Honestly...I'm done with this crowd, and this sport, at least, at the professional level. literally grew up in track and field. My dad coached for fifty years, and I raced for twenty. Cross and track were my life. It would have been easy to get us to skip Christmas than to skip state meet.
And what I see happening to this sport disgusts me.
You all disgust me. The hate I see on display for trans athletes, all the posturing about protecting women's sports, is just bunk. Women in athletics were long treated as second class citizens, still are, and only now, when the specter of trans athletes competing with them, do you all suddenly care about the sanctity, the fairness for cisfemale athletes? Give me a break. This is just the same old arguments used against keeping blacks out of baseball, dressed up a bit.
You do realize, that when a movie is made about all this, years from now, you all will be the villains, right? That this is not a war you can win? Or if you do win, it will as a consequence kill the sport I love. Because when you practice exclusion in a sport, you slowly strangle it. Because there are young people coming of age now, for whom transgender rights aren't a controversy. They are a given, an absolute, and when confronted with a sport that excludes trans athletes from competing alongside their gender, they will reject that sport. Track and field, cross, athletics, is on such shaky ground as is, and this fight will only hurt its reputation in the long run.
You may think you are fighting to keep it pure and fair, but you are just slowly strangling it. And I'll be goddamned if I'm a party to it. This is a sport of inclusion, and dignity, and winning is the least important thing about it, at least, it is to me. It's about doing one's personal best. It's about pushing others to do their best. Damn the medals. Damn the podium. Damn it all. I would rather lose a race where all are welcome, than win in a race that excludes some individuals. All should be welcome. And that so many of you do not feel this way, feel so insecure, so fearful of trans people who just want to be accepted for who they are, sickens me.
Brian Rose