A women’s volleyball team at a major NCAA Division I school that has never started 9-0 has started 9-0. And, as it turns out, it appears to have a transgender man on its team.
Now, its opponents are forfeiting and men in women’s sports is again in the spotlight. What’s to blame for this?
You, of course, the news consumer at home — for noticing!
As the third school in the Mountain West Conference announced it wouldn’t play the San Jose State University Spartans women’s volleyball team, various media outlets blamed a “transphobic legal mess,” a “right-wing website” for supposedly sloppy reporting they couldn’t prove was sloppy, “potential outside antagonists” who might cause problems, and “negativity against trans folks.” Also, racism!
The move came after the University of Wyoming announced Tuesday it would be the third program to to forfeit over Blaire Fleming, a transgender player on SJSU’s team.
“After a lengthy discussion, the University of Wyoming will not play its scheduled conference match against San José State University in the UniWyo Sports Complex on Saturday, Oct. 5,” an announcement from the school read.
“Per Mountain West Conference policy, the Conference will record the match as a forfeit and a loss for Wyoming.”
It’s become clear that Fleming is the flashpoint for the controversy; the U.K. Daily Mail reported that “Southern Utah and Boise State both refused to play against San Jose State last month, albeit without giving a specific reason as to why.” Then, people started noticing an article from feminist site Reduxx earlier this year noting that “Blaire Fleming, born Brayden, is currently playing women’s Division I volleyball for San Jose State University in the reputable Mountain West Conference.”
“While the exact age Fleming was transitioned is unknown, early photos posted to his aunt’s Facebook show he was raised as a boy, and only began presenting in feminine clothing in 2016 when he would have been approximately 14 years old. His family members have been careful not to publicly identify him as transgender, but his grandmother referred to him as her ‘grandson’ in an early photo,” the report said.
Should men be banned from women’s sports?
Now, this isn’t entirely dispositive, but it also isn’t Imane Khelif, part deux: Absolutely nobody going on record about Fleming seems to assert that the player was born a biological female or that this is a question of disorders of sexual development.
Instead, the playbook from the media is to blame people for taking notice.
LGBT outlet Out Magazine may indeed be the worst offender of the lot, attacking Reduxx’s journalistic chops while also suggesting that racism played a part in this, too.
“Reduxx, a clickbait-y site filled with transphobic, poorly-reported stories about ‘trans-identified males’ being predators, pedophiles, and criminals, was the one to ‘break the story’ about this SJSU player,” Out’s Mey Rude reported on Tuesday, calling this “[a]nother racist, misogynist, and transphobic witch hunt targeting a female athlete.”
“In a story written by Anna Slatz, the site’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, on April 17 of this year, Slatz reported on the athlete’s birthname and that she is actually a transgender woman. However, she presents zero evidence of any of this,” Rude wrote. “In her takedown piece, Slatz didn’t use any hard, credible evidence, but instead relied on anecdotal stories from ‘the mother of an opposing player’ who became suspicious of the targeted athlete’s gender during the 2022-2023 volleyball season.”
Never mind the fact that Out Magazine isn’t exactly objectivity central, either; Rude goes on to note that Reduxx produces no evidence of these assertions. Nowhere in the article, however, is it mentioned that nobody has asserted Fleming was born a female, which would be easy enough to do if we wanted to end this controversy posthaste.
Oh, also, there’s racism involved, Rude claimed: “In the original reporting, part of the evidence that the player is trans is that the mother of an opponent said her daughter claimed she ‘would stare her down after plays and was extremely arrogant.’
“This echoes popular complaints about Black athletes in all sports,” Rude said. “There is a pattern when people on the Right accuse women of being trans. Notable women who have previously been accused include former First Lady Michelle Obama, tennis GOAT Serena Williams, Olympian Caster Semenya, and soccer star Barbra Banda. All of these women are Black, all were born as girls, and all were raised as girls.”
Here’s the San Jose state university “women’s” volleyball team. Take a close look at the muscle development of the legs in this picture. Boise State is doing the right thing refusing to play. pic.twitter.com/fk9pH6NRM0
— Justin (@justin323032) September 28, 2024
And who else was that way? You guessed it: Imane Khelif!
“She overcame that hate, won a gold medal, and is now suing her harassers. Hopefully, the SJSU athlete will have a similar future,” Rude wrote.
There is not an eye-roll emoji big enough for that claptrap, but I digress.
SFGate — a web outlet formerly affiliated with the San Francisco Chronicle and which has a considerably more respectable journalistic profile — also called the matter a “transphobic legal mess” in its reportage.
That outlet at least acknowledged that “[t]he forfeit comes after SJSU team co-captain Brooke Slusser joined a lawsuit filed by [women’s sports activist Riley] Gaines against the NCAA, in which she alleges that her teammate and former roommate is transgender.
“Slusser, a junior setter who previously played for the University of Alabama before transferring to SJSU, is one of several NCAA athletes who signed onto the lawsuit alleging that their Title IX rights are violated when trans women are allowed to compete in sports.”
How is this transphobic? Uh, it is. Shut up.
Also quoted is SJSU spokeswoman Michelle McDonald, whose non-statement statement about Fleming’s gender speaks volumes.
“It is disappointing that our SJSU student athletes, who are in full compliance with NCAA and Mountain West rules and regulations, are being denied opportunities to compete,” she said.
Note what you didn’t hear in there: Fleming was born a woman. All you need to do is say that, absent even the slightest shred of proof, and everyone protesting this looks very stupid. You didn’t hear it. Draw your own very reasonable conclusions.
Meanwhile, the San Jose Mercury News — the paper of record for the Silicon Valley metropolis — noted the university was “taking steps to protect volleyball players” from “potential outside antagonists as the program finds itself in the middle of a debate over the role of transgender athletes.”
McDonald, quoted again, said social media activity involving SJSU was “unsettling.” How so? I mean, Out Magazine called Reduxx’s detailed descriptions of Facebook posts that essentially proved Fleming was born a male totally dismissible, all because they didn’t produce the screenshots — as well they shouldn’t, since that gets into personal territory. (Even then, one suspects they’d be dismissed as fakes, but I digress.)
But here, we have the Mercury News saying that security needed to be beefed up for SJSU volleyball players because of “unsettling” posts, quoting a university talking head, and nothing of what made them “unsettling” is mentioned.
Finally, we have San Francisco’s KTVU-TV giving air to Gabrielle Antolovich, board president of the Billy DeFrank LGBTQ+ Community Center: “There’s so much negativity against trans folks and the LGBTQ+ community … Title IX is a protection of women. And trans women are part of that protection,” she said about the controversy.
To KTVU’s credit, they also gave time to a journalist from conservative sports outlet OutKick: “A school that had never started a season 7-0 is now 7-0. Yeah, it raised some eyebrows,” said Dan Zaksheske.
That’s the issue here. Not transphobia, not racism, not clickbait, not vague ideas of threats, not “negativity against trans folks.” It’s about the fact that we have women’s sports for a reason and transgender players make a mockery of that reason.
This isn’t even to blame the player. They’ve been told lie after lie after lie by administrators, coaches, medical staff and now by the media, which is attacking anyone who bothers noticing the patently obvious. This is to say nothing about the lies they’ve been told by doctors, psychologists, activists and/or their own families. We won’t even go into that.
Live your “true self,” whatever. Just don’t demand others affirm that “true self,” particularly in spaces that have been reserved for women because of very specific biological reasons.
And, as for the establishment media, don’t pretend that noticing the elephant in the room is elephantophobia, and also a threat to elephants, and probably racist, and also clickbait, too. This game is old and tired, and no matter how many times the same shopworn lies are brandished, they remain lies and become even more shopworn.
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