USA Hockey reluctantly protected women's hockey. Some women's leagues are livid

I published the first article about men in the Women’s Hockey Association of Minnesota, It’s a WHAM Shame, on November 5, 2025. WHAM has always defended their betrayal of women by saying they’re just following USA Hockey’s policies that allowed men in women’s hockey at the recreational level. That policy, instituted in 2019, made perfectly clear from the first mendacious words that USA Hockey was all in on including “transgender athletes,” i.e. men. Women were never mentioned:

USA Hockey supports diversity and inclusion in all aspects of hockey. The purpose of this policy is to provide transgender hockey athletes an avenue to participate in recreational and competitive ice hockey in an inclusive sporting environment where people of all backgrounds can contribute and play ice hockey, and to do so in a fair and safe manner. USA Hockey’s goal is to allow all athletes access to ice hockey in a healthy and respectful environment. This policy is based on USA Hockey’s belief that recreational ice hockey should incorporate an inclusive policy that focuses on allowing athletes to participate on a team that is consistent with their gender identity. Application of the policy to competitive ice hockey includes requirements to help maintain a fair and safe environment.

Just ten days after I published that article, USA Hockey very quietly changed that policy to restrict women’s hockey to females “assigned at birth” and further, to females who have not “undergone hormone therapy,” i.e. taken testosterone. This policy takes effect April 1, 2026. First and last, I want to congratulate USA Hockey for restricting women’s hockey to females who are not doping, at all levels.

HOWEVER, because I am a jaded battle axe who’s lived through lots of moments when women appear to be almost human beings, USA Hockey’s woman-recognizing has an ice rink’s chance in March of being permanent. Let’s look at the circumstances and the wording of this policy change. And then further down, we’ll look at the “unique” culture in women’s hockey that has historically supported the erasure of their own sport, violently silenced any woman for voicing the tiniest support for female sports, and, more recently, has lost their collective minds now that women’s hockey is for women.

The Policy Change

It was the best kept secret in sports. No press release. No announcement. In fact, I couldn’t find the new policy on USA Hockey’s website at all. A Google search only turns up the new policy on sports news sites. USA Hockey obviously didn’t want to restrict women’s hockey to females, and once forced to, did everything they could to bury news of that policy shift. You will never find a more forced, less enthusiastic, carefully worded hostage letter in your life:

The USA Hockey Board of Directors adopts this Participant Eligibility Policy following directives from the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (“USOPC”) whereby the USOPC requires that each sport’s national governing body (“NGB”) must update and adopt their own policies to follow federal guidance. USA Hockey is committed to protecting opportunities for athletes participating in sport. USA Hockey will continue to collaborate with various stakeholders with oversight responsibilities, e.g., USOPC, IOC, IPC, NGBs, to ensure that women have a fair and safe competition environment consistent with Executive Order 14201 and the Ted Stevens Olympic & Amateur Sports Act, 36 U.S.C. § 22501, et. Seq. The USOPC has advised that the NGB policy must apply in all aspects of the NGB’s programs.

My goodness, the gun-at-their-head, under-extreme-duress language here is eye-wateringly misogynistic—this decision was made under threat of losing funding and NGB status, had nothing to do with recognizing the rights of women as a separate sex class or preserving the integrity of women’s hockey, and has all the staying power of Trump’s attention span. Compare the stilted, gritted teeth language in this women-centered policy with the florid enthusiasm USA Hockey expressed for its belief, its absolute commitment to “inclusion” of males in their previous policy. My god, the previous was a weepy-eyed manifesto of men’s rights. This new policy is called the “Participant” Eligibility Policy—could not even use the word “woman” in the title. Right off the bat and repeatedly, USA Hockey points out that they’re just following directives, that they “must” and “are required” to recognize women’s sex-based rights and reality, and, much as they would like to continue to screw over women at the recreational level, nope, this outrage—women’s hockey for women only—applies to all levels. They blame the radical idea of women having a fair and safe competition environment on Executive Order 14201, but delicately declined to spell out the name of that order: Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports. Puts too fine a point on it. The message between the lines could not be more clear—just as soon as Trump and the 2028 Olympics are in the rearview mirror, this female-only BS is history.

Which brings us to the reaction from women’s hockey over USA Hockey’s assurance of fairness and opportunity from women…

What the Heck is With Women’s Hockey?

I admit I’m in a biological reality bubble, and I accept that Helen Joyce and Ross Tucker are not known entities to the vast majority of Americans, but man, I was not ready for WHAM. The men of WHAM, yes, but not the women of WHAM. Walking into that locker room of mostly middle-aged women in various states of undress, and asking how they felt about the fact that WHAM allowed males in their women’s hockey league—I was stunned when, after a brief uncomfortable silence, not once but twice, in two different locker rooms, one woman spoke loudly and proudly that a trans woman is a woman and she welcomed anyone who identified as a woman to play in WHAM. There was a lot of looking around for confirmation and head nodding, and some deer-in-the-headlights looks that I recognize as fear of wrongthink, but no one else contradicted this bizarrely self-loathing statement. These particular teams of sports-bra-and-undie-clad women did not have a man on their roster, but if they had, he would also have been welcome in that space. And, welcome sister with the mister, that would have been just fine with these middle aged women??!! I was so slow-witted I could not think to ask the obvious follow-up: If WHAM accepts males, why have a women’s league?

First, hockey insiders tell me that the women who loudly support men in women’s hockey are a very vocal, and frankly unhinged, minority. And many have never touched the ice, as in, keyboard activists rather than athletes. WHAM has not come out with an official statement about USA Hockey’s new policy, but they have in the past supported males in the league both on social media and privately, and also tacitly allow women who are using testosterone to play. Seattle Women’s Hockey Club immediately and vehemently stood firmly against any effort to exclude males from their club. There was discussion about dissociating from USA Hockey and forming their own “inclusive” league.

Of course, women’s professional hockey has already tried that. Because this bizarrely self-loathing, anti-woman culture has been around for a long time. In 2015, the National Women’s Hockey League formed in the U.S. and Canada, but in 2021 the name was changed to Premier Hockey Federation. See what’s been removed? The word Women’s. And that was purposeful. To be more “inclusive,” the PHF allowed men who self-ID’d as women with NO testosterone suppression as long as these men had “lived as a woman” for two years. The Federation also welcomed women who were doped on testosterone. The PHF ceased operation in 2023, but was bought by Billie Jean King’s company and started up again under the name Professional Women’s Hockey League. Different names, same strange counterproductive culture: A professional women’s team that violently shuts down even a whisper of support for women’s-only sports.

Example A: Minnesota Frost player and upcoming Olympian Britta Curl-Salemme is “the most hated woman in the PWHL,” according to a recent New York Times article. Her crime? In 2023, she liked a tweet by Canadian Olympic hockey players Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux, and replied:

“Females protecting female players on the female players association board? Thank you (Lamoureux twins).”

For this, Curl-Salemme is still, three years later, groveling in apology for the “harm” that social media post caused the LGBTQ+ community. Even though she is liked and respected by most other players, frothing mad activist fans boo her every time she touches the puck. Because she liked a tweet that celebrated women’s sports. THREE YEARS AGO. These same unhinged critics erupted in anger when she received a two-year contract extension. The New York Times wrote in their biased piece of crap that falsely stated there was no evidence “trans women” had advantage,

“Understanding that harm, Curl-Salemme said, is part of the internal work she’s been doing over the 19 months since coming under fire. She said she has had many conversations with teammates who offered different perspectives, and has become more understanding and empathetic, particularly to the lived experience of trans people and members of the LGBTQ+ community.”

I encourage you to read the paper of note’s long, biased, and factually inaccurate struggle session to get a feel for the demented, spittle-flecked, anti-woman culture of women’s hockey. And know that no other professional athlete would have agreed to such an antagonistic interview—only a female hockey player who spoke up for females. I’m thinking of the many many fawning interviews with men who are objectively cheating, stealing women’s opportunities and awards, committing sexual harassment, while the interviewer nods along, and notes how much bigotry and hate the marginalized man is enduring.

The trans hockey player getting the most media attention is trans-identified female Harrison Browne, who wrote a book called Let Us Play, in which she spends several hundred pages not answering why she quit hockey when she started taking testosterone rather than playing in alignment with her identity, on the men’s team. Trans men are men, right? It might have something to do with the fact that Browne is 5’4”. Continuing on her campaign of self owns, Browne took to Instagram to bemoan USA Hockey’s decision to prevent doped women from playing:

I was upset and wanted to do more research and realized that this policy also bars myself and other transmen from playing on women’s beer league teams if we’ve undergone hormone therapy. It’s no surprise that men’s hockey is not a safe environment for gender non-conforming individuals and the women’s side is often the only place for most queer people to play. Barring trans individuals from these spaces essentially bars us from hockey. Horrible.

Men’s hockey is a violent and unsafe environment so men (those same violent individuals) who claim to be women and doped women should play in the women’s league. Because women’s safety and fairness is not important. The lack of self-awareness is startling.

What the holy heck is with women’s hockey? This culture of misogyny and self-loathing and rabid thought policing among women is…insane.

I have a few theories, not wholly Sarah Science. Hear me out.

Internalized misogyny. Hockey is and has always been a male dominated sport characterized by aggressiveness and violence. Along with MMA, the poster sport of toxic masculinity. Women who take up this male sport feel obliged to adopt male behavior—aggression, willingness to take hits, accepting physical risk. But along with the aggressively male culture of hockey is contempt for women and feminine men—misogyny and homophobia are endemic in men’s hockey. That’s not just Sarah Science, there’s robust evidence. Women’s hockey is not dominant enough to create its own culture, it has just appropriated men’s, misogyny and all. Standing up for women’s rights is for pussies.

Lots of lesbians=automatic support for the whole alphabet. Women’s hockey has always had lots of lesbian players. This is not inconsistent with the fact that men’s hockey is notoriously homophobic—hockey in general rejects the feminine. Women’s hockey has been very accepting of lesbians, queer women, women who identify as men, gender nonconforming women, in part because they aren’t stereotypically feminine. And they’re in a sport that rewards stereotypically masculine behavior. Call it tribalism or blind allegiance to the whole LGBTQ+ group, disparate as those identities are—support for trans identified men by lesbians, despite the erasure of the meaning of being lesbian, is a knee-jerk response by some.

The rabid true believers. Mantra-intoning, unquestioning, TWAW pentecostals. As Kelley Grotting, a WHAM player who suffered the fanaticism of this group when she spoke up for women’s hockey, told me, most of these hardcore spewers have never stepped on the ice. Like all religious zealots, anything short of complete compliance with their creed is apostasy and must be brutally stamped out. These are the lovely folkx filling comment sections with rape threats, or long lists of not-quite-third-grade-level names.

Hormone treatment, or something=not really male. When I talked at greater length to WHAM players, many women parrot what they’ve read in mainstream media—that hormone therapy eliminates male advantage, or even puts men who’ve suppressed their testosterone at a disadvantage compared to women. Or maybe a man who claimed to be a woman was not really male. Maybe there was something to the born -in-the-wrong-body idea. These women probably did not believe me when I said that the theory of testosterone reduction had been utterly debunked (because: New York Times vs me), and were unaware that WHAM had no hormone requirement. So, a mixture of not knowing too much about gender identity, not wanting to know too much about gender identity, and general ignorance of the fact that their rights as women have been quietly removed. Not thinking about it too hard, these women could accept that the men playing in women’s hockey were somehow not really men. Whatever, they just wanted to play hockey.

Be Kind. Even badass women that play hockey are not immune to the potent idea that if they don’t let poor distressed marginalized men play in the women’s league, they’re genociding them. Or not wanting them to exist. And thus, are bad, hateful people. Women, especially women who are playing rec league hockey, have years of experience putting others’ feelings and needs before their own. Many are moms, grandmothers. Enough said. And they’re realists—of course this is no big deal. It’s rec league hockey.

USA Hockey is doing the right thing for the wrong reason which they will almost certainly undo at the first opportunity, and a bunch of women are screaming bloody murder that men are, for the time being, kept out of their sport. Hockey, of all sports, where the physical risk and advantage of a bigger, stronger, faster male body are so blindingly obvious—it defies reason that even a few women would support the inclusion of males, to say nothing of representing the dominant culture of the sport.

I can’t explain it. I don’t understand it, and I realize it’s not a monolith. I’m just holding women’s hockey up—from USA Hockey to PWHL to WHAM to fans—as a bizarre artifact of our world.