Perspective: College volleyball, Blaire Fleming and the flex of the forfeit

Emmeline Pankhurst, that great suffragist, once opined about those who refused women the vote: “Well, they little know what women are. Women are very slow to rouse, but once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way; it is impossible.” I am reminded of that quote when I consider the evolution of women’s sport.

At first, women were excluded from sports. The excuses were many, often revolving around the “frailty” of their physical constitution. Seared in my mind from my own youth is the photo of Kathrine Switzer at the Boston Marathon, who was physically pushed off the course by a male official — for yes, in 1967, it was considered untoward for women to participate. A footnote: her buff boyfriend pushed the race official off her, and she went on to finish the race. There’s a lesson to ponder in that.

As sports gradually opened to women, it was clear that the attitudes of the past still weighed them down. Schools begrudgingly let women play women’s sports, but often times the women had no facilities or uniforms, or even coaches. From this inequity came the effort to pass Title IX in 1972, which federally mandated equivalent commitment to women’s sports in educational settings.

Some argue that the arc of history always bends toward justice, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes, in fact, we see regression, and we have certainly seen such regression in women’s rights over the past decade. That regression hit women’s sports hard when sports associations began to assert that biological males who identify as females should be allowed to play in women’s sports. Perhaps officials thought such cases would be vanishingly rare, but sites such as SheWon.org and HeCheated.org show that this is not the case at all. Biological males who identify as women have not only won numerous women’s sports competitions, but have medalled in them, and also broken women’s records. In some sports, these competitors completely dominate the winner’s podium , such as in women’s cycling.

The high tide of this effort is the proposed reinterpretation of Title IX by the Biden administration to redefine the word “sex” in that legislation to mean “gender identity.” That effort has not yet been fully successful; several federal circuit courts have rejected the reinterpretation, and half of U.S. states have also passed laws banning male participation in women’s sports under Title IX. And yet, to date, the NCAA — the major governing body for sports at the college and university level — has refused to hear the voices in opposition, and NCAA rules permit biological males to play in women’s sports.

What really chafes is that the NCAA, and the schools which agree with the NCAA’s policy, have brazenly shut down any female athletes who wish to raise their voices against this state of affairs. As revealed by Riley Gaines and others who were forced to not only race against Lia Thomas, but also to change in Thomas’s presence, their schools threatened to exclude them from the team and strip them of their scholarships if they complained. Female athletes have come together to sue the NCAA for this treatment, and for violation of the original meaning of Title IX.

This saga now has a new chapter. For the first time since this issue has arisen, we now see school teams standing up collectively and refusing to play other teams with a transgender athlete. These teams are willing to forfeit games, even championship games; these teams are willing to be penalized. They have stood up to the NCAA in open rebellion against what they perceive to be a completely unfair situation for their female athletes. And these teams could not have stood up without the backing of their respective administrations and boards of trustees.

The sport in which the rebellion has begun is women’s volleyball, specifically in the Mountain West Conference. One of the teams in that conference is San Jose State University, which has on its team roster 6′ 1″ Blaire Fleming. Fleming transferred to San Jose State after playing in South Carolina but before a bill was passed in that state that would have banned Fleming’s participation. An interesting coda is that it is unclear that San Jose State even knew Fleming was transgender when the transfer occurred.

No one on the team was told, it seems, but it soon became apparent. With the net in women’s volleyball seven inches lower than that for men’s teams, Fleming was able to dominate play to the extent that the San Jose State team went undefeated. One of Fleming’s teammates, Brooke Slusser, noted , “Fleming’s spikes were traveling upward of 80 mph, which was faster than she had ever seen a woman hit a volleyball ... The girls were doing everything they could to dodge Fleming’s spikes but still could not fully protect themselves.” These fears are not unjustified: in 2023, a female volleyball player was seriously injured when a male player who identifies as a woman spiked the ball into her face. Male hitting power is about twice that of females.

Once word got out, the schools playing San Jose State had a choice: to play in risky and unfair matches, or to forfeit. Each forfeit would be recorded as a loss. A non-conference school, Southern Utah, was the first to brave the penalty and stand up for fairness and safety in NCAA women’s volleyball. They were followed in succession by three schools in the conference: Boise State, Wyoming and Utah State. All accepted the penalty as the price worth paying to make this stand.

This is what it will take to restore fairness to women’s sports. It can’t just be the individual female athletes standing up, though they are due applause for doing so and risking their future in sports as a result. In addition to these brave women, it takes their schools to say, “Enough, NCAA.” Southern Utah, Boise State, Wyoming and Utah State are to be commended for their willingness to support their female athletes.

Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, sums up the situation well, in a report she will be presenting to the UN General Assembly next week. Alsalem concludes, “Sports have functioned on the universally recognized principle that a separate category for females is needed to ensure equal, fair and safe opportunities in sports. Multiple studies offer evidence that athletes born male have proven performance advantages in sport throughout their lives, although this is most apparent after puberty. Undermining the eligibility criteria for single-sex sports results in unfair, unlawful and extreme forms of discrimination against female athletes on the basis of sex.”

Amen to that. It is heartening to know that schools have finally decided to join the fight, and that women will not stand alone. Pankhurst was right: “Women are very slow to rouse, but once they are aroused, once they are determined, nothing on earth and nothing in heaven will make women give way.”

Valerie M. Hudson is a university distinguished professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University and a Deseret News contributor. Her views are her own.