Fans celebrate the UNLV volleyball team in Cox Pavilion. (Photo: Lucas Peltier/UNLV)
Women’s collegiate volleyball is the rage bait flavor of the month for conservative cultural warriors, who are calling for a boycott of San Jose State University’s team because they believe one of the players is trans.
Four universities so far have refused to play the team. The University of Nevada Las Vegas and the University of Nevada Reno are, thankfully, not among them. Both schools have gone on record saying they will play the San Jose Spartans as scheduled.
As they should.
Nevada’s public universities have a history of supporting trans students and denouncing bigotry. When Regent Patrick Boylan earlier this year referred to female trans athletes as “ men masquerading as women ” and blithely spoke of them having their “you-know-what cut off,” the pushback was immediate. Other regents and leaders immediately called him out for the disgusting and inappropriate comments.
The Nevada Faculty Alliance called on Boylan to resign. UNR President Brian Sandoval released a statement of solidarity with trans and gender-diverse students, faculty and staff, saying, “We stand with you and want you all to know that your contributions to our University are immense and meaningful.”
That sentiment should extend to visiting student athletes.
The Spartan in question has not spoken publicly about her gender identity. She was doxxed by a far-right website whose content focuses solely and exclusively on transphobic fear mongering.
The story has been picked up by more mainstream conservative outlets, who, since losing the battle against gay people at large, have increasingly embraced becoming grosser, scarier versions of those “man or woman” episodes of Maury Povich from the 1990s.
Not that it matters to the people pushing anti-trans narratives but San Jose State’s women’s volleyball record is currently 9-1. While that is the best record in the Mountain West Conference at the moment, the Spartans’ competition so far doesn’t seem to have been particularly difficult. Only two of the nine teams they have beaten have winning records. One is tied 8-8. The other six have losing records, ranging from 1-14 (ouch) 6-9.
That means most of the teams San Jose State has beaten were also beaten by a bunch of other teams. And the two teams they beat that have winning records were 9-4 and 10-5 as of Monday. Solid numbers, but they don’t exactly suggest they would have won if not for a trans player being on the opposing team.
Also, Colorado State (record 8-6) beat San Jose State.
None of those details matter to the people pushing these anti-trans narratives, of course. The details didn’t matter when the target was an Algerian boxer in the Olympics, or a collegiate swimmer who tied for fifth against the new face of participation trophies , Riley Gaines.
They say this is about upholding the integrity of women’s sports and protecting women from the physicality of men. (Where’s that energy when it comes to protecting men and boys against the well-documented traumatic brain injuries rampant in beloved, monetized sports like football? I digress.) But these are issues that affect a small percentage of athletes. They can, and should, be decided by governing athletic bodies, and not the court of public opinion or Maury Povich.
The outsized outrage is performative. There is a reason Republicans have, according to reporting by the New York Times, invested more than $65 million in anti-trans television ads supporting former President Donald Trump. It’s about finding a new scapegoat, a new face of “radical wokeness” intended to scare people into supporting a party that wants to take the country back to the 1950s.
I do hope UNLV and UNR beat San Jose State when they face off this weekend and later this month. Not because they are the underdogs playing against an unfair competitor, but only because I root for the Rebels always (and for Nevada when they play teams that aren’t UNLV).
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