Yes, we should keep men out of women's sports

Hi, friends. Earlier this month, I wrote that President Donald Trump’s anti-transgender agenda actually has nothing to do with women’s sports — his first three anti-transgender executive orders make that inexplicably clear. I still believe that. But that doesn’t mean he was going to let trans women in sports off the hook. There’s nothing this man loves more than a political stunt.

Last Wednesday, on National Women and Girls in Sports Day, President Donald Trump, flanked by young girls and women, signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in women and girls’ sports entitled, “Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports.”

In his order, Trump states that “it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy. It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.” Within 24 hours, the NCAA followed suit.

I’ve been covering the advancement of anti-trans legislation for a decade. Here at Power Plays, we’ve closely followed the movement to “protect” women and girls in sports via transphobia since it gained significant momentum and organizing power at the start of the Biden administration. Watching things unfold last week, I was heartbroken for my trans friends, whose mere existence was being used as a punching bag. I felt like a failure, and found it difficult to focus through my fury. I still do.

Like fellow Substacker Frankie de la Cretaz, I’ve been dismayed by the silence of women’s leagues and women athletes since the ban. Like Katelyn Burns, I’ve been outraged by organizations like the New York Times failing to publicly grapple with their role in pushing anti-trans propaganda into the mainstream. Like Rodger Sherman and Nancy Armour, I’ve been sickened by the NCAA’s spinelessness and complicity.

But, as the days have ticked by, and the anger has stewed, I’ve come to realize that I actually do agree with Trump about one thing: We should keep men out of women’s sports.

We should keep men like Donald Trump out of women’s sports. Men who only care about women’s sports when they can use them as a political prop. Men who take away abortion rights, who publicly mock women’s appearances, who use their bully pulpit to attack the star of the U.S. women’s national team in the middle of the 2019 Women’s World Cup, creating a distraction so large that it probably should have cost the U.S. a World Cup victory, and who publicly reveled in the same team’s quarterfinal loss at the 2023 World Cup, posting, “WOKE EQUALS FAILURE. Nice shot [Megan Rapinoe], the USA is going to Hell!!!” Men who are accused of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment by dozens of women. Men who say things like “when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. ... Grab 'em by the pussy.”

We should keep men out of women’s sports who weaponize Title IX to invoke trans witch hunts instead of utilizing the law to encourage schools provide equal resources and opportunities for girls and women in sports. We should keep men out of women’s sports who are trying to get rid of the entire Department of Education, which will surely mark the end of Title IX as we know it.

We should keep men like Charlie Baker out of women’s sports, absolute cowards who oversee organizations that have had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, every single step of the way over the last 50 years to advance women’s collegiate sports, but want full credit for all of their current successes. Men who accept television deals that criminally undervalue women’s basketball, and women’s sports in general. Men who know that out of 510,000 NCAA athletes, less than 10 are transgender.

We should keep men like Luis Rubiales out of women’s sports. Rubiales, the former president of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), infamously kissed Spanish soccer star Jenni Hermoso on the lips while she was receiving the medal for winning the World Cup on August 20, 2023. We should keep men like Rubiales’s colleagues — former Spanish women’s coach Jorge Vilda, former RFEF sporting director Albert Luque, and former RFEF marketing director Ruben River — out of women’s sports, men who proceeded to (allegedly) incessantly pressure Hermoso into publicly defending Rubiales and saying that the kiss was consensual. Men who are currently on trial in Spain for their actions; Rubiales for sexual assault, and all four for coercion.

We could have just believed women

“He didn’t ask me if he could kiss me or not,” Hermoso said in court last week, according to the Athletic, who is providing phenomenal coverage of the trial. “If he had asked me the question, I would not have agreed.

“I felt disrespected, it was a moment that tainted one of the happiest days of my life.”

We should keep the men out of women’s sports who gave Rubiales a standing ovation five days after this kiss, when he gave a defiant speech in front of a RFEF assembly, declaring five times that he would not resign. (He resigned about two weeks later.) We should keep the men out of women’s sports who encouraged Rubiales’s behavior for decades, despite informal and formal protests by players.

