After Atalanta

 [this is cross-posted with Title IX Blog where I will also post something about the announcement that NIL is not subject to Title IX] The NCAA's new policy banning transwomen from competing in women's sports arrived (seemingly) minutes after the administration issued its executive order banning transwomen and girls from participating in school-sponsored sports teams.  The NCAA did include verbiage though which is worth looking at.  This is the synopsis at the top of the press release:  Men's category open to all eligible student-athletes, women's category restricted to student-athletes assigned female at birth, schools directed to foster welcoming environments on all campuses. But it is not accurate.  The women's category--for competition purposes--is open to people students assigned female at birth who are not taking testosterone. What we see here is a different standard. Testosterone levels matter only for some people. Taking it knocks you out of the women's...

Things are bleak and despair is high. I hope folks are doing what they can to fight the fights they think are worth fighting and finding ways to care for themselves and others. I have compiled below videos, websites, fact sheets that I have found helpful in 1) learning more about what is going on from experts and folks on the ground and 2) getting some comfort from the work that is being done and 3) figuring how where to put my efforts and how.  This video from GLAD Law about what an executive order and is not. Following them on Instagram may be helpful as they are in the midst of many legal battles.  GLAD Law (not be confused with GLAAD which is also doing great work--see below) is fighting the trans military ban and GLAD lawyer Jennifer Levi reported that during the hearing in which GLAD asked for emergency relief from the military ban the judge asked pointed questions of the government including the rationality of a policy that says simply being transgender--while meeting...

 The same day as the president signed the executive order banning transwomen in school-sponsored sports (which WILL have more widespread effects--i.e., recreational sports for youth and adults), the NCAA issued its own change on transwomen in collegiate sports which, for the purpose of "consistency" will also prohibit transwomen from competing in women's NCAA sports.  [I wrote about the effects the EO will have on Title IX compliance which is something that NCAA purports to care about, at Title IX Blog .] I would have been surprised (in a good way), if they had not. They give in to outside pressure regularly (with positive and negatives effects). But this policy is another example of their failure to protect athletes. [Lack of penalties for schools that shield predatory coaches and doctors as well as athletes who commit sexual assault; their exploitation of Black men who help them make their billions every March; their laughable adherence to an ahistorical definition of ...

One post on the a dministration's executive order banning transwomen and girls from women's sports does not seem sufficient. I have so many things to say. I will do a separate post on the NCAA on the path it chose in issuing its own ban; and then probably another one on the all the contradictions contained in the ban; and then another about this bullshit discourse on the protection of women (the photo of the bill signing with a group of young white girls surrounding a sexual predator is gag-worthy); and the mess that is trying to categorize things as sex or gender.  Here though I muddle through some initial (though not new) thoughts.  I am on sabbatical this semester trying to complete a project on the influences of feminist ideologies of the 1970s (US context) on women's sports. And being (re)immersed in this literature has been somewhat surreal given the current discourse. Gender as a concept was not in circulation in the 70s but arguments over the role of culture, biolo...