The president and his allies have never been interested in helping or elevating female athletes. His true feelings were exposed on Sunday
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his past week Team USA won gold in both the women’s and men’s ice hockey at the Winter Olympics, presenting Donald Trump with a golden opportunity. Instead of seizing the easy political points, he embraced his chance to ingratiate himself with the boys by inviting them to the State of the Union address. He followed up his offer of a military jet shuttle to Washington DC with a lament that he would have to also invite the women’s team. It was a bit that lit up the locker room with laughter.
The women’s gold medal had been a prime opportunity for Trump to live up to his stated commitment to “protect opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports”, a claim made last February when he sought to position himself as the figure saving women’s sports. Instead, he decided to make a joke at the expense of Olympic champions.
But we shouldn’t be surprised, because Trump and his allies were never interested in boosting women’s sports. The Trump administration’s purported commitment to female athletes occupies a rather narrow lane. It is a product of the meticulously structured and audience-tested rhetoric of the “Save Women’s Sports” movement, a coordinated and well-funded right-wing campaign that marries women’s sport with its perceived negation – the threat of trans participation. On the right, female athletes are only significant in the shadow of the transgender menace. They are little more than useful pawns for a political project aimed not at advancing women’s sport but purging transgender people from public life. Instead of concentrating on important matters such as funding for women’s sports or celebrating the achievements of outstanding athletes such as the US women’s hockey team, right-wing activists and advocates have used their political and social cache to advance a purely negative political project. Women’s empowerment through exclusion and nothing else.
