This site has previously reported on the forfeits that several colleges have accepted when their women’s volleyball teams refused to play against San José State University, which has Brayden Fleming, a male player pretending to be a female going by the pseudonym of “Blaire”. The credentialed media have been trying to ignore the story to death, but my good friend and occasional blog pinch-hitter, William Teach, reported on Saturday how the Grey Lady finally said something . . . and tried to make it seem as though men males claiming to be women playing on women’s sports teams was no big deal.

How a Women’s College Volleyball Team Became the Center of the Transgender Athlete Debate

Not since the swimmer Lia Thomas has a college athlete or team put the fiercely contested issue of transgender rights in sports under such a bright spotlight.

by Juliet Macur | Thursday, November 28, 2024

On the court, they seem like any other college women’s volleyball team. At a recent game, the players moved around the court in staccato rhythm, setting and spiking the ball, springing into the air like pogo sticks to block attacking shots, all in their blue and gold uniforms of the San Jose State University Spartans.

Off the court, though, the team is trying its best not to crumble during an unexpected season of tension and tears, confusion and anger. The players are at the center of a drama playing out over one of the most explosive issues in American life: whether a transgender woman can play on a women’s sports team.

It all started in April, when a conservative website said that one of the San Jose State players was transgender, surprising some of the woman’s teammates.

We have previously noted that Mr Fleming had either already had his ‘gender reassignment’ surgery, or was amazingly skilled at maintaining his physical privacy in locker rooms and with roommates on overnight away games, because at least some of his teammates didn’t know he was male.

In the meantime, the transgender volleyball player has remained silent. Teammates other than Brooke Slusser, the co-captain plaintiff in the lawsuit, also declined requests for interviews. The New York Times is not naming the player because she has not publicly confirmed her identity and declined an interview request through a university spokeswoman.

Guffaws! “The player” has been named in public many times, by many media sources, so all that The New York Times was doing was concealing information from their readers.

The Grey Lady also used the feminine pronouns in reference to Mr Fleming.

The newspaper uses the silly formulation “assigned male at birth” that the transgender advocates and their fellow travelers like to spout. However, we have known for over a hundred years that males have XY chromosomes, while females have XX, and that the determination of sex comes from whether the sperm which fertilizes the egg carries the X or the Y chromosome. Sex is determined at conception, and simply recognized at birth.

Just think: if sex was actually “assigned” at birth, His Majesty King Henry VIII could have saved himself a lot of trouble by simply “assigning” Mary as male.

Every bird, every reptile, and every mammal has the natural ability to distinguish between males and females of their own species. Only human liberals have managed to “educate” that ability out of themselves.

Now comes the news that San José State’s women’s volleyball team lost the championship game in the Mountain West Conference, so Mr Fleming’s collegiate ‘career’ is probably over.

Trans Volleyball Star Blaire Fleming’s Collegiate Career Likely Comes to an End

by Alex Welz | First Sunday of Advent, December 1, 2024 | 10:17 AM EST

A transgender volleyball player likely played his last game on Saturday night, marking the end of a controversial collegiate stint that captured national attention.

Blaire Fleming spearheaded San Jose State’s run-up to the championship match even as teammate Brooke Slusser advanced both a Title IX complaint and a formal lawsuit against Fleming. The latter’s in-game dominance led Boise State, Utah State, Wyoming, Nevada, and Southern Utah to forfeit seven games total games throughout the season, including a tournament semifinal.

At least National Review used the proper pronouns to report on Mr Fleming, though author Alex Welz went ahead and used his faux name. If you are stymied by the magazine’s paywall, you can also read the article here.

Fleming’s recruitment also remains a fraught topic. Suspended San Jose State volleyball coach Melissa Batie-Smoose and former head coach Trent Kersten filed a lawsuit against the Mountain West for courting Fleming as a transfer recruit, offering the 6’1” star a full scholarship, allegedly with the knowledge that the athlete is a biological male.

“Prior to the 2022 season the then coach of the SJSU Team, Trent Kersten, recruited an outside hitter from Coastal Carolina University, a NCAA Division I program in Conway, South Carolina, named Blaire Fleming, who had entered the transfer portal,” the lawsuit read.

“Fleming was given a full scholarship to play for the SJSU Team. On information and belief, SJSU advised the MWC that Blaire Fleming was a trans-identifying male and would be participating in women’s volleyball on the SJSU Team.”

California remains one of 24 states that allow transgender collegiate athletes to play for teams that don’t align with their biological sex.

Those are statements from the lawsuit, but if Coach Kersten is part of the lawsuit, and states that he was aware of Mr Fleming’s ‘transgender’ status, it had better be true, or he will have gone along with filing a knowingly false claim. If the lawsuit is allowed to proceed, given that SJSU’s season is over, discovery will reveal what the Mountain West Conference knew, assuming that the documents have not already been destroyed.

This is somewhat different than the case of Will Thomas, the male swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania who decided that he was a woman named “Lia.” Mr Thomas ‘transgender’ status was publicly known, if not widely discussed before the Zippy Invitational Meet in Akron, Ohio. SJSU’s athletic department certainly knew about Mr Fleming, because, as LGBTQ Nation reported:

The player in question has been playing for three seasons now without issues with her participation. She has been compliant with NCAA requirements for testosterone levels throughout this entire period, and has never violated the requirements. There is no evidence of discrimination against cisgender female athletes due to her participation.

If Mr Fleming has been compliant with testing for testosterone levels, that means that San José State has known that he is male all along, or he wouldn’t have been tested.

More, as SJSU volleyball player stated, the university “had not warned any of its recruits that it had a transgender athlete on the team.” While Mr Fleming has the same privacy rights as any other American, not informing potential recruits that there was a man male on the team was falsifying the recruiting pitch; how many of the women signed would have chosen differently if they had been fully informed.

So, Mr Fleming is (supposedly) out of competition, though who knows: perhaps the NCAA, if they are really, really stupid about things, will give SJSU an at large bid in the tournament. But it has to be wondered: when will the next such thing occur?