Four Ways the Women’s Hockey Community Can Better Support LGBTQIA+ People
Pride month continues to roar on in an offseason where women’s hockey looks to create changes on and off the ice. How can teams better support the LGBTQ+ community, whether that be fans of their teams, co-inhabitants of the city, or the athletes and staff on their payroll?
1) Move away from the International Olympic Committee’s policy for transgender athletes, allow all athletes to compete regardless of hormone level
The International Olympic Committee’s policy on transgender athletes forbids athletes, transgender or otherwise, from participating in women’s sports if their testosterone exceeds a level arbitrarily decided on. What the IOC claimed to have invented to “prevent men from pretending to be women for easy wins” has all along been a way to police the bodies of athletes under transphobic, misogynistic, and racist guidelines. Since starting in 1966, the tests have yet to catch a single “man pretending to be women to win” and have only shamed and barred intersex women and trans athletes from participating in their competition.
The idea that testosterone gives a clear competitive advantage has long been questioned, particularly by scientists themselves. A piece Sara Chodosh wrote for Popular Science discusses how the common idea that testosterone leads to better athletic performance may not be true. “One study of professional male triathletes found no relationship between testosterone levels and performance. Another, looking at professional cyclists, found the same lack of correlation. Yet another, comparing cyclists, weightlifters, and controls to each other on a cycling test, found a negative correlation between testosterone levels and performance. A study of teenage weightlifters found no relationship between boys’ testosterone levels and their performance, and a negative correlation among the girls—meaning they performed better when their testosterone was lower.”
Even the Canadian Center for Ethics in Sports, which makes laws related to steroids, said that it wasn’t correct to compare naturally occurring hormones or those prescribed by doctor hormones to steroids or doping that give people an advantage. “There is simply not the evidence to suggest whether, or to what degree, hormone levels consistently confer competitive advantage.”
Women’s hockey leagues, teams, and organizations should remove requirements for testosterone to be under a certain level in players. Doing so would allow transfeminine athletes to join teams without invasive testing or requirements, and prevent discrimination against intersex athletes. Allowing players regardless of testosterone levels would also give transmasculine individuals a choice on if they wish to keep playing on a women’s team. Some transmasculine players have voiced wanting to stay with a women’s team because they feel safer doing so or want to stay with the team they’ve played for previously and found a home with. While not every transmasculine athlete would be comfortable with this, it provides them with the choice instead of forcing them out. New guidelines would help nonbinary players feel less pressure to fit themselves in a certain box based on faux biology to participate in sports, especially as microdoses of hormones become more common for nonbinary individuals in particular (though not exclusively.)
2) Youth Clinics
One of the biggest challenges facing LGBTQ+ youth in sports, especially trans youth, is a safe place to play. Even organizations that technically allow LGBTQ+ athletes to participate may make an unsafe environment by forcing them to undergo unnecessary examinations or testing, hire bigoted staff, or lack resources to support those in the community.
Youth clinics focusing on giving younger LGBTQ+ athletes a safer place to play, educating allies on how to be better teammates, and employing LGBTQ+ coaches and programs strengthen community bonds and tangibly make the sport more inclusive. A session could provide both the typical strengthening of on-ice skills while allowing time off the ice for participants to hear from other LGBTQ+ athletes and be connected to resources like LGBTQ+ friendly trainers and health clinics. Coaches and staff of youth teams could also receive training on how to deter homophobia and transphobia on their team. Doubling as a way to teach allies allows LGBTQ+ athletes to attend without outing themselves.
Teams have previously partnered with Athlete Ally, which is an organization that could assist in running an event of this caliber.
3) Draw Attention to fighting bills discriminating against transgender athletes
Many people feel hopeless as lawmakers pitch bills to prevent transgender children from participating in sport. Transathlete keeps an updated list of which bills have passed, are in progress, have been defeated, and priority actions to take against bills still being voted on. One of their current priority actions focuses on Wisconsin, one of the biggest states for producing women’s hockey players and home of the Badgers. Minnesota also has a bill looking to criminalize transgender athletes.
Women’s hockey teams and players can draw attention to the bills that need to be defeated by simply sharing the Transathlete Take Action page on social media, mailing lists, and press releases/team statements. Women athletes speaking against these bills become increasingly important as those lobbying for the bills to pass claim they are doing so to protect women’s sports.
4) Connect with local LGBT organizations
Overarching LGBTQ+ organizations focusing on sport are extremely important. That said, teams cannot forget the activists in the city they live in and building a relationship with them. Many Pride Nights focus on partnering with You Can Play, a group that has done a lot to bring awareness to homophobia in sports, but teams should also look to partner with and raise money for activists in their cities. For example, a team like the Boston Pride or the college programs in Boston could work with Boston GLASS Community Center which provides “support groups, educational workshops, social events, access to computers and internet, food, toiletries, clothes.”