Transgender Kids and Weird Sports.

I have previously written my view, in “The Issues of Transgender Youth Sports,” that transgender youth should be accommodated in sports by simply doing what sports always should: pit competitors of relatively equal ability against one another. That view, for whatever reason, has not been voiced in the larger debate.

There are many forms of competition. Everything from beep baseball to wheelchair basketball to Korfball to the familiar sports that rake in billions of dollars per year, the world of sports sure is wide. Indeed, it is as if any group of people can get together somewhere, settle on some rules, and do an activity together. A few years ago nobody had heard of pickleball. The concept was beyond imagination: bopping a garnish back and forth at one another? Is that a sport?! But according to the Pickleheads article, “Pickleball statistics – the numbers behind America’s fastest-growing sport,” the sport is already nine percent as popular as charging electric vehicles (based on number of pickleball courts versus EV charger numbers from “The U.S. Now Has Over 183,000 Public EV Chargers”)!

Pickleball and electric vehicles aside, the need for transgender youth to be given their due seems to require some help. Particularly, alternative leagues like those for people who play pickleball or beep baseball, alternative sports besides, are surely fertile ground for these kids to be accepted in their own right. If their allies in youth will join them in creating some alternative leagues, it will give them strength in numbers and let them do what they want: play ball.

The Korfball example is useful. In order to create a coed sport, the rules stipulate that players can only defend against others of the same sex. They saw a disparity in ability and built the rules to allow people of different abilities in the same game. Other sports are possible. Or as Shakespeare might have written (Corlioanus (Act III, scene 3: The same. The Forum.) in a different context, ‘There is a sport elsewhere.’

Let states, let federal legislation, and locals alike, put forth funding and support for alternative leagues, for brave new sports. Let us discover new fun and new spectacle. Let us not be tied to old sports that aren’t that old, for even American football had to be changed (with urging from Teddy Roosevelt among others) for being too brutal before. Basketball and baseball have changed with the times as well (see A League of Their Own, for example). None of that means transgender kids shouldn’t pursue their rights to participate in traditional and established sports, but if the only game in town isn’t friendly, you can always bring a new game to town.

I bet some transgender kids can come up with some really cool new sports, and they won’t be gatekeeping twerps when they do. They will be forgiving, and invite anyone who wants to play to join in.