Tales From A Young Female Athlete

When I was younger my mom put me in figure skating (she also put my big brother in figure skating and I believe there's a home video somewhere of him skating around in a dog costume doing the macarena...). I rocked that (read: sucked at it) for a couple of years and then demanded to play hockey like my daddy and brothers. I believe that this may be one of the proudest moments for my dad. Aside from a minor altercation with using a male cup for my female parts and it hurting like a bitch for the first few practices, I transitioned pretty easily. I got myself a sassy lady-cup and played with the boys.

First photo that shows up on Google Image
when you type in: Sporty Girl
I believe this is the standard football uniform?  

It helped, of course, to have my dad coach me for the first few years. I never fully appreciated the difficult choice he made. He had two sons who were good enough to compete at AAA levels and he gave up the chance to coach them so that he could help his daughter transition to a male dominated sport. I was the only girl on my team for the first 3 or 4 years and he treated me just like one of the guys, which is exactly what I wanted. My least favorite moments in hockey were when the other coaches did something that highlighted the fact that I was a girl. It made me feel completely isolated. Sometimes they'd talk slower to me, as if I couldn't understand a concept because I had a vagina, or they'd give me special treatment which was even worse. If I was actually horrible at the sport that would be one thing but I could hold my own out there. It was just demeaning to have to put up with these men who saw me as different even though my only marker as a girl was a tiny blonde ponytail poking out of my helmet.

What gorgeous...sports

I think that being all geared up did help because other than that ponytail I didn't look any different than the boys in grade 3. Overall my memories of early hockey playing were positive. But when I joined lacrosse in middle school I had an entirely negative experience. In true sister fashion, I wanted to play lacrosse because my brothers were getting into it. They'd play in the yard and I would want to join in and then I decided I wanted to be on a team. I had parents who let me try anything I expressed a sincere interest in, so off I went to my first lacrosse practice. What I encountered was a team of pre-pubescent boys who had never played with a girl, only this time I couldn't hide my girlishness behind pounds of gear. With just shorts and a jersey, I set out. At first I didn't even consider this - I'd played sports my whole life and had never run into any issues. I sailed in a bathing suit and played soccer in shorts, but with sailing it was usually with my female best friend (where we had some of our most epic fights, confined to a very small boat) and with soccer I was on an all-girls team.

Couture Soccer 

It was when we got into a circle to stretch that I experienced some of the deepest shame in my life. I was doing the crouch with one leg out to the side, and I noticed that two of the boys beside me were staring up my shorts - and they could see everything. I hadn't realized that my loose shorts - just like what the boys had on - would cause a problem but those boys just stared and stared. I was looking back at them, trying to force eye contact and they just wouldn't look up. It was humiliating. Should I stop the stretch? Should I run away? Then I realized I still needed to stretch out my other leg. I switched sides gratefully, only to see that the boys signaled the group of boys on the other side. I spent that practice knowing that almost half the team had seen a part of me that no one else had ever seen. I was ten years old.

I stuck to it for a little longer and then begged to quit. Even at that age I knew that the dynamic on the team had completely changed. None of those boys ever did look me in the eye. I had been branded "just a girl" from that very first practice. To this day I can still remember their faces, totally unashamed. I couldn't believe they had the confidence to just stare at me like that. A statistic came out recently in a commercial saying that by age 14 girls are dropping out of sports at twice the rate of boys. We're bombarded with images of what women should look like, and none of those images show a girl with dirt on cheeks and sweat on her brow. Another statistic provided by Dove researchers states that 6 out of 10 girls will quit a sport because of how they feel about their looks. That's some heady stuff, knowing that girls are becoming aware of their bodies in a negative way at an earlier and earlier age. But why?

The way I felt about my looks and my place on the team was altered almost completely because of those boys. I wish I could go back and find out why they weren't embarrassed or ashamed of themselves, why they thought their behaviour was acceptable. When we have conversations about why girls quit sports, I don't think that all the emphasis should be placed on the media or their self-esteem. I understand that there's a gendered focus but there needs to be discussion about young boys too. I was sexualized by my teammates before I fully understood what sex even was. There was never an attempt to include me or befriend me. My dad coaching me in hockey was probably the biggest reason I stayed, and I can't imagine how hard he worked to make sure I felt accepted. When I started out in lacrosse I was benched during games by the coaches, ogled by my teammates and felt forced to quit by my resulting insecurities. Maybe there should be training sessions so that coaches don't remain ignorant. Maybe parents should remind their sons that girls are capable of not only keeping up but also whooping their asses from time to time. Maybe boys should be held responsible for isolating their female teammates.

Imagine if my lacrosse coaches had "manned up" for me? I may have stuck with it, and instead I'm just writing a blog about it.

Baseline: Believe.

I've been looking back at the amazing support I've gotten from my family, friends, colleagues and coworkers after someone tried to break into my apartment last Tuesday. I was going over the details in my mind, and I started to think about how lucky I was in the way I was treated post-event. Let's review the facts together.

1. No one blamed me for having transparent curtains. No one told me that maybe I could have prevented the whole thing by having solid curtains, that maybe the guy felt welcomed by the curtains and it was partially my fault.

2. No one questioned my story. Why on earth would anyone make up a story about a person trying to get through her fire escape at 3:30 in the morning? That's just ridiculous...it's extremely rare for any crime to be falsely reported.

3. No one asked if maybe I had actually invited the guy inside and just regretted it afterwards. Perhaps I'd been sleeping provocatively? Perhaps having a night light on was like a signal that I wanted someone to try to enter my home? But no, that's foolish, obviously. 

4. No one told me I should consider his side of the story, that maybe he made an honest mistake and there were some mixed messages about whether or not he could break into my apartment.

5. No one asked me what kind of pajamas I was wearing, or if I'd consumed any alcohol before going to bed. It was very clear that this was not relevant to whether or not someone was trying to get inside my home. Why on earth would that make a difference? After all, someone was committing a crime. The circumstances of my attire or sobriety aren't relevant.

6. No one tried to defend the actions of the guy. No one said he had a right to come in, no one implied that I should have somehow prevented this, or that it wasn't that big of a deal. No one said "boys will be boys".

Are you hearing me? No one said I was "asking for it". No one told me to "be more careful". No one told me to change my life to prevent this sort of thing. Why the hell are we doing this to rape victims? If I had been wasted out of my mind and had passed out naked in bed, would that have been reason enough for someone to break into my apartment? Of course not. Yet every day it's used as justification for rape. And I do mean that literally. Every. Day. 

I don't know how, as a culture, we decided that women are extremely likely to falsify a report of sexual assault but the fact is that false reporting is extremely rare. Even when analyzing false report data on sexual assault we can see that many victims withdrew their claims due to fear, intimidation, or simply trying to forget it or put it behind them (a common stage in recovery from sexual assault). I cannot say this enough: Leave the judgment to the court systems, the police and the lawyers. Baseline: Believe. Do you hear me? That's all you have to do. Extend that courtesy to anyone you know who says that they've been sexually assaulted. No one bat an eye at my claim that someone tried to break in. No one questioned my story. Do not question theirs. It's much harder to come forward about a sexual assault than my situation, so imagine the strength that person has to even tell their story to a single person. Baseline: Believe. That is all I ask.