Ilona Maher, a star of the USA women’s rugby team, is no stranger to sexist stereotypes. The strong, broad-shouldered woman has, like so many other female athletes before her, endured allegations that she’s a man, simply because of her physique and athletic prowess.
A video of Maher addressing this — with some poignant observations and a lot of tears — is making the rounds after she and her team won USA’s first rugby medal at the Paris Olympics.
“I get comments being called a man and being called masculine and asking if i’m on steroids,” Maher says in the video. “There will always be negative peopel out there. And they put women in a box. And they think women should be fragile and petite and quiet and meek. But that’s not the case.”
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While Maher recorded the video from before the Paris Olympics, her tears and her message ring true, pouring out again in one of her post-medal speeches.
“I want them to dream,” she said of her hopes to inspire girls to be athletes, “of being professional rugby players—professional athletes. That’s what I feel like I’m giving them. Even if this is my last rugby game, I hope that there’s space for them to grow and thrive and [that] they experience this [because] I got to.”
Maher has also issued a warning to people who might try to be mean to her or call her a man: Her posse is bigger than yours.
“I used to get those comments all the time, people being mean or calling me a man,” Maher told CNN with her bronze medal around her neck. “But now I have 2 million friends who will come after you, and take you down if you say anything mean to me. So don’t even try it, because they’re worse than you.”
It’s great to hear Maher talk about the pain of these attacks as being in her past. Yet despite the size of her following, they surely still sting. And they routinely hurt other athletes who don’t fit into society’s stereotypes of sex and gender.
These kinds of attacks are nothing new. Over the years they’ve affected both male and female athletes.
Just as Maher and other strong women are accused of being men, or automatically lesbians, men in some Olympics sports are automatically called gay. Male divers, gymnasts and figure skaters in particular face the gay monicker no matter who they are. It’s assumed by some sports fans that a male athlete in one of these more “artistic” sports must be feminine, weak and thus gay.
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We even routinely hear this refrain from many gay men. The homophobic and sexist stereotypes run deep.
While the allegations of strong female athletes being men are nothing new, much of it comes from the decades-long conversation about transgender athletes. The Olympics have been the center of a lot of this, with allegations about the Soviet Union and East Germany cheating during the Cold War, having male athletes compete in the female category.
It’s led to various kinds of tests — even parading naked women in front of judges — to determine if someone hoping to compete at the Olympics is a woman.
These kinds of attacks have ramped up over the last five years as transgender women enter the female sports category. As more and more trans women compete and win, would-be internet sleuths — and some total idiots — are now levying allegations against more and more successful female athletes.
Trans advocates have sounded this alarm for years, that once you start attacking trans athletes, you will lead to attacks on cis women in sports as well.
Some people on X are — of course — trying to turn this into some kind of party-based political rally. Sadly, attacks on female athletes and trans women have no party affiliation. Some of the people who have elevated the attacks on trans athletes in particular are both right-wing conservatives and left-wing liberals.
Some of them have even been strong female athletes who have had these very stereotypes thrown at them. During her legendary tennis career, Martina Navratilova was dogged by attacks that she was a man. Same with Olympic swimming champion Nancy Hogshead-Makar. These are both liberal women who also are leading the charge to push trans women out of female sports.
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These two women would also be the first to condemn these steretype-based attacks on Maher.
I’ve advocated for years for thoughtful conversations about the inclusion of transgender women in sports’ female category. There are reasonable arguments to be considered on every side of the conversation.
Yet it’s the ugly rhetoric — from people like Riley Gaines — that has to get out of the public discourse of this important conversation. If strong women like Olympic champion Ilona Maher are having to deal with allegations that she’s a man, the ugliness and finger-pointing have gone way too far.
