By Mitch Hall
Tuesday, September 13, 2016
On Monday, the National Collegiate Athletic Association
(NCAA) announced it will relocate seven national championships from North
Carolina because of the state’s now-infamous religious freedom bill, known as
House Bill 2, which passed back in March.
The decision, made by the NCAA board of governors, will
affect both men’s and women’s championships for tennis, basketball, and soccer
amongst other sports, and will deprive the state of the benefits of hosting
these major events. In its statement, the board justified the move with its
apparent concern for North Carolina’s LGBT citizens—who represent 3.3 percent
of the state’s population—adding that the current laws conflict with the NCAA’s
commitment to “fairness and inclusion.”
Although the sports organization took issue with many
aspects of HB2, foremost on their list of grievances was the fact that under
the law, transgender people are legally forbidden from using their preferred
locker room and restroom facilities on government-managed property.
Can We Please Call
Out The Hypocrisy, Already?
This is not the first time major athletic associations
have let political preferences motivate major decisions regarding sporting
events. Just this summer, the National Basketball Association (NBA) announced its
decision to pull the league’s annual All-Star game from North Carolina in
protest of the controversial law. National Football League (NFL) Commissioner
Roger Goodell has pledged to fight the bill, exclaiming, “anything that
discriminates, we oppose.” All three organizations also exerted considerable
pressure on Indiana and Georgia recently, threatening to divert their business
when those legislatures were deliberating over similar religious freedom
legislation.
Of course, the decisions these powerful organizations
make can be chalked up to little more than grandstanding, motivated by a desire
to pander to the popular political agenda of the day. They may claim to be
concerned about the well-being of transgender folk at their championships, but
just as many on their side of issue characterize conservatives’ concerns as
“baseless,” so too are theirs.
There have been zero recorded instances of a transgender
person being assaulted at any NCAA, NBA, or NFL sporting event. Less than 1
percent of all hate crimes in 2014—the year with the most recent available
statistics—were motivated by gender identity. Very few police reports exist
regarding assaults on transgender people in locker rooms or bathrooms; indeed,
the vast majority of evidence the media uses derives from personal accounts or
self-conducted surveys wherein a perceived dirty look constitutes “harassment.”
Indeed, it’s quite an irrational fear to assume that hosting a golf match in
North Carolina would result in widespread violence towards that state’s
transgender population.
There are countless other ways we can perceive the
dishonesty in these groups’ commitment to fairness and inclusion for all. The
NBA often organizes international basketball matches with teams from other
countries, some of which—like Turkey—are far less progressive than the United
States on LGBT rights. The NCAA, too, has a long history of hosting bowl games
in countries like the Bahamas and Japan, which offer no sexual orientation or
gender identity protections. Sports teams also have a well-known, hostile
subculture: walk through any professional locker room, and you’ll no doubt hear
some players alternate between homophobic slurs and casual sexism.
Given their love of inclusion, why haven’t the NBA or the
NCAA pulled their operations in these regressive countries? Why haven’t they
worked to eradicate the discrimination present within their own organizations
before criticizing legislation passed in civil society?
Dear NCAA, et. al:
Stand Up for Women
While the NCAA and other sports leagues trip over
themselves to defend special privileges for 0.3 percent of the U.S. population,
they’ve evidently forgotten about a much larger and more important demographic:
women.
In response to the NCAA’s decision, North Carolina GOP
Spokeswoman Kami Mueller released a statement criticizing the organization for
its decision, saying “I wish the NCAA was this concerned about women who were
raped at Baylor. Perhaps the NCAA should stop with their political
peacocking—and instead focus their energies on making sure our nation’s
collegiate athletes are safe, both on and off the field.”
Mueller’s statement immediately garnered significant
attention, and rightly so, considering that in the very same breath as its
rebuke of North Carolina, the NCAA reiterated its commitment to “values of
inclusion and gender equity,” as well as its desire to provide ”a safe and
respectful environment” at all their events. Let’s take a deeper look into how
they’re doing on the whole gender equality and safety stuff, shall we?
