Tag: sports

So Who Gets to Be a Woman?

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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Major sports competitions do not test participants in male events to see if they are “really” men. So why do they do it with women?

I mean, I know why they say they test women. There’s a silly panic that men are disguising themselves as women to win medals. Back in the day this was a dastardly “Communist” plan by the Soviet Union and the East Germans.

In fact, as I just discovered from this book review in The Nation, allegations about men passing as women in sports goes back even farther and has ties to Nazi Germany.

This started way before transphobia became the cause du jour and is rooted in the idea that men are so much more physically able than women that any random guy can beat world-class women athletes. You know, all those guys who are sure they could score a point or two off Serena Williams.

Funny that the women they seem to disqualify in these events are people assigned female at birth and raised as girls. Apparently some women have uncommon chromosome patterns or higher testosterone levels and some self-appointed authorities have decided they can’t possibly be women.

It’s a control mechanism, just like anti-abortion and anti-contraception laws. Or like asking women who have been raped what they were wearing and what they did to provoke the rape.

It’s a rule presented as an effort to “protect” women from men that instead victimizes women. Continue reading “So Who Gets to Be a Woman?”…

Drag in High School

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I think the first time I saw guys in drag was when we did the annual powderpuff football game in high school. That was where the girls played football — juniors against seniors — and a few boys became cheerleaders.

Only girls were cheerleaders in my high school, so the boys did their cheerleading in drag. Very comic drag, as I recall. Alas, I have no pictures, having lost my yearbook over the years, but it included very fake wigs and clownish makeup.

That struck me as weird back then, and even weirder today. We girls were not in drag as football players. I mean, we were dressed in gym clothes — this was flag football, not tackle — but we didn’t look like boys. We weren’t pretending to be boys to play.

The boys should have been dressed as themselves cheering, because the whole point of the event was the girls doing something and the boys cheering them on.

That is, if you were one of the girls playing that was the point. We took this very seriously. We practiced a lot. I, who was not much of an athlete back in high school, played both years. And I still remember that my team won both the years we played. (I have at least forgotten the scores.)

I didn’t score any points. I was, then as now, larger than the average woman, so I played defensive line.  Continue reading “Drag in High School”…

Changing the Rules

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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When I was young and trying to break into places that were marked “no girls allowed” (like practicing law and training in martial arts), I used to say, “Women don’t want to change things in [insert male-dominated space here]; we just want to be allowed to play.”

That was a lie. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was. First of all, bringing women into those spaces inevitably changes things. Secondly, as demonstrated by the recent decisions by people like Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka to refuse to participate on other people’s terms, it leads to changes in the underlying rules.

Playing hurt isn’t a good idea, even at the Olympics. Putting up with abuse should never be necessary.

Add in the women refusing to compete in uncomfortable clothing — a proxy for all the stupid dress codes that dictate to women just how they’re supposed to cover or uncover their bodies — and you’ve got women changing the rules of the game.

What a wonderful thing. Continue reading “Changing the Rules”…