The evolution of male inclusion in women's sports

"It’s deception by omission, by allowing people to believe something that Fleming knows is false, and not giving the information people are owed by virtue of the sporting contract.”

Will (Lia) Thomas was first gen. He “transitioned” very publicly, striding around the women’s locker room, maleness swinging, after three years on U Penn’s men’s team. That Thomas was so obviously male made it extremely difficult for the NCAA and U Penn to appear sane, much less fair, and it chummed the waters for a media feeding frenzy. “Trans woman” and she/her pronouns notwithstanding, the fact that Thomas had competed as a male on the same team, and was obviously still male, was the single most effective argument made to date for women’s sports. The kind with only women in it. Even for a narcissist who was unfailingly backed by U Penn and the NCAA, the media scrutiny could not have been pleasant for Thomas.

Back then, a well known sports scientist and I wondered why anyone would put themselves through that kind of scrutiny, the media hell? That was a first gen strategy error. The next Lia Thomas, we agreed, would be much more stealth, transitioning very early, well out of the public eye, birth certificate changed, documents in order, going the whole nine yards with surgery and hormones, and passing quite well. For the next Lia Thomas, “transition” would be so far in the rear view mirror by the time college came as to be virtually invisible, so seamless that coaches and school administrators might not know they were recruiting a male athlete for their female team. Teammates, fans—no one would know. And if done right, who would question someone who appeared female and had been playing female sports since, well, before anyone was paying attention? All the unpleasantness of Thomas’s very public “transition” would be avoided. No (public) trans, no foul.

Enter Brayden (Blaire) Fleming.

Fleming, a senior, is now in his third season as a member of the D1 women’s volleyball program at San Jose State University. Fleming has competed, traveled, and lived since 2022 with the SJSU women’s team, none of who were informed by the school that he’s male. Fleming is now at the center of a lawsuit filed by SJSU volleyball co-captain Brooke Slusser, and 11 others claiming SJSU and the Mountain West Conference violated their First Amendment and Title IX rights by allowing a trans-identified male to play on the women’s team, something SJSU still does not admit publicly. In their words, “It’s Blaire’s story to tell,” so if Fleming doesn’t admit to being a trans-identified male, they won’t either. And SJSU is not alone. On October 29, the New York Times wrote bizarrely:

“The university has not publicly confirmed whether the team has a transgender player. Some news media outlets have named a player they say is transgender, but The New York Times has not independently verified the player’s identity nor whether there is a transgender player on the team. The Times could not reach the player named by other outlets for comment.”

On November 14, the New York Times again used many many words that their legal team deemed safe:

“In the lawsuit, Slusser said the teammate, who was also her roommate, ‘was born male and identifies as a ‘transgender woman,’ and came out to her during a conversation in April. …The Athletic is not naming the athlete because the athlete has not publicly identified.”

CNN, NBC, ABC, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, few legacy media outlets will name Fleming, and they hedge any mention of transgender with “alleged” or “reportedly.”

And from Fleming? Nada. No male team stats, no male history, no junk in the locker room, no press conferences, no transition story told to Sports Illustrated. It’s as if Blaire Fleming, female-esque volleyball player, sprang into being in 2016.

Up until a few months ago, Fleming had seemingly pulled off the trans trick, living and participating in sports at the highest collegiate level “as a woman.” He’s still controlling his story, literally, history, based on a shaky claim of privacy. Unlike Thomas whose inarguable maleness made it easy to talk about unfairness and infringement of sex-based rights, it’s not even clear, publicly, that Fleming is male. This is trans-identified male 2.0. Weapons-grade gaslighting (Thomas) has evolved into a more insidious deception by omission (Fleming).

This new strategy of inclusion by deception, by withholding one’s sex history, brings up all kinds of questions. If they “transition” early enough and manage their public image carefully enough, do trans-identified males even have to reveal their sex to coaches and administrators and officials? Is this an athlete's private information? Should all competitive sports require cheek swabs, even high school? Could a trans-identified male be charged with fraud/misrepresenting himself if he doesn't reveal his sex? Are schools required to tell teammates and opponents if there is a male on the team? And bigger picture, what happened to the honor system?

