Last week, I watched two stories grip the swim coaching community. One was a story of doping, and then ultimately retirement. 30 year old Conor Dwyer, a decorated international swimmer for America, was revealed to have had testosterone pellets injected into him
Meanwhile, on facebook, coaches were once again embroiled in a discussion of transgender athletes, particularly trans women, and to put it extremely diplomatically, “fairness”.
Look, before I even get started discussing a topic that I have witnessed people completely lose their minds on, including in this instance, I may as well lay my cards on the table. I actually believe in many instance the policy’s surrounding transgender athletes competing are well out in front of many people’s perceptions about them, which is a good thing. In the story above, I think it’s awesome that these women are competing on their high school teams.
But what I am struck by most in these two situations is the contrast in empathy. Dwyer, familiar to many within the swimming community and liked, received quite an outpouring of empathy from coaches. This is despite an obvious violation of one of the most important rules governing fairness in sport.
Meanwhile, a couple of high school kids, essentially nameless and faceless to the masses, are subject to extreme scorn based on their desire to compete in sport, within the rules that have been set out for them.
What’s different? It’s plainly obvious. The trans population is such a small and marginalized percentage of any area that it is likely that few people discussing them have any familiarity on a personal level with a trans athlete.
I myself can’t say I have much experience. One athlete that I coached during my first year as a college coach later revealed her gender, but chose not to continue competing in sports. Despite the doomsday predictions often featured in articles like the above, trans athletes are exceedingly rare.
Why wouldn’t they be? Consider that the deck is already heavily stacked against trans people in nearly every walk of life. By participating in sports, particularly as women, they must have some awareness that they will be even more heavily scrutinized, criticized and subjected to other people’s transphobia.
Perhaps the most glaring piece of transphobia is the continuing assertion that “men” are competing in women’s sports to steal glory, and that this is an existential threat to women’s sports. Curiously enough, a many of those with a sudden burning passion for protecting women’s sports are men, and I’d be curious to read their passionate defense of Title IX elsewhere (I’ll wait).
Forgive me, but again I struggle to visualize a widespread movement of men destroying women’s sports in this particular way. By men in this context I mean people who if you were to wrap in Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth would unequivocally answer “I’m a man”. I find it specious that they would decide to completely upend their life, join a heavily discriminated against minority, and completely violate their own identity just to win some trophies.
Especially when, you know, you could just have some testosterone pellets injected. It would be easier, less costly, and far less vilified.
Addendum about names/pronouns/gendering
While I’m emptying on this topic, I have to address one of the most frustrating parts of any conversation regarding trans athletes. Again, in the vein of basic empathy and respect for other people, could we all do the simple task of honoring how people want to be addressed?
When I was in the 4th grade, I had a classmate we called Rachel. One day Rachel said “I would like to be called George”. As you can imagine, this was pretty perplexing to a group of 10 year olds. I’m sure we caused a lot of pain to George, totally unnecessarily.
It shouldn’t be so hard. When I met my wife, many people called her “Katie”. But she wanted to be called “Kate”.
So I explained to her how she was really a Katie, and that she was born that way and couldn’t just go and change to Kate, even if she “preferred” that name. WAIT NO. I didn’t think about it for a second and have called her Kate for our entire relationship.
Look, if you want to continually disrespect other people by calling them a name they don’t want and insisting that they don’t know who they are, please think about that for a moment. My opinion is that you’re a bully picking on people who commit suicide at an alarming rate.
Even if you believe the transphobic trope that somehow trans people are suffering from a mental illness, the response of fighting them over their name and gender doesn’t meet a bare minimum standard of empathy or care for people with a mental illness.
As usual, a disclaimer for this post. If the above makes you angry, I didn’t write it for you.