Med School (sexist) Softball!

I'm playing on the Radiation Oncology team in the Stanford Medical Center Co-Ed Softball league. It is lots of fun - I'm getting to meet many people from the medical side of the department who I haven't interacted with before. Also, I get to play softball and drink beer. It is a touch better than when I was in Junior High playing softball and drinking iced coffee. People are much nicer now than when I was in Junior High. I'm not a better softball player though. I might, in fact, be worse.

I can deal with being a bad softball player, because it is all about having fun, right? Unfortunately there is something severely limiting the fun I'm having, and it has nothing with my inability to throw/catch/hit. It turns out that the rules for Co-ed softball (which I first assumed were just for this league) are disturbingly sexist. I knew some of the "strange" rules coming in - the men and women are pitched different sized balls. But others I only learned at our first game last night. I was pretty pissed off and decided to make it a battle against the power-that-be who make the softball rules. Unfortunately, these are the "official" rules of the Amateur Softball Association. So my battle is going to be difficult.

What rules have me frustrated? Well, it is set of 'gendered' rules. I can deal with strange things like 2 strikes=out (rather than 3) since they apply to everyone. But the rules dealing with male vs female players bother me. The first set are not particularly offensive:

1. A team forfeits if it has fewer than 4 female players (regardless of the number of male players)
   
2. No more than 5 men can be playing defense. This means there must be 5 female players on the field if you have them, and you have reduced outfield if you only have 4 female players.
   
3. Men and women alternate in batting order
   

The above set seems like it is "encouraging" the participation of women. I mean, I would have guessed that from the fact it is a Co-Ed league. Though, one could guess that means male players are allowed. I still have some issues with these rules - it causes teams to value female players for their presence alone. We (and the opposing team) had to forfeit our first game because we didn't have enough female players.

When I show up, my presence is important because I get the team 25% of the way to not forfeiting. I'm not important because of my excellent (ha!) softball skills. People aren't happy because they like me and want to get to know me. They are happy because I'm female and female bodies are needed. I don't blame my team members for this - the rules are set up that way. Why is it so hard to get female players? In our case, it is because many of our female players are therapists and nurses in the department who can't leave until their patients are taken care of. (I don't understand why the male players, the majority of whom are doctors, don't have this problem).

BUT IT GETS WORSE! The above rules annoyed me, but were tolerable. The rules below paint a much different picture:

1. If you do not have enough female players to alternate them between males in batting order, the place where a woman should have been will be an automatic out.
   
2. Men and women are pitched different sized softballs.
   
3. If a male player is "walked" with no strikes, he goes to 2nd base. When a woman is walked she goes to first.
   

And perhaps there are more! The official rule is actually that a woman up to bat after a man who was walked can choose to walk as well, going to first base and the original hitter remaining on second. I don't think we play with that rule.

Taken as a whole, the assumption is that female players and bad and male players are good. The women are thrown a softball that will go farther. Pitchers are strongly discouraged from walking male batters, but only somewhat discouraged from walking female players. Is this fair? Of course not! There are female players (who are not me) who can hit very well and some male players who have never played before. If the goal is to make it more equitable for everyone, assess our skills beforehand. Hell, no 'handicaps' are assessed for race, age, height, weight, and other variables that can be perceived to correlate to someone's ability. Just sex.

And, of course, there is the big question here of 'sex' vs 'gender'. For all of the apparent effort the league is going through to welcome women, I'm sure any transgender identified person would stay away. What would the umpire do if I showed up and demanded to be treated as a male player? After all, they didn't check ID or chromosomes. If my team had 'enough' female players and I knew them better, I would possibly try it. After all, what is the difference between being the worst female player on the team and the worst male player on the team?

I anticipate it would be very different if one of the 'male' players wanted to be treated as a female player. One situation would be a male-bodied person who is in the process of transitioning in her life. Another would be a guy in a wig 'goofing around'. In the second case everyone would probably say no since it would give that person's team an 'unfair advantage'. What about in the first case? I could imagine the team being very supportive and understanding her identity, regardless of her appearance. What about the umpire and opposing team? Would it 'just' be awkward comments/questions, or would it become an unwelcoming environment?

Any activity that enforces the gender binary is going to be a difficult place for transgender people. But not only is this enforcing a gender binary, it is also basing rules on stereotypes about athletic performance corresponding to gender. It is the most egregious case of institutionalized sexism I have faced since working in physics labs where there were only men's restrooms in the experimental buildings. I know I'm not the only person playing who has an issue with it. I just don't know if the person running the league would consider splitting from the "official" rules of co-ed softball.