Gender-equality

When Nora Beck, BC ’83, was a student at Barnard, she was a force to be reckoned with on the basketball court. The three-year captain won the respect of her teammates and the attention of women’s basketball fans across the nation, becoming the second All-American the program had ever seen. The 1983 MVP’s number, 32, was retired upon her graduation that year, and now hangs in the Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame.

Despite accounting for about 50 percent of the population, women are vastly underrepresented in the professional coaching environment. As recently as 2012, no women worked as coaches for the NBA, NFL, NHL, or MLB.

With a new generation of athletes like Ada Hegerberg, Marta Vieira da Silva, and Naomi Osaka, activism in sports has shifted in a new direction. Female athletes have risen to the front lines of many protests, ranging from struggles for equal pay in sports to police brutality and racial injustice.

On Aug. 14, Columbia revised its sexual misconduct policies in response to a number of changes to Title IX federal regulations that drastically rolled back protections for students. Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972 is a federal law that prohibits sexual discrimination—including sexual harassment and sexual violence—in federally-funded educational institutions.

At the end of last semester, I began an important step in my gender journey: I started to experiment with changing my name. It was a step I was afraid to begin, but one I knew I would eventually have to take. I have never felt a connection to my deadname and I was ready to quit being referred to by it, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to give everyone, even distant acquaintances, such a clear glimpse into my gender journey.

After most students left campus because of COVID-19, I was moved into a Carman suite where I’ve been living—mostly in isolation—ever since. It’s been a little lonely, but I’ve found an unexpected benefit from my quarantine: the confidence to plow headfirst into my long-intended gender presentation changes. I’ve been stocking up on more traditionally feminine clothing and discussing my gender plans with friends for a while at this point, but I’ve been slow to incorporate more extreme feminine fashion choices because of my mostly-imagined fear of standing out in classes and on campus.

For the past few weeks, I’ve had a constant middle school flashback replaying in my head alongside the 2012 hit song “Just Give Me a Reason” by P!nk. I don’t really know how this earworm wiggled into my head, but I think I know why the sentimental ballad has been difficult to shake: It makes me think of my mom, which is likely the last person most people would think of after hearing a romantic duet longing for a doomed relationship. Yet, the gender-affirming therapy I’ve begun at Counseling and Psychological Services has unintentionally led me to understand my relationship with my mother in terms of this modern pop song.

I first realized when I was five years old, sitting criss-crossed, holed up in my corner of a cold ABCs rug, that there was something hiding inside me, something I couldn’t hold, something I couldn’t heal with a hug. I sat with my head held up, pretending to focus as my kindergarten teacher shared with my class the primary struggles of our time: addition, subtraction, and counting to ten.