Skateboarding, an American original art form and sport, has always had a dual nature. While representing the unconventional, the punk rock, and the outsider, it has also been a boys’ club.
That is starting to change, as more gay, lesbian, nonbinary, and transgender people are taking up riding. A recent article on the Cut website celebrated “the trans skaters of America’s growing queer skate scene.” One of them, New York model Efron Danzig, goes to skate parks but is “usually confronted with a bunch of guys,” he told the outlet.
“I’m put off by the skate community,” Danzig said. “But I’ll skate for as long as my body allows because I wake up and want to skate every day.”
As a lifelong skateboarder, I have no problem with new kinds of people getting up to ride. In fact, skateboarding is such a healthy and rejuvenating activity that I think the more young people do it, the more we will help the youth mental health crisis.
I only have a couple of stipulations. One, the skateboarding community should not in any way encourage anyone below the age of 18 to sexually transition. More and more evidence is emerging that gender-reassignment surgery is butchery that causes lifelong problems.
Secondly: Don’t let boys compete with girls in skateboarding contests.
Female skateboarder Taylor Silverman, the host of the YouTube show Boonies HQ, has competed against biological males three times in skateboarding contests. In two of the three competitions, she came in second, losing to a biological male who claimed to be a “trans woman.” Silverman has been a vocal critic of the unfairness of this, including the prize money she has lost out on.
Recently, Silverman criticized the National Organization of Women, which claimed that reluctance to let transgender women compete in sports is “white supremacy.” Silverman told Fox News, “I take the National Organization for Women claiming that fairness in women’s sports is white supremacy about as seriously as I take them claiming men can be women. They are blinded by this lie and desperate to scare people into silence. Men in women’s sports impacts all women, including minorities that the National Organization for Women seemingly want to erase to push their ridiculous narrative.”
As I said, skateboarding has always been an activity of the independent-minded and the outsider. But it has also been an activity infused with a strong sense of honor. Whereas in group sports, an athlete may be able to fudge a little bit, slacking to let teammates do some of the heavy lifting, in skateboarding, it’s just you, your board, and the hill. You can’t fake it — either you nail it or you don’t.
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Riders who lie, exaggerate, are unfair, or are otherwise deceptive are seen as dishonorable. In his book The Most Fun Thing: Dispatches from a Skateboarding Life, veteran skateboarder Kyle Beschy offers the following: “How many of us, I wonder, are lucky enough or doomed enough to have a force such as this in our lives? A practice, I mean, a pursuit or activity, an entity, in reality, any kind of thing whatsoever, that we fear or respect enough that we will not lie to it, or try to trick