"It’s a system designed to humiliate these girls, discourage them, and displace them in sports."

A mother of a girl who runs against trans-identified boy Soren Stark-Chessa speaks out

The New England cross country championships were run on November 11 in Belfast, Maine. Placing sixth in the girls’ race was trans-identified boy Soren Stark-Chessa, in a time of 18:07. That time would have earned Stark-Chessa 215th place in the boys’ race, so sliding over into the girls’ category resulted in a nice bump in relative performance and a place on the podium he certainly would not have attained competing as a boy. Last year, as a freshman, Stark-Chessa competed on the boys’ team at Maine Coast Waldorf School. He was ranked 296th in Maine, and 56,057th nationally according to Athletic.net. This year in the girls’ category he’s ranked 6th in Maine and 594th nationally. Another way to look at this—New Englands winner Ruth White and her excellent 16:57 PR would place her somewhere north of 11,000th nationally in the boys’ category. Switching sex categories inordinately benefits boys as it equally vastly disadvantages girls, which could explain why we don’t hear much about trans-identified girls in boys’ sports. This is an issue of material unfairness to girls, not how anyone chooses to identify.

The Maine Interscholastic Athletic Association, in fact every New England state association, allows students to participate with the team that aligns with their gender identity, so this is a-okay with all of these athletic administrators whose job it is to make sports safe and fair. As supporters point out, Stark-Chessa is fully in accordance with these rules.

I had the opportunity to talk with the mother of a girl who will compete against Stark-Chessa. She’s speaking on condition of anonymity, mostly for her daughter’s sake—she is still figuring out the ramifications of saying what she truly believes. Here are some excerpts from our phone conversation.

My beliefs are that people can be who they want to be, love who they want to. If they want to dress a certain way, that’s fine, however none of that negates the physical advantages a biological male will have over a biological female. The frustrating thing I find in nearly every article that supports trans boys in the female category is concern for his mental wellbeing, completely ignoring the fact that many young girls participate in sports to achieve great things. They’re competitive. Sports are an outlet mentally and physically for them, for their wellbeing. There is zero consideration of the mental health of girls who have to compete, unfairly, against trans-identified boys. These articles allude to the fact that it’s just high school sports or it’s just youth sports. Many female athletes are looking forward to a future in sports at advanced levels. This is not just youth sports—this is serious. The loss they feel due to a natural [male] physical advantage is devastating. And not only are they devastated emotionally by this unfairness, they don’t even feel safe in voicing their concerns. There have been some examples in New England, Vermont I think, where the volleyball team refused to play against a team with a male. The entire school was punished for making that stand. So fear of speaking out is well founded.

You hear all the time, girls should just not run [to solve the problem of trans-identified boys in girls’ sports]. This is extraordinarily simplistic. For one thing, the majority of the girls who ran New Englands were not aware there was a boy in the race. And why would they be? It’s a girls’ race. Further, when you sign up for a sport, you make a commitment to show up. A girl can’t just say I’m not going to run. Can you imagine a boys’ football team or Little League team being told not to participate to protest an unjust policy? Would never happen. Boys’ sports are a big deal. Why is there such a disparate impression of how sports affect young women? Kids already have a lot of societal pressures. To add to that list being labeled a bigot or a transphobe is devastating. And they talk about the suicide rate of trans kids! People can be vicious on this issue. This is not for girls to solve.

The question becomes, if girls are afraid to speak up for fear of retaliation then what’s the onus on society? Something like 70% of people believe it’s wrong for biological males to compete in female sports, so what’s the onus on us? I don’t know how this plays out, if it ever does. It’s in the weeds for a lot of people. They don’t want to be vocal about it. I haven’t talked other parents because I don’t know what their opinions are.

I don’t understand why blame isn’t on legislative bodies. They are the ones who are making and enforcing these rules that disadvantage girls. It’s just common sense that boys have measurable physical advantages over girls. It’s pure biology but they will argue against it with ideology. It used to be empirical, but now science has been subsumed by ideology. That, to me, is astounding. Laws are being made based on ideology.

Back to people talking about the emotional state of the trans-identified boy. I dread thinking about young ladies forced to share housing on a road trip or forced to share locker rooms with a boy, a male. It’s abuse. What about girls who go into sports to get away from abusive situations? Many female athletes use sports as an outlet to have time away from a difficult situation in their personal life, an abusive relationship with a male. Does that not matter? Why does only the boy’s emotional state matter?

The idea of fairness is also curious. The physical advantages of this person [Stark-Chessa] are so clear, by facts, by statistics. Ruth White, who is one of the top female runners in the country, would rank over 11,000th among boys. But this person [Stark-Chessa] moved up from 56,057th nationally in the boys’ rankings to 594th in the girls’. Statistically, how is this not unfair? Boys have obvious natural physical advantages and they’re celebrated, but if a girl took an illegal drug that would be unfair advantage. Cheating. Male physical advantages—heart size, lung size, length of limbs, narrower hips—these things are indisputable, but yet somehow overlooked. At New Englands, Soren went into a different gear at the end. He just blew those girls away. The difference was so obvious, looking at his musculature. It’s jaw-dropping. I don’t get it, I really don’t.

People will say, Well, he didn’t win. Five girls beat him. It must not be unfair. Top 25 receive an award. The girl in 26th place lost out on the opportunity to stand amongst her peers and be acknowledged as a top athlete. He took that spot that should have gone to a woman, a girl. And, as a boy, he’ll grow, he’ll increase his mileage, his body will respond differently to weight training, and he’ll be faster next year as a result. At the same time, the girls’ bodies are changing, they’re dealing with menses, and they often plateau. It’s very likely he’ll get a top three spot next year.

[I asked her response to the common support of trans-identified boys in girls’ sports—they just want to do the sport they love.] Soren has every opportunity to do the sport he loves by running in the appropriate biological category—that being male, just like he did in his freshman year. 

My daughter was assigned The Handmaid’s Tale for an English class, so I picked it up too. It’s about this dystopian patriarchy in which women become powerless, and I was struck by how this situation [trans-identified boys in girls’ sports] is creating an athletic patriarchy, fostering powerlessness in women’s athletics. It’s a system designed to humiliate these girls, discourage them, and displace them in sports. It’s a suppression of women’s athletic rights. If women are forced to compete against males in their own category in an athletic system that we know has always been run by men for men, how is this different from The Handmaid’s Tale? It’s still men suppressing women, loss of female agency.

[I asked about her daughter’s feelings about competing against Stark-Chessa] She’s aware of him. For now, her position is, I’m not running for or against anyone but myself, but until she’s beaten by this person, she isn’t fully processing the unfairness. She knows logically, statistically about the unfairness but until she’s beaten it won’t become real, personal. And I think that’s how it is for a lot of women who give lip service to inclusion of trans-identified males—I’m thinking of Lauren Fleshman in her book Good For A Girl, and Megan Rapinoe. They can virtue signal now because they’re not competing. They’re never going to experience that unfairness firsthand.

UPDATE: There were three incidents in Washington of trans-identified boys running in girls’ cross country races, and most recently, in California, trans-identified boy Athena Ryan won the girls’ varsity conference championship in a time of 18:56. That time would have earned Ryan 23rd place in the boys’ varsity race. Recall that Ryan qualified for the girls’ state track meet last spring but did not show up due to “safety concerns.”