Mueller cited a recent case at Baylor University, in
which multiple rape survivors accused the college’s administration of
deliberately ignoring or mishandling accusations of assault launched against
star football players. Baylor is by no means an isolated incident. A large body
of literature suggests student athletes commit sexual assault at considerably
higher rates than other students on campus. More recently, the case of Brock
Turner and the high-profile accusations waged against Jameis Winston in the
documentary film “The Hunting Ground” have brought this widespread problem to
light. Indeed, researchers are even beginning to analyze the rate at which
reports of sexual assault coincide with home and away college football games.
Professional sports leagues like the NBA and the NFL also
haven’t lived up to their purported values. The NFL has long been accused of
having a “violence against women” problem, thanks to both a large number of
domestic abuse cases involving starting players (such as Ray Rice and Greg
Hardy), as well as the league’s lax disciplinary rules regarding domestic
violence, which have historically been less harsh than drug policy violations.
The NBA, meanwhile, has yet to implement a consistent domestic violence policy,
and the league has ignored some particularly egregious cases in the past, such
as then-rookie J.J. Redick coercing his girlfriend to terminate her pregnancy
in 2007 as per their abortion contract.
Again, we have to ask: why should we believe the
self-touted “values” of the NCAA and their ilk when they routinely ignore the
safety and dignity of women? Why do they jump at the chance to pander to a tiny
sliver of the population when they could be doing far more for women—who
contribute to their industry as fans, compete under their jurisdiction, and
constitute half of the U.S. population?
It’s A Matter of
Time Before Trans Goes Pro
Considering the trajectory of the transgender movement,
the NCAA may soon come to regret its steadfast support of special preferences
and privileges for gender non-conforming Americans. We’ve all heard about the
open bathrooms and locker rooms many cities and several states now mandate. But
the mania has spread far beyond that frontier, infecting even more civil
institutions.
Women’s colleges now accept men who claim to be women.
Hundreds of universities now offer “gender-neutral” housing. The Department of
Justice has instructed prisons to place inmates based on identity rather than
biology. And sports teams from the middle school level up to the Olympic Games
now allow biological men to compete in women’s sports and vice versa.
This last policy development is most relevant to these
professional sports leagues. The transgender movement has already de-sexed
sports at levels both local and international. Why shouldn’t it encompass
professional American sports leagues as well? Their exclusion from the golden
rule of the trans movement—that identity trumps all—would be completely
arbitrary. Indeed, by the NCAA’s own standards, it will have to comply with
this inevitable demand.
As Mueller noted in her statement: “I genuinely look forward
to the NCAA merging all men’s and women’s teams together as singular, unified,
unisex teams. Under the NCAA’s logic, colleges should make cheerleaders and
football players share bathrooms, showers, and hotel rooms. This decision is an
assault to female athletes across the nation. If you are unwilling to have
women’s bathrooms and locker rooms, how do you have a women’s team?”
Acquiescing to and ardently endorsing open locker room
policies—as the NCAA has done—signals acceptance of the idea that biology
doesn’t matter, that “trans women are women” and “trans men are men.” If this
is true in the case of bathrooms, then it must be true in the case of all civil
institutions. What leg would the NCAA have to stand on if faced with the
prospect of de-sexing their professional teams? How could it reject that
demand, yet remain “committed to values of fairness and inclusion?”
Once this happens, how do you think the millions of
female athletes will feel? Competing with biological men for a spot on the
field would be hard enough—but what about athletic scholarships designed
specifically for women? Will anyone self-identifying as “female” be eligible
for those as well? If so, underprivileged female athletes who rely on such aid
programs will have yet another obstacle to overcome.
If the trans movement continues on its path to
professional leagues, it will mean the end of female sports. Women will have no
defense against the next biological male who wants to hop in their boxing rings
or race them on the track. As a friend and colleague of mine once put it, “when
gender identity wins, women and girls always lose.” Let’s hope the NCAA wises
up to this fact sooner rather than later.
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