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According to Fleming’s SJSU profile page, he was born Blaire Rene Fleming at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. That’s not entirely true according to Outkick, which “confirmed Fleming was born male,” and Reduxx, that originally broke this story back in April 2024. Reduxx reported of Blaire, who was born Brayden: “While the exact age Fleming was transitioned is unknown, early photos posted to his aunt’s Facebook show he was raised as a boy, and only began presenting in feminine clothing in 2016 when he would have been approximately 14 years old. His family members have been careful not to publicly identify him as transgender, but his grandmother referred to him as her ‘grandson’ in an early photo.”

Starting high school as Blaire, Fleming played all four years on John Champe High School’s girls’ volleyball team and with the girls’ Virginia Juniors club team. Fleming and his parents cultivated and curated a feminine image, effectively hiding the fact of his birth. Students would have been required to have a physical on file with the high school before participating in competitive sports. It’s likely, in 2016, that the form had a simple male/female choice, in which case the doctor would have indicated a male child who was healthy enough to play sports. A 2024 sports physical form allows “sex assigned at birth” and options for gender identity, but

nonetheless, John Champe High School would have been aware of Fleming’s sex. They were the first of several organizations in Fleming’s career to not only allow a male to play on a female team, but to withhold that information from girls on the team and opposing teams. At least officially. As we’ll see, throughout his sports career, women were aware of Fleming’s sex but were coerced, directly or indirectly, not to talk about it.

Fleming’s Hudl recruiting profile does not indicate sex or gender, but does show that Fleming played on girls’ teams, and presented as a girl (below).

Fleming graduated from John Champe High School having set a school record for number of kills in one game and one season. He was recruited and played for one season with D1 Coastal Carolina. If Fleming didn’t offer that he was a trans-identified male, and his high school decided to “protect his privacy,” Coastal Carolina might not know Fleming was male. This happened before, as Reduxx reported, when Tate Drageset’s volleyball scholarship to the University of Washington was rescinded after the university belatedly discovered he was male.

But, Coastal Carolina did know. They hid that information from women on the team, and from the media. I reached out to some members of Coastal Carolina’s volleyball team who were there when Fleming was. One, Madison Lowery, described a distressingly similar experience to that the SJSU women have endured. She emailed:

“Neither the Coastal Carolina University Administration (CCU) nor the coaching staff at CCU made me aware in any way of Blair Fleming’s sexuality. 

I and other girls on the team reached a conclusion as to Blair Fleming’s sexuality based upon social media postings and other observations. Among these observations was the fact that Blair Fleming did not have a suite mate in the Athletic dorm. All the other freshman on the volleyball team at CCU had suite mates. The suites consisted of four rooms, and each of us shared a room with another player (except one of our outsides, because there were an odd number of girls on the team staying in the athletic dorm), and all of the girls in the suite shared a communal bathroom. Blair Fleming was the only person staying in her suite of rooms. In addition Blair Fleming did not shower or dress with the team before or after practices or games. On road trips all of the girls on the team shared a hotel room with another girl, with the exception of Blair Fleming. Blair Fleming always stayed alone in a room on away games. I will also make the following caveat: that my observations as to Blair Fleming’s residency status at CCU were what I observed and I was only in Fleming’s room one time.”

Another Coastal Carolina team member who wished to remain anonymous wrote in an email:

“I do not believe that trans-identifying athletes should be able to compete in women’s athletic events. I believe the reasons should be self-evident to any critically thinking person.”  

Passage of a bill in 2022 that banned male athletes from competing in women’s sports in South Carolina apparently prompted Fleming to leave Coastal Carolina for SJSU. California of any state, would reliably prioritize Fleming’s right to withhold his true sex.

