Stuff stopped making sense for Chase Strangio, and Chase Strangio stopped making sense, when she left her high school girls' soccer team in favor of the queer community

Chase Strangio, that petite testosterone-juiced woman with the queer hair who is given to false statements except under oath when arguing insane shit for the ACLU, has a Substack. Called Legally Trans. And she wrote about sports. And did not allow comments on the article! I could not resist.

Update: I started this post on June 29th, when Strangio thought she was going to lose the case the ACLU was arguing that it was unlawful to organize sports by sex, and on June 30th as I was finishing this analysis of Strangio’s bizarre ramblings, the Supreme Court sided with Little and the state of West Virginia, that the 27 states that currently organize sports by sex may continue to do so. Strangio and the ACLU lost. The bad news is that the 23 states that allow choose-your-own-sex-category sports may continue to violate girls’ rights. More on this long-awaited decision in another post.

Let’s wade into Strangio’s latest post, about how sports allowed her to experience her female body happily and healthily, and how trans ideology then fucked that up for her and taught her to be a victim. This Substack post explained a lot.

This June, New York City has been electric: the elation of the Knicks championship overlapped with the start of the World Cup, all of which unfolded against the backdrop of Pride, bringing neighbors together through joy rather than crisis. I witnessed and partook in the celebrations that unfolded around me with an enduring appreciation for the power of a shared love and community.

As a pretend man, Strangio must have noticed that World Cup soccer is made up of ALL MALE players. Surely she must notice that there are no “trans men” on any team. Worldwide. None. Why isn’t Strangio hollering about the fact that there are zero trans men in World Cup play? How could she celebrate such an exclusive, unwelcoming event? All males doing amazingly athletic stuff that males do because they’re male. Also, our gal Strangio plays with fire by bringing up Pride and soccer, because of course, those two terms in the same sentence will return Canadian mono-named sex rejector Quinn who very much is not banned from sports, despite whatever nonsensical stuff she may believe. Which shoots down Strangio’s whole carefully constructed lie.

At the same time, I had to temper this celebratory spirit with the reality of what June has brought and will bring from the Supreme Court. Last week, the Supreme Court cravenly dismissed the racism of the Trump administration and upheld some of the President’s deadly immigration policies. This coming week, we will culminate this month of sports and Pride with a decision from the Supreme Court on the lawfulness of banning trans athletes from sports, which will serve as another pronouncement from the Court on whether trans people will be included in social and civic life. When the trans sports decision comes down, I hope that everyone who, like me, loves sports will pause to think about what it means to exile a group of young people from the social, cultural, and emotional experience of being part of a team.

There she goes again, trotting out the “banned from sports” lie that even the most slavish foot soldiers of the ideology (New York Times, I’m looking at you) won’t publish. Strangio was not allowed to spew that kind of whopper under oath before the Supreme Court, but rather she argued that her male clients, Becky Pepper-Jackson and Lindsay Hecox, would be very sad if they, like every other human being in West Virginia and Idaho respectively, were required to participate in sports in their sex category. And furthermore, Strangio argued, they would be so sad about being required to follow the rules that they might just quit sports. Strangio was never allowed to say in court that her clients would be banned from sports because that’s not true. But when she’s not in court, like on her Substack, Strangio likes to pile the falsehoods into glorious steaming heaps. Because it sounds better to the empathetic public than if she just said her male clients refused to accept reality, respect women’s rights, and follow the basic structure of sports, as recently reified by the International Olympic Committee. That would just sound stupid.

Like all liars when inventing something truly monumental, Strangio had to skate dangerously close to the truth. In pointing out the obvious heinous injustice of making it unlawful for a group of people to enjoy the benefits of sports, she accurately described what has actually happened to girls in 23 states, where it is unlawful to organize female-only sports. There are no girls’ sports or locker rooms or restrooms; there are only mixed-sex sports and locker rooms and restrooms in 23 states. Twenty-three states ban female-only sports. When she paints this horrific picture of lawful exclusion of a group of people from sports, she runs the real risk of thinking people connecting some dots—Hold on a minute, where have I heard this before?

