07/02/2026
To our trans community: you belong. In sports and everywhere else.
Pioneer Valley Roller Derby is proud to have been a leader in gender inclusion from our very beginning 20 years ago. We believe everyone should have access to supportive, affirming athletic community, and that everyone should be able to be their full selves in all the places they call home. Our team is stronger for having people of all genders and no genders on it.
We also affirm that policing who is “woman enough” to play women’s sports has a long history intertwined with racism, body shaming, homophobia, and intersex exclusion. For generations, Black women athletes like Serena Williams and Brittney Griner have had their womanhood questioned when they were a little too successful for the liking of white America. Women athletes are all too often forced to present in stereotypically feminine ways so that they aren’t perceived as too masculine (i.e., q***r). For more than 30 years, women Olympians were required to undergo a chromosome test (or worse) and carry a card that said “I am female” in order to compete, and women with intersex conditions are now required to artificially lower their testosterone levels far below the natural bell curve for cis women. Creating more room to challenge women who are too masculine, too tall, too muscular, too Black, too successful doesn’t just hurt trans women.
If even a fraction of those who are currently arguing to exclude trans girls and women from sports actually cared about women’s sports, women’s sports would be fully funded and women pro athletes would be paid the same as men. This has never been about women’s sports, and it has never even been about the single-digit numbers of elite trans women athletes in the country. It’s about political power.
We stand and roll with our trans teammates and with trans people everywhere. ✊ 🩷🤍🩵 ✊
