Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on December 4, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission.
The San José State University (SJSU) women’s volleyball team made international news this season, with coverage by the BBC, the Telegraph, Quillette, the New York Times, CNN, and ESPN. The reason for all this interest is that SJSU had a biological male on the team.
This offense against athletic fairness was not received kindly by many involved. Brooke Slusser—a team co-captain—assistant coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, two former players, and eight players from teams that forfeited games against SJSU have all filed suit. Teams from Boise State University, Southern Utah University, Utah State University, the University of Wyoming, and the University of Nevada all opted not to play SJSU due to the Spartans’ unfair advantage.
This lack of fairness is evidenced by the fact that nets for male teams are set at 7 feet, 11 5/8 inches, whereas nets for female teams are set at 7 feet, 4 1/8 inches, a nearly 8-inch difference. Male athletes, with their extra strength, can seriously injure female athletes, particularly when playing by women’s rules. In 2022, North Carolina high schooler Payton McNabb was struck by a ball spiked by a trans athlete, ending her athletic career and causing traumatic brain injuries that she is still struggling to recover from today. In Massachusetts, a male high-school basketball player caused injuries to female players from a rival school before forcing a forfeit.
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The SJSU women’s volleyball season has now come to an end. SJSU nearly won the Mountain West Tournament after two judges ruled against injunctions to stop the school from playing with a male on its team. Due to opponents’ forfeits, SJSU advanced to the final round without playing a single game in the tournament. Furthermore, Batie-Smoose alleges that the male athlete in question conspired with Colorado State University—the team that would go on to beat SJSU in the final—to throw a match and injure teammate Slusser.
In addition to her lawsuit, Batie-Smoose filed a Title IX complaint in support of the team’s female athletes. Instead of moving to investigate, however, SJSU suspended her indefinitely. She was also threatened with job loss if she expressed concerns about practical issues, such as the fear of injury due to the biological male’s participation in training sessions.
The fight against SJSU’s discriminatory actions continues. Representing the plaintiffs is veteran Title IX attorney Bill Bock, who alleges discrimination by the university in violation of Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. For her own part, Slusser states that she was forced to play and share a room with the male player without being informed that he was a male. Furthermore, the suit alleges that the male player in question had requested that he room with Slusser on road trips—perhaps he has a crush on her.
Multiple teammates, including Slusser, were reportedly warned that if they complained about the situation, “things would go badly” for them. Thus, in addition to the Title IX suit, SJSU is also being sued for violating the First Amendment for trying to silence women who are against males in women’s sports.
This isn’t the first time SJSU has decided not to protect female student-athletes. For over a decade, SJSU administrators enabled coach Scott Shaw to sexually abuse female students. This occurred under the watch of multiple SJSU presidents and resulted in one president, Mary Papazian, stepping down. The athletic director, Marie Tuite, allegedly knew about the allegations and was forced to resign in 2021.
Instead of doing a thorough investigation, Tuite and Papazian performed a sham one, letting Shaw back into the locker rooms where he continued his abuse. Whistleblower coach Sage Hopkins reported this neglect to the NCAA, but for this, Tuite tried to fire him. After leaving SJSU in disgrace, Tuite unbelievably landed a job as the athletic director at Southern Utah University.
Eventually, the FBI stepped in. Shaw pleaded guilty, six student-athletes testified at his sentencing, and he received a paltry two years of incarceration. SJSU paid $1.6 million to 13 female students whose complaints they had mishandled.
One may wonder what is wrong with SJSU. Why are they failing to protect and respect women? But this isn’t a case of just one misbehaving university. Progressive colleges around the U.S. are falling into the same pattern. For example, male athletes entering female sports and stealing opportunities from women have also occurred at Georgia Tech, which hosted the infamous 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championship featuring Lia Thomas. If allowed to take effect, the Biden administration’s changes to Title IX would strip away protections for female athletes and enable more males to join women’s teams.
