By Jackson Hare, Campus News Editor

This week, spring intramural sports are beginning, and I couldn’t be more excited to play with my team of friends. However, my enjoyment is tainted by the gendered rules that rely on archaic sexist and queerphobic justifications.

I have played intramural sand volleyball since my first year at Xavier, and I have always appreciated playing the sport and playing low stakes games with my friends. However, I have played a number of games that were particularly frustrating.

It is currently required that you have an equal number of guys and girls on the court in order to play with the full four-person team.

As a result, I have played several games where we were forced to play down a player or two, which often made the game miserable for both teams. 

Essentially, it ended up being that the other team just served until the game was over, because our team was unable to return the ball due to the lack of people on the court. Our team grew frustrated and embarrassed, and I can only imagine the other team was bored and felt their time was wasted.

There are several issues with this rule. First, it is inherently sexist. The rule in the handbook reads, “In all matches, a team shall be composed of two men and two women. Up to four women may be played, while up to two men may be played. Teams may play with two men and zero women, or four women and zero men.”

This rule relies on the fact that men have some physical advantage over women, saying that the athletic ability of four women equates to the ability of two men. This is an absurd notion, nevermind the fact that we are talking about volleyball, a sport predominantly played by women.

Now, of course people can cite averages across each gender and say that on average men are taller and so on. However, if you look at that data, you will find that not only is the average height of men only a mere dozen centimeters taller, but there is also significantly high variability. This is to say, this rule is grounded more in the patriarchal perception that men are stronger than women, rather than the data.

Additionally, unfair physical advantages are not purely related to sex. I have a hard time thinking my 5’8” self could even constitute a competition were I to play one-on-one basketball with anyone on the Xavier basketball team. Yet, this rule would have you believe I have the same ability as them just because I identify as a man.

On that point, this rule is also exclusionary towards queer students who might wish to participate, particularly trans or non-binary students. By creating a binary rule, delineating team composition requirements for only men and women, you neglect the existence of students who identify as neither.

This would force them to sacrifice their gender identity and conform to the binary requirements of the sport guidelines in order to participate.

Moreover, were it the case that someone who is non-binary decides to play, the enforcement of this sex-based rule would discriminate against them. Even worse, it would be the student referees who are doing it and not because they are queerphobic, but because they are being told to enforce rules that are.

I have been told that, were this the case, this could just be communicated to the refs and the problem would be resolved, but this puts undue burden on the non-binary student to disclose their identity and to identify themselves as an outlier; an exception to this rule, in order to participate. This is a form of othering that forces queer people into an uncomfortable and potentially unsafe situation, and it requires that a queer person be comfortable being out in order to participate like any other student.

Now, I have brought up this issue once before and discussed a solution with intramural faculty last year, and their solution, to my knowledge, was to create an open league that does not have these gendered rules.

While I appreciate the attempt, it is not a satisfactory solution and it continues to do harm. Yes, you have now provided a league that queer people can feel safe participating in, however, this league does not participate in the intramural playoffs. So, you still exclude them from competing in a meaningful way. It’s a classic trope. Make the minority feel included, but still effectively exclude them from meaningful participation.