(Actual) Threats to Girls’ Sports (hint–it’s not trans people)

by Aspen Ruhlin (they/them) Mabel Wadsworth Center Community Engagement Manager

Content Warning: this blog includes mentions of sexual violence, specifically in regards to minors. Details are not discussed, but we understand this can still be triggering to other victims/survivors of sexual violence and assault. If you are a victim/survivor, please know that we believe you. You are deserving of compassion, support, and safety. If you need support as a victim/survivor yourself or as a loved one of someone who was assaulted, regardless of when it happened, you can call our friends at Rape Response Services (Bangor area) or Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault (entire state) at 1-800-871-7741. You are not alone.

While I know myself to be a nonbinary trans person now, I had not yet figured out that piece of my identity as a high schooler. As such, I lived my life as a typical cis teen girl, and as a freshman and sophomore, played on my school’s field hockey team. It was an intensive sport that I still carry both memories of and injuries from almost two decades later: feeling like I was flying as I ran full tilt down the field; the solid thunk as I hit a drive; the hard and heavy ball smashing straight into my exposed ankle. The only athletes at our school that ran more than us were the cross country and track and field kids. Our team didn’t have a great record when it came to wins, but we had a blast and were rugged, strong teens because of the nature of the sport.

Like most, if not all, high school field hockey teams in Maine, our school only had a girls’ team. Our coaches let us know that because of this and Title IX rules, boys were allowed to try out and potentially play, both at our school and the ones we would play against. We weren’t concerned. In fact, we were hopeful, and immediately sought to recruit a boy or two to try out. This wasn’t because we thought having boys on the team would give us an advantage that would turn around our losing streak (we had gym class with these boys and, to put it as kindly as possible, did not think highly of their strength, stamina, or speed as a general rule). This was because of our uniforms. The standard uniform for girls’ and women’s field hockey is a skirt or kilt. We all hated them. We figured that if we could recruit a boy onto the team, they would never make him wear a skirt, and then to make the whole team uniform aligned, we would get to wear shorts. Our uniform kilts, which were really just black pleated wrap skirts, were short enough that we couldn’t wear them at school without getting a dress code violation. We had to buy our own under shorts to avoid flashing onlookers during games.

The idea of boys playing with or against us wasn’t a concern, nor was the idea of any trans girls playing. Skill and strength in field hockey or any other sport comes from practice, not chromosomes or genitalia. The cis teen girls playing high school sports aren’t delicate flowers that need to be protected from their trans teammates and opponents–but they do need protection.

During and after my time as an athlete in high school, both myself and my teen girl classmates were subjected to gendered violence and mistreatment. Some of this looked like the typical prioritization of boys’ sports in our culture, whether in the form of distribution of funding or just how much attention was focused on the boys’ teams vs. the girls’ teams. Some of this looked like the consistent degradation of women and girls by my teen boy peers that went unchallenged by teachers, like when a boy in my class argued that a woman could never be president of the United States because, “once a month, she’d set off the nukes.” Some of this looked like a dress code that existed to control, shame, and sexualize the bodies of teen girls with the argument that we “couldn’t risk distracting the boys.” Some of this looked like the history teacher who, a handful of years after I graduated, was found to be a predator who had been sexually harassing and stalking a 15-year-old student of his. When he committed suicide to evade the consequences, she was blamed and bullied to the point of transferring schools. Some of this looked like being the victim of two different sexually abusive relationships, one of which occurred while I was still a field hockey player. Like many, my physical strength was not enough to prevent me from being assaulted by someone I thought I could trust.

I was not the only teen girl in my school subjected to gendered violence and mistreatment. I wasn’t even the only one on my field hockey team. Not a single one of us subjected to gendered violence and mistreatment faced harm at the hands of a trans person. Every single one of us who faced harm were harmed by cis boys and men. That doesn’t mean trans people are incapable of causing harm–trans people are people, and people in general can cause harm, intentionally or otherwise. It is very clear, however, whether we look at the anecdotal experiences of people like myself who actually played girls’ high school sports or look at the data and research that the presence of trans girls and women in sports is not a threat. Teen girls, trans and cis alike, face many threats, but inclusion isn’t one of them.

If you advocate against allowing trans girls to play school sports, I know that you do not care about girls sports or the general safety of cis women and girls. Not think. Know. Transphobia is a tool of patriarchal violence that functions to harm trans people first and cis people second. It works alongside racism and white supremacy to create a narrow vision of girlhood and womanhood that is small, fragile, and weak. I will give some grace and say that, if you are not knowledgeable about women’s and girls’ sports and/or trans people, I can understand being misled into thinking there may be legitimate safety concerns, to a certain degree. With that grace given, it’s also important to be critical of any call to further restrict and scapegoat a marginalized group. It is far too easy for far too many people to immediately accept excluding and fearing trans people without question.

Trans people are not the enemy. We are not the monster hiding under your bed or in a dark alley. We are part of your community. We are your neighbors, cashiers, family members, librarians, and more. Trans people are a marginalized group far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of violence. Trans girls and women deserve to be honored for who they know themselves to be in every sphere of life, and the notion that cis women and girls need to be “protected” from them is one rooted in the devaluation of trans and cis women and girls alike. Seeking to exclude trans girls from school sports is transphobic and misogynistic, plain and simple.