And Strangio’s stance here is mighty pessimistic. Before the decision even comes down, she’s pretty much assuming that she has lost, that Idaho and West Virginia will be able to continue to organize sports based on sex. She has not even considered in this piece the possibility that her clients will prevail. Why not spend those words on her Substack to describe how lovely it will be for “Becky” and “Lindsay” and all the boys with girl identities to be able to get all the social and emotional benefits of being part of a team that has been forced by law to accept them? Why did Strangio not use AB Hernandez in California as a glowing example of the paradise, the rightness-with-the-world that results when boys can self-identify into girls’ sports?

Growing up, I felt a profound alienation from both my body and the world that I could not place. I had no models of queerness or transness around me and no map to follow for how to find home in my body and sexuality. Middle and high school were unbearable, but what gave me peace were the experiences of being an athlete on a team. I could inhabit my body when I stepped onto the field. I could make sense of being part of the world when I was with my teammates. For years, I imagined that I would grow up to be a professional athlete. I would play soccer for the University of North Carolina and then go on to join a yet-to-be realized women’s soccer league, I genuinely believed. Of course, I would discover that I had neither the skill nor the desire for a future in soccer and more profoundly, that I was not a woman. But what mattered in those formative childhood and adolescent years, were the dreams and the drives that kept me connected to my body and the world. That is what the overwhelming majority of us get from youth sports: a structure, a set of lessons, a social and emotional home, a place to navigate our bodies through puberty. Yes, competition is thrilling and important, but it does not explain, on its own, the transformative impact that sports can have on our lives and culture.

She almost gets it. So close. She feels right with her female body, with other girls and with being a girl when playing on a female soccer team. Everything made sense. Yes, of course it did. That’s called reality. That’s why sports are organized by sex. Somehow she failed to appreciate that she was only afforded that sex-accepting experience because she was playing on an all-girls team. It was girls-only by law. It excluded boys. Why doesn’t Strangio wonder how she could have had such a positive lifesaving experience on a team that banned males? Despite “navigating” her body through female puberty, Strangio made a hard and unexplained left into I was not a woman. Even if you think of this tragic indoctrination of a distressed girl as discovering her authentic self, why then did she not seek that same transformative sense of community, of rightness, on the boys’ team? Girls’ sports was the only thing that got me through puberty, which is why I will die on the hill that girls’ sports, that beautiful social and emotional home, that transformative experience, should be destroyed by including boys who think they’re girls? I’m not a lawyer, but that is some crazy kind of reasoning.

When, at seventeen, I realized that I was queer and came out, I left my athletic “career” behind and found embodiment and community in queerness. But I never left my love for sports. A lifelong Boston sports fan, I felt a similar sense of belonging in team fandoms that I did in queerness. In college, I gathered in lounges and bars to watch the New England Patriots win the Super Bowl in 2002 and the Boston Red Sox win the World Series in 2004 and was overtaken with joy in the same way that I am when I gather in June for Pride. I recognize in all of these experiences the way that being part of a community speaks to a deep human need for connection and shared purpose. It is why, even as a Boston sports fan, I could revel in the Knicks victory; it was a transformative moment of joy for New York City, another community that has shaped my life. Our love and fandoms can even hold the contradictions of living full, complex, messy lives. Even those who abhor nationalism find themselves overtaken with an inexplicable love of country during the World Cup or Olympics. Immigrants who flee profound violence still cheer for their home countries because of deep ancestral ties that can overcome exile and cruelty. Community is transcendent in that way.

Aaah, here’s the answer. She left athletics—where she was happy, where she felt at home, where everything made sense—behind, to instead find community in a community that proudly makes no sense. Making no sense, and demanding that others respect your nonsense, is the not-very-stable foundation of queerness. Men are women, women are men, good is bad, bad is good—it’s kind of like Pajama Day during Homecoming week, but the adherents, including Strangio, never moved on. They never realized that Pajama Day is not a good way to live the rest of your life, and probably the Supreme Court is not going to buy it.