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The attacks against females at SJSU go beyond athletics. I, too, was targeted as a professor at SJSU. Upon changing its protocols for access to the curation facility in my field of anthropology, the university inserted sex-discriminatory regulations, stating that henceforth, “menstruating personnel will not be permitted to handle” the human remains collection. (Note that politically correct university administrators couldn’t even bring themselves to say “women,” as that would exclude the possibility that males menstruate.) Such menstrual taboos are about casting females as filthy while they’re on their periods. Primitive beliefs that menstruating females need to be excluded from interacting with others should not, in the 21st century, be endorsed by a university dedicated to promoting education and progressive, inclusionary values.
This offensive menstrual taboo was removed after my lawyers notified the university that I’d be filing a Title IX complaint. Yet, my victory notwithstanding, menstrual taboos are also found in hands-on field schools, such as the University of Washington’s. There, anthropologists collaborating with Native Americans prevented menstruating women from entering the kitchen, preparing food, or serving themselves.
Universities also celebrate World Hijab Day, which is held on the first day of February to coincide with the return of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran from exile. Campuses around the U.S. have been remarkably silent when violence occurs against women who regard the hijab as a repressive tool meant to erase their individual identities. Note, for example, Wear-A-Hijab Day at the University of Illinois.
Some may argue that biological males should be free to identify as females. And if, in the 21st century, some Native Americans still want to cling to offensive superstitions about menstruating women, that, too, is their right. But as the saying goes, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s [or, in this case, woman’s!] nose begins.” Where very real physical, sexual, and psychological harms result, these policies are not acceptable. It’s time to take a stand for female rights and to ensure that female students and women in general are protected from violence, abuse, stigma, and backward ways.
Image of San Jose Spartans women’s beach volleyball at Stanford Invitational 2015-03-07 on Wikimedia Commons
As one who has been subjected to Title IX all his life, with the total elimination of all male spaces and activities (including the Boy Scouts), I have to admit to no small amount of Schadenfreude here.
First, as to the physical safety issue, there are college women who are over six feet tall and probably weigh at least 180 lbs, all muscle. And there are college men who are 5′ 05″ and weigh 120 lbs — and college women who are even smaller. (I’ve known several who didn’t weigh enough to donate blood — 110 lbs.) Force is equal to mass times acceleration — if a 180 lb woman collides with a 98 lb woman, she’s going to be injured just as badly as if it were a 180 lb man…
If society wanted to, there could be some sort of male/female comparison chart for equity — much as we already have for women in the military and public safety jobs.
Yes, a 20 year old woman only has to run as fast as a 50 year old man. The 20 year old man has to run faster than both — and who will catch the bad guy?
No one is questioning that — and other than the fact that trannies are mentally ill and were considered that only a few years ago — if we are going to talk “safety” then we need to have a uniform standard for everyone in jobs where physical fitness is important for safety.
So it’s not just Schadenfreude but also equity — if we are paying our female police officers and female firefighters the same amount of money that we pay their male colleagues, then we need to expect them to meet the same physical fitness standards. (Imagine the outcry if it were the other way around…)
And then there is the question of Title IX itself — the goal is equality between male and female students, equality of opportunity and it initially meant that if you had teams for one sex, you had to have them for the other sex as well.
So where’s the MEN’S volleyball team?!?
There are two ways to comply with Title IX — increase female teams or eliminate less popular male teams, and the latter is what often is done. And what’s worse is that in some sports (e.g. skiing) the female team isn’t viable without the male team because they share resources (e.g. coaching staff, transportation to mountain, and bulk discount on lift tickets and equipment).
And then let’s take Title IX as a whole — Higher Ed is about 60% female, which (pursuant to Title IX) is 10% too many female students. Why isn’t there a similar mandate to recruit male students, offering full-boat scholarships if necessary? (Or denying entry to qualified female applicants so as to achieve equity that way…)
Even worse are fields like education that are 90% female — why doesn’t the Title IX equity mandates apply here? If we’re going to have quotas, then we should have quotas — or simply abolish Title IX outright as it only was introduced as a last-ditch effort to block a law against racial discrimination. If 50% of the children in K-12 are male, why are we training a teacher cadre that is 90%+ female?!?