Reduxx spoke with the mother of a player on a team that opposed SJSU who wished to remain anonymous, who said her daughter mentioned “widespread” rumors among the women of Fleming being male in the 2022-2023 season. It seems, Fleming could not resist revealing that he was male within the confines of the team, while being supported in deceit publicly by the university. Brooke Slusser transferred in to SJSU in the fall of 2023. Like the other women on the team, she was not informed by the coach or the athletic department that there was a male on the team, or that she was, in fact, living with that person. Outkick reported: “Once Slusser and her teammates became aware of Fleming's biological sex, the SJSU athletic department discouraged them from speaking about the issue publicly. Essentially, the school laid a guilt trip on the volleyball players, suggesting it was their responsibility to protect their male teammate from public scrutiny.”

Speaking to Outkick, Slusser said “the whole team knew” Fleming was a trans-identified male because Fleming had been speaking about it in the locker room and in individual conversations, but SJSU only acknowledged to the team that Fleming was not female in the fall of 2024, when they warned the women not to talk to the media. There was no concern for how female athletes were feeling about having a male on the team, nor that they were being pressured to participate in the violation of their own rights.

Fleming might have pulled it off were it not for the irresistible desire to flaunt his breaching of women’s boundaries, like the women’s bathroom selfies that proliferate on trans-identified males’ social media.

There is evidence that Fleming’s path is seen as the way of the future for trans-identified males. Recall my previous post about Nike and Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance funding a study of the sports performance of kids as young as 12 who are on puberty blockers. “That’s the million dollar question. I think if we start kids at a younger age with treatment, we don’t know how much of an effect that’s going to have on performance,” said lead investigator Kate Ackerman. For Ackerman and co-investigator Joanna Harper, the holy grail is to “start kids at a younger age,” to try to bypass male puberty and its attendant massive jump in male performance advantage, to help erase male appearance, to make a male into a more perfect facsimile of a female, or at least a male no one would have the temerity to question.

World Athletics’ and World Aquatics' loophole that allows males who have not gone through male puberty into female sports, inadvertently serves as a perverse incentive to start kids on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones at an early age, the key to trans 2.0.

Jon Pike, Professor of Philosophy at The Open University in the UK, studies the ethics of sport. “This idea of getting kids young enough, I was naive enough to think no one would go down that road,” Pike said. “It’s impossible for a 10- or 12-year-old to give informed consent to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. It’s barbaric, experimenting on children. Regardless of fairness in sport, which it does not achieve because of the mini puberty that happens in utero, it’s an appalling way to treat children.”

Assuming a child has been “transitioned” at an early age, is an athlete or parent, no doubt deeply invested in erasing his sex, obligated to inform the school or sports organization of his sex? Pike said, “I don’t know the legal answer to that. Ethically, it’s straightforward. Eligibility for the female category should exclude everyone with male advantage. Males have performance advantage even before puberty, so, are ineligible, and are under an obligation to reveal the fact that they were born male. By participating in competitive sport, they are implicitly saying I will play by the rules. Fleming proceeded on the basis of false information that affects the fairness of sports. He’s playing as if he had a female history, when in fact, he has a male history. The coaches who recruited Fleming also acted wrongly, unethically, exploiting male advantage.”

Marshi Smith, co-founder of ICONS, who are funding Slusser, et al’s lawsuit, agreed sex disclosure is critical: “An athlete’s sex is not private medical information. Schools are required to know the accurate sex of each student-athlete to comply with Title IX. Without this knowledge, how can they ensure they are following the law and providing equal opportunities for female athletes ‘on the basis of sex’?”

And what about the consent or refusal of female athletes? Do high schools, clubs, and colleges have a responsibility to inform teammates and members of opposing teams of a male player? Do they have an obligation to report that to the media? ICONS co-founder Kim Jones responded: “Yes, women absolutely need to know if they are competing with or against a male player. There should be no right to obscure sex in any situation where sex is relevant, and that includes women's sports and women's spaces. There should be no right of a man to hide his sex from women, but especially not in situations involving consent or where women could be unknowingly taken advantage of on the basis of sex. This includes all situations where men could obtain physical access to vulnerable women, success and accolades due to women, or power over women by hiding their sex.