We should keep men out of women’s sports who perpetuate abuse and protect abusers, men like former NWSL head coach Paul Riley. In a 2021 investigation by Meg Linehan of the Athletic, NWSL players Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim reported that Riley sexually harassed, coerced, and abused them when they played for him. Subsequent reporting revealed a culture of sexual and emotional abuse throughout the league that was ignored and enabled for years in order to protect the reputation of the NWSL and to perpetuate the notion that pro women athletes should be grateful for anything they get; that safety was too much to ask for.

Riley was banned from the NWSL, but true justice and accountability has been slow. Last week, on the same day that Trump issued the transgender ban, attorneys general from D.C., New York, and Illinois concluded their three-year long investigation into the NWSL’s abuse, and announced a settlement with the league. As part of the settlement, the NWSL established a $5 million Players’ Restitution Fund, and agreed that the attorneys general would oversee and enforce player safety policies in the league for the next three years.

“This $5 million restitution fund is not a gift, nor is it justice,” Tori Huster, former NWSL player and current deputy executive director of the NWSLPA, said in a press conference. “This fund is an acknowledgment of the league’s failures and the harm suffered by players. It’s a testament to players’ courage and a necessary step toward accountability. If the NWSL is safer today, it is because players fought to make it that way. But true accountability means ensuring this never happens again.”

We should keep men out of women sports who perpetuate inequality, such as the president of the Internationals Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), Johan Eliasch. FIS is the federation that oversees ski jumping, where women earn less than 30 percent of the prize money as their male counterparts. As reported by Power Plays, last week in Lake Placid, women had to hold a GoFundMe in order to pay the winner of the women’s qualifying competitions.

We should keep men out of women’s sports who only see it as a stepping stone on the way to their true dream of working in men’s sports; men who only view their support of or involvement in women’s sports as an act of charity; men who perpetuate bigotry rather than fight against it.

In his speech last Wednesday, Trump said he wanted to get the “woke lunacy” out of women’s sports. We should keep men out of women’s sports who believe that is a possibility.

In 1971, a young girl in Connecticut, Susan Hollander, wanted to run varsity cross-country and indoor track for Hamden High School. But this was the pre-Title IX era, and there was no girl’s team, so she wanted to join the boys’ team. When that was prohibited by state law, she brought a lawsuit against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference.

Here’s more information from a 1973 Sports Illustrated feature on women’s sports:

The case was heard on March 29, 1971 in the Superior Court of New Haven and Judge John Clark FitzGerald ruled against Hollander. In giving his decision Judge FitzGerald stated, “The present generation of our younger male population has not become so decadent that boys will experience a thrill in defeating girls in running contests, whether the girls be members of their own team or of an adversary team. It could well be that many boys would feel compelled to forgo entering track events if they were required to compete with girls on their own teams or on adversary teams. With boys vying with girls … the challenge to win, and the glory of achievement, at least for many boys, would lose incentive and become nullified. Athletic competition builds character in our boys. We do not need that kind of character in our girls.”

The biggest irony in all of this is that girls’ and women’s sports were not created as a category to protect girls from boys; they were created to protect boys from having to compete against, and potentially lose to, girls.

And those same men who worried that competing against a girl would nullify “the glory of achievement” for boys actively discouraged girls from competing in sports of any kind; they feared that girls would gain positive life skills from such an experience, and “we do not need that kind of character in our girls.”

Women’s sports do not exist to make people comfortable, to reinforce gender stereotypes, or to give political points to the patriarchy. They exist to disrupt the status quo. And that’s why, beyond their dehumanization of trans people, which is reason enough to oppose them, trans bans in women’s sports are so upsetting; because they rely on the notion that femininity, above all else, is fragile. And, as someone who actually actually watches women’s sports on a daily basis and sees what these athletes are capable of, I vehemently disagree.

All trans youth should be able to compete in sports without restriction, and there should be a reasonable and achievable pathway to participation for trans women to compete in women’s sports at all elite levels. Because trans women are not a threat to women’s sports.

In fact, right now, women’s sports are absolutely thriving. Plenty of men, inside and outside of women’s sports, are threatened by that success. Those are the men we need to keep out.