The hate comes so easily. So, too, the lies and the gaslighting.
And in the middle of it is a young woman who was minding her own business as a decent-but-not-great player on a decent-but-not-great volleyball team until the right wing decided to make her a piñata in its latest culture war.
Nevada officially forfeited Saturday’s volleyball game against San Jose State, the fifth school to join a transphobic panic that has no basis in fact or science. It’s part of an ongoing grift that would have you believe transgender athletes are taking over women’s sports, robbing cisgender women of opportunities to play, scholarships and trophies, and doing them physical harm in the process.
None of which is true. But it doesn’t lessen the damage being done.
The San Jose State player hasn’t commented and her gender identity hasn’t been confirmed, yet the most private parts of her life are being picked over and debated. She’s been betrayed by the silence of the Mountain West conference and the NCAA, as well as the noise of teammate Brooke Slusser and Nevada captain Sia Liilii, whose newfound interest in “fairness” seems to have a direct correlation to its ability to make them right-wing media stars.
The San Jose State player has been the target of online abuse and harassment, and now Donald Trump is talking about her at his rallies. And no one seems to give a damn about the toll this could be taking on her mental health.
It’s taken a toll on her team, too, with the Spartans dropping three in a row after the first forfeit. As for players on the forfeiting teams who don’t support this nonsense, their postseason hopes are being threatened.
All because we hate what we don’t know and fear what we don’t understand.
The percentage of Americans who are transgender is minuscule, the number who play sports even smaller. Between 30 and 40 at the college level, according to Athlete Ally, which promotes safe and supportive environments for LGBTQ+ athletes. That’s out of the nearly 539,000 athletes who competed across all NCAA divisions last year.
So, no, transgender women are not overrunning collegiate sports teams. And those who sputter that it “could” happen ignore the reality that it hasn’t, despite the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee having had protocols allowing the participation of transgender athlete for more than two decades. It simply isn’t a thing.
As for the “advantage” transgender athletes supposedly have, there is no scientific proof of that. Most of the studies the transphobes spout are comparisons between cisgender men and cisgender women, with the leap being made that of course transgender women must have an advantage. In fact, a study commissioned by the IOC and released earlier this year found evidence of the opposite. That transgender women might actually be disadvantaged when it comes to lung capacity and cardiovascular performance.
Besides, if it were true that transgender athletes had an advantage, then why aren’t they winning? Laurel Hubbard, the first openly transgender woman to compete at the Olympics, didn’t even make it out of the first round in Tokyo. Paralympic sprinter Valentina Petrillo didn’t get past the semifinals in Paris. Juniper Eastwood, the first openly transgender woman to compete in Division I cross country, was eighth at the 2019 Big Sky championships, finishing almost 45 seconds behind the winner.
What even of Lia Thomas? Yes, she won one NCAA title her senior year, but in a time that was more than nine seconds off Katie Ledecky’s collegiate record and slower than all but one of the previous eight NCAA champions. She finished well behind the winners in each of her other two finals, too.
But facts don’t matter to the anti-trans crowd, whose silence on issues that actually do threaten women athletes — lack of funding, inadequate support, abusive coaches, etc. — speaks volumes. They are only interested in fearmongering, taking a page from the time-worn playbook of sowing hate and divisiveness against the marginalized for their own power and gain.
What they don’t realize is punching down on those who are more marginalized does not make them superior. It makes them bigots. Ignorant ones, at that, for not understanding that sex and gender are not the same thing, and both exist on a spectrum.
And rather than ‘protecting’ women athletes, all this hysteria does is put more women in the crosshairs. Any woman who is masculine presenting, or has short hair or dresses like a tomboy, is considered suspect, exemplified by the ugliness at this summer’s Paris Olympics. A witch hunt on their teammate has made the season chaotic and uncertain for the rest of the San Jose State team, too.
History will eventually recognize these shameful and uninformed furies for what they are. But the harm they’re doing now, to the San Jose State player and so many others, can never be undone.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
