Mainstream newspaper refers to male athlete as trans athlete instead of male athlete in the eleventy billionth refusal to tell the truth about this relentless cheating of female athletes.

When East Valley of Spokane runner Verónica Garcia crossed the finish line at Mount Tahoma High School after winning the Class 2A 400-meter dash on Saturday, she looked over at the scoreboard, saw her time of 55.70, and smiled. 

Ignoring the boos she heard from the crowd, Garcia took a moment to bask in her accomplishment of winning her second consecutive Class 2A 400-meter state title. 

How sweet – except for the fact that he’s a boy and it was a girls’ race.

As a transgender person, Garcia has heard the boos before. She heard them last year when she hit the straightaway on her first state title run. She heard them again on Saturday, as the crowd cheered loudly for every other runner during the medal ceremony, before boos rang out when Garcia was announced as the winner. 

But he’s not a generic “transgender person.” He’s a boy. He’s not a she, he’s a he. The boos “rang out”” (how do boos “ring”?) because he cheated a girl out of winning the race. Calling him “she” obscures that fact. Journalism should not lie about what sex people are, especially when it’s a story about a male cheating females.

While she warmed up before the race, a man near the starting blocks wearing an American flag shirt that read “Save women’s sports”  repeated “Let’s go girls!” and “girls’ race!” seemingly making sure that Garcia was within earshot. 

She heard the heckles, but the 17-year old Garcia didn’t let it negatively affect her performance. Instead, she used it as fuel. 

“I’ll be honest, I kind of expect it,” Garcia said. “But it maybe didn’t have their intended effect. It made me angry, but not angry as in, I wanted to give up, but angry as in, I’m going to push.

Isn’t that nice? Framing this story as boy cheating girls = the victim of nasty right-wing bullies, as opposed to boy cheating girls = boy cheating girls. It’s not the guy in the flag shirt who’s the bully here, it’s the boy cheating a girl out of first place.

And in conclusion:

For Garcia, who plans to study fire science and someday drive a Spokane Fire Department engine, winning the state title wasn’t just about herself.  “One of the things that Martin Luther King always pointed out is that you have to do what’s right,” Garcia said. “Even if there comes risk, you still have to do what’s right.”

And what you’re doing is wrong, you smug little toad.