noticed that SJSU managed to inject more substance into their statement than anything coming from the Gem State:
Actually managing to address the issue at hand, San José State entered the fray, defending itself and Fleming. “All (of our) student athletes are in full compliance with NCAA rules and regulations.”
This fight is putting the transphobes at the university in bed with their enemies:
The Idaho Freedom Foundation — a libertarian-leaning lobbying group that has made criticism of Boise State’s social justice programs into a recurring rallying cry — is now encouraging its members to attend the Broncos’ next home volleyball match.
The IFF is exactly who you think it is, of course, and consistently fights university funding. This whole “university allies with enemies of universities to defeat the Transsexual Menace” situation deeply resembles anti-trans campaigners who paint themselves as feminists but find themselves suddenly surrounded and supported by groups that fight tirelessly against women’s reproductive rights.
Meanwhile, the cancelations and questions are spreading. Before the Broncos made news, Southern Utah University had also canceled a match against SJSU’s Spartans. And in the time since, two more schools, Wyoming and Utah State, have also announced forfeits. Colorado State, also a Mountain West school, did play their scheduled match against SJSU on October 3. The Colorado State University Rams crushed the Spartans and their 6’ 1” ringer. There was a particularly cruel irony to the match, reports the San Francisco Chronicle:
Thursday was “Excellence in Inclusivity” night for the Colorado State women’s volleyball program and testimonials from players flashed across the videoboard between the second and third sets.
One, from Colorado State’s Taylor Pagan, said, “Inclusive excellence means creating a space where every individual’s unique contributions are not just welcomed but celebrated.”
One tragedy in this is that Fleming was outed when her roommate and team co-captain Brooke Slusser joined a lawsuit asking the NCAA to ban trans women’s participation in the women’s sports the NCAA oversees. No one is talking about how they ended up roommates — a story probably best unreported anyway — but it’s hard to imagine that Slusser’s move has done much for Spartan morale. Indeed, instead of celebrating every individual’s unique contributions, the Spartans have been flooded with hate mail. Again from the Chronicle:
SJSU head coach Todd Kress said he didn’t know whether to congratulate or thank Colorado State head coach Emily Kohan for playing the match.
“When we’re getting what I would call hate mail, it’s disgusting to me as a coach, to see our kids have to go through that,” Kress said. “It really is. It hurts my heart for them, because they’re good human beings, and they don’t deserve that.”
Of course, the haters don’t bother to notice that it’s an SJSU co-captain suing to end trans participation — exactly their goal — because hating an entire team for one undesirable member is how tribalism works.
It’s also not clear whether Boise State and other schools are even forfeiting for what cissexists would call the “right reasons”. As IdEdNews.org reminds us, we still don’t know if the actual players of these teams had any input into the cancelation decision. The universities themselves consistently say nothing about their reasons or their process.
If the players made the decision on their own, that’s one matter. But if university officials made the decision — or overtly or subtly nudged the athletes in that direction — that’s another matter.
Indeed. Even if the Bronco players did have input, it seems highly unlikely that the team’s iconoclast and Goth rebel Nora Hayd would feel the same way about forcing others to fit in as Idaho Gov. Brad Little. And while anti-trans exclusionists like Slusser obviously exist and are rooting for the least inclusive outcome, it’s hard to see anything good for women’s volleyball coming out of this. Yet the cancelations keep coming, and SJSU expects to see more. After a season of racist and sexist harassment of WNBA players largely fueled by men who hate Black women and lesbians and have made Caitlin Clark their unwilling White Hope, the only injuries certain to result from trans players’ supposedly unsafe participation are those inflicted by the people screaming loudly how dedicated they are to protecting women athletes.
[IdEdNews.org / Erin In The Morning / San Francisco Chronicle]
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Your friendly neighborhood Crip Dyke also writes other perverted stuff!
This is bullshit. Newsflash: we have trans firefighters. They do the work really well and can kick my ass. They are smart, caring and frankly very sincere. Tim Walz says it best: Mind your own damn business.
All these anti-trans bigots have, as Oscar Wilde said, "A nose sharpened from years of poking it into other people's business."