Strangio tries and fails to show that queerness or transness—ideologies that deny reality—provide the same sense of community as being a Red Sox fan or a German, both of which are based entirely and necessarily in reality. Because Mexican immigrants who fled murderous drug cartels can still cheer the Mexican soccer team does not mean they feel all chummy about the drug cartels. For the love of god. This woman is a lawyer? No no, identifies as a lawyer. And, I’m sorry, what does this have to do with boys in girls’ sports?

I thought about all of this - sports, pride, the Supreme Court - when I left my house yesterday to join the New York City Dyke March. It has been an excruciating week in the United States with the Supreme Court legitimizing the Trump administration’s grotesque immigration policies. And yet, when I left my house in the rain wearing a Colombia soccer jersey, holding a “Fuck ICE” sign, and walked down the streets of my Queens neighborhood, what I witnessed was the opposite of the cruelty on display from those in power. Immigrant business owners of South Asian descent were wearing Colombia jerseys to share in the joy of their South American immigrant neighbors. Families were still celebrating Ecuador’s win over Germany that sent Ecuador into the Round of 32. Queer people in Knicks jerseys were heading out to join thousands at the Dyke March. Everyone was profoundly joyful. Being in and part of a community is often the antidote to despair. In my life, I have found that in both queerness and in sports. Whether in the knowing smiles to fellow queers or Boston sports fans on streets around the world or in the public celebrations during Pride or championship parades, shared love can transcend almost anything.

Gosh, for a minute there, what with the cruelty references, I thought she was going to talk about how lesbians are being called gender nazis for not dating men. And how, in fact, some of those lesbians that are being excluded from queer love were undoubtedly on her high school soccer team, helping her navigate her female puberty. Not sure how BPJ threatening his teammates with rape fits into Strangio’s queer lovefest.

There are many queer people who do not understand or enjoy sports and many sports fans who do not understand queerness. But, I would submit, the majority of us understand the experience of being part of community. We understand what it means to gather together with a shared sense of purpose, embracing the same emotional register, and overcoming an obstacle or sustained adversity to celebrate what makes our shared experience special. That means we also understand that banning people from these shared experiences has long-term consequences and not just from the immediate exclusion but also from the impact of being deprived an essential human need - belonging.

Strangio misunderstands sports. And rights. And reality. Maybe this is why she lost. The only reason sports provides community is because athletes and fans trust that rules are being followed. Sports are not a vehicle for affirmation of whatever crazy-ass belief one has. One gains a sense of belonging from sports because everyone respects the rules. That’s a requirement for belonging. If you’re arguing for cheaters to be celebrated, well, you’re not going to get that warm fuzzy sense of community. It’s not Pajama Day, ffs.

So, as we close out this June - of sports and Pride - I want to urge people to fight for those moments of collective joy and shared sense of belonging. If you are replaying videos of OG Anunoby’s tip in Game 4 of the NBA Championships or you found yourself following Cabo Verde goalkeeper Vozinha’s epic World Cup run or you wait every year to join your people on the street for Pride, consider joining in a shared sense of outrage at the Supreme Court’s decisions impacting immigrants and trans people. These decisions are not only about legitimizing discrimination but also about dividing us from this human need to experience collective joy.

June is for sports and Pride. And our love for either or both, can carry on in a year-round insistence that our lives our improved when we believe in and fight for each other.

Again, why didn’t Strangio illustrate the “collective joy” and “shared sense of belonging” of the girls who were forced to share the podium with AB Hernandez? Are girls not worth fighting for? Are girls not “each other?” You know, ever since Strangio left girls’ sports behind, stuff stopped making sense. She stopped making sense.

Fuck ICE, go Knicks, Happy Pride.

Huh?