Jones continued: “The media should also know the sex of athletes competing in the women's category. The public should not be misled; sports are a public interest and publicly accessible. The public has a right to know when women and girls are being stripped of fairness and safety.”

All of the schools and clubs Fleming played for, and media who won’t name him, do so on the basis of athlete privacy. Jon Pike explained why competitive athletes give up some privacy for the sake of fair sport: “The nature of sport is voluntary. If we enter into it, we agree to play by the rules. Now, I don’t want anyone to watch me urinate, but if I’m an elite athlete, I’m subject to anti-doping. They need to make sure I’m not doping, so they send you in with a chaperone to watch you pee. An elite athlete gives up the right to privacy when he chooses to participate in competitive sport.”

Could a trans-identified male athlete on a women’s team be charged with fraud or misrepresenting himself if he does not reveal his sex? Marshi Smith replied, “While individual athletes have a responsibility not to lie about their sex, schools must also enforce stricter monitoring of sex eligibility. If associations impose severe penalties on schools for rostering male athletes in female categories, it will create greater incentive for schools to ensure compliance and protect fairness in women’s sports.”

Responding to the same question, Pike said, “That’s partly a legal question, which I can’t answer. But there are two other parts to that question—are they behaving dishonestly, and are they attempting to deceive people? And I would say, yes and yes. If Fleming said I’m a woman, I’m XX, that would be a straight lie. Instead, Fleming is saying I’m eligible to play on the female team. By not giving more information, it’s deception by omission, by allowing people to believe something that Fleming knows is false, and not giving the information people are owed by virtue of the sporting contract.”

Two boxers and the IOC created a major controversy at this past summer’s Olympics because they claimed they were eligible for the female category despite evidence that they were male. The athletes and the IOC deceived their female opponents and the public by refusing to reveal their male DSD history. At the IOC’s invitation, a group of renowned scientists suggested a return to noninvasive cheek swabs, done early in an athlete’s career. Marshi Smith commented on the need for instituting cheek swab sex screening: “A simple, inexpensive cheek swab has become necessary to determine an athlete’s sex, as we are seeing increasing instances of men and boys misrepresenting themselves and entering female competition categories—sometimes without disclosing that they only self-identify as women, but are actually male.” Kim Jones agreed: “I anticipate cheek swabs that detect the active SRY gene becoming very inexpensive and readily available soon. I would expect a cheek swab (sex verification screening) to be part of any physical for joining a middle school, high school, or collegiate team, or to be a part of any membership to an Olympic movement competitive environment. Age group competitors should not be exempt.”

Pike was undecided about use of cheek swabs at the high school level, though he is one of the signatories to the letter suggesting sex screening to the IOC. “Fleming’s junior high school, where he first presented as the opposite sex, should have said, we understand your wish for she/her pronouns, a different name, etc, but you’re not playing on the female team, rather than requiring cheek swabs. I’m not sure how I feel about mandatory cheek swabs.”

In all of those thoughts on ethics, personal responsibility, truth, honesty, and the word should are doing a lot of heavy lifting. Women should be respected as distinct but equally deserving humans.

More than anything, I find male inclusion by deception depressing, because it demonstrates that a significant portion of our society cannot manage to do that. Activists crowing that trans-identified males have been in women’s sports and spaces forever and we didn’t know it is neither the character endorsement, nor the compelling argument for inclusion they think it is. That there are men running in the women’s category of my local half-marathon without my knowledge does not excuse the lack of consent, the breaking of boundaries. Ten minutes ago, girls’ and women’s sports, women’s classes, women’s bathrooms all operated on the honor system, the key word being honor. Of course, any man could enter those spaces, and some did, but there was stigma attached to it. It was not honorable. Now, with the help of parents, gender clinics, school administrators, sports officials, puberty blockers by age 12, cross-sex hormones by 14, vaginoplasty by 18, and a raft of cowardly facilitators along the way, trans-identified males 2.0 appear quite polished. Professionally curated. A world away from Thomas’s willy. But it’s still got some bugs. A trans-identified male knows he’s still male, it’s still deceit, and it’s still not honorable.