So if we must affirm their mental illness while also blindly observing the Title IX equality of outcome mandate, I see no reason why trannies can’t play on the women’s teams. After all, they *think* they are women and society is required to affirm the delusions of the mentally ill and what they think.
Oh, wait — society does *not* confirm the delusions of the mentally ill — instead we lock them up in the psych ward, their God-given rights to Life, Liberty, and Property notwithstanding. Colleges routinely do this to students who are anorexic, in some cases mistakenly doing it to very small female students whose weight actually was healthy for them.
Can you imagine a college or university offering an “anorexic diet” and otherwise affirming and encouraging an anorexic lifestyle? No, we don’t affirm that mental illness — and we shouldn’t affirm this one.
But let’s go one step further — why do men want to be women? In centuries past, there were women whom society believed to be teenaged boys — and in the male-centered world that existed at the time, we can see why they did this. So is it unreasonable to assume that the converse is happening now in our female-centered Title IX country?
And that goes back to where I started, this whole problem is being created by Title IX.
The solution is individual equity — say a physical fitness requirement where every student is required to play a sport and the university is required to provide a team at the ability level of the student. MIT, a land-grant university, meets its physical fitness mandate in such a manner and that is how you have varsity Frisbee.
Male, female, or confused — it wouldn’t matter what sex a player was if there was a balancing chart based on height, weight, and maybe muscle mass. Take volleyball and a team of female players who are all above six feet tall playing a men’s team where no one was above 5′ 09″. The men would have the advantage in strength, the women in height, and it probably would be a fair match.
And as to men in the women’s locker room, how is that different from gay men in the men’s locker room? Anyone remember Gerry Sandusky?
This is why I am not really upset about coed Boy Scouts — if the safeguards that are being introduced now had existed 50-60 years ago, the NAMBLA scandals that nearly destroyed the organization would never have happened. And maybe we need to go back to the level of personal privacy that existed during the Civil War, which is how women were able to fight on both sides without anyone knowing they were female until they were KIA.
It’s not just Schadenfreude, it’s the inherent inequity that Title IX has created, something which the trannies are demonstrating. The solution, of course, is to treat people as individuals…
The problem with writing html code by hand is that just one typo will lead to an extra eight paragraphs being bolded — that’s my fault. I also found something interesting in the European press:
“Thousands of women on social media have revealed that they would rather be stuck with a bear than a strange man if there were alone in the woods since the question took off on TikTok.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/relationships/article-13360727/man-bear-viral-question-domestic-violence-australia-dating.html
“‘People would believe me if I said I was attacked by a bear,’ one said, referencing how sexual assault victims are often dismissed. ‘They wouldn’t ask what you were wearing, or how many other bears have attacked you, or suggest that maybe you wanted to be attacked.’
If you walked between a mother bear and her cubs, as one woman in the article apparently did, I absolutely would blame you — doing something like that is stupid. I’m sorry she got mauled, and glad she survived, but she was “asking for it” if she went between the mother and her cubs.
But to say that a generic human being is a greater inherent threat than a 500 lb wild animal with razor sharp “assault” claws is asinine. (In close quarters, far more lethal than any “assault” gun.) It’s classified as U. horribilis for its character — and while you might be able to kill one with a handgun, it will lethally wound you before it bleeds out.
And I’ll go further — hiking in remote areas (i.e. no cell phone service) in groups of less than three is also inherently stupid. I don’t care if you are male, female, or confused — anyone can twist an ankle or trip and fall. If there are three people, one can stay with the victim and the other can go for help — if you are by yourself, you have to hope for the charity of the random passing stranger. Or perhaps Grizzly Bear…
Yes, U. horribilis is known to organize searches for lost hikers. Yep, they’ll climb out of bed in the midst of a howling gale and go out into the rain or snow to go look for someone who is missing and likely injured. Bears do this sort of thing on a routine basis…
The scary thing is that these women are apparently serious — the issues in this society extend way beyond one confused undergrad wanting to play volleyball.