Disclaimer: I rarely write about politics. This is one of those occasions.
Sometimes I feel like what seems to be happening in our tortured politics is best symbolized by the revelation of the true meaning of sports in our (American) society, a meaning laid bare by the Great Trans Debate of the last decade, and especially exacerbated during the last few brutal years of the Identity Wars.
Sports have long been hailed as a way to build character and a collaborative mindset among children—characteristics thought to be crucial to carry into adulthood and for the continuation of a functional democratic society.
As a little kid, you are told that the winning part of sports is secondary. But past a certain age—generally whatever age comes after t-ball—you start to suspect winning might actually be the main thing. You see parents yelling at refs and each other, being disappointed in outcomes, encouraging the losers with, “You’ll do better next time”—but not better at having the fun and doing the character building you thought was the point—better at the winning stuff.
If teamwork and character were the point, trans kids (emphasis on kids) would not have been thrust into the national spotlight as yet another phony wedge to divide and conquer Americans for political gain. Legislation has been drawn up in states to ban trans kids from sports. Utah, Wyoming and Kansas—where there were a combined 5 transgender athletes—passed laws banning this clearly massive problem. Of the more than 550,000 NCAA athletes—12 are transgender. Divide. Conquer. Winner. Loser. Black. White. This. That.
Seeing youth as having an unfair competitive advantage in sports while participating for a team opposite their birth genetics seems to me to prioritize winning above all else. And that tracks, because at least as long as I’ve been alive, sports in America have never been about what they claim to be about—because what better way to build character and teamwork than to welcome to the team those who are different from you?
The true nature of sports in America is about sorting us into binary piles: the winner pile, and the loser pile. That’s why so many of us Americans don’t like soccer—because of the gray area of the tie. We cannot wrap our heads around the idea that everyone goes home a winner, or a loser, or… neither? When it comes to soccer, we’re not sure which and frankly we’re pretty pissed about it.
Speaking of, I’m not much of a soccer fan, but when FIFA’s World Cup was in America recently, and Norway’s veritable viking Erling Haaland was all the rage, there were stories exploring how such a small country—about the population of Minnesota—could produce so many world-class athletes in both winter and summer sports.
Norway’s youth sports culture, it turns out, is built on a wild ass philosophy that translates to “the joy of sport.” It’s an approach that prioritizes fun, and not only fun over winning, but just not having winning at all—there’s no scorekeeping under the age of 11. Winning isn’t discussed.
The point is to get every kid involved and help them feel like there’s a place for them. Everyone plays. Kids really do get participation trophies to encourage them to come back next season. The result: more than 90% of Norwegian kids take part in youth sports; in America it’s closer to 50%. Because when you’re a kid, it really sucks to be sorted into the loser pile (it sucks later in life too, trust me).
Instead, America has private academies, personal coaches, travel tournaments, nationally televised youth competitions, and more, all emphasizing to our youth the ultimate goal of winning.
If we are, in fact, using sports as a tool to build a society that is about more than winning, as a tool to lift up the one team that matters most—team humanity—we are screwing it up badly. Because there’s an actual issue that needs our serious attention: It’s hard being a kid.
More than 1 in 4 U.S. children ages 3 to 17 has a diagnosed mental health issue and nearly half receive no treatment as depression and attempted suicide rates outpace our nation’s mental health workforce capacity. Suicide is a leading (and growing) cause of death for kids aged 10-24, a time when we human beings are all trying to figure out who we are and become comfortable in our own skin, to varying degrees of success.
Trans kids, meanwhile, are more than four times as likely to report suicide attempts. Translation: These children are more than four times as likely to feel so bad about themselves that they believe they should die by their own hand. They don’t feel this way out of thin air. They’re paying attention, and they feel this way because of adults. This is not character building.
And so when the Minnesota Lynx played the Indiana Fever in WNBA women’s basketball recently here in Minneapolis, protests and counterprotests surrounded the game after Fever player Sophie Cunningham sparked controversy by implying young girls in locker rooms need to be protected from trans kids—despite that clearly being a total non-issue. Meanwhile, Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve came out wearing a shirt that read “Trans kids belong.” Because she understands that kids are paying attention to a lot of things adults say and do, and that affects how they feel about themselves, how they feel about team humanity.
Personally, I’ve never cared all that much for the sports industrial complex that undergirds so much of American society, dictates so many of our activities and actions from grade school all the way through to the office water cooler.
It’s hard for me to understand, because I’ve never felt like I belonged to a team, or that a certain team is “my team.” I might lean toward certain teams, but having any part of my identity tied to a particular team has rarely resonated with me.
I suspect this is because I grew up in the shadow of an older brother who was a standout athlete, and before I’d even begun I felt like I could not compete. I feared failure and lacked confidence, which eventually transferred to many areas of my life, where the long shadow of competitive sports still lingers like an encroaching shot-blocker in the background. Anyway, that’s what my therapist thinks. But that’s just my experience; for some people, sports work just fine and do what they’re supposedly designed to do.
But just in case everyone doesn’t experience the world in the same way, couldn’t we at least wait until kids are adults, and then begin to tear them down, like we do our politicians, who — I think we can agree — completely deserve it?
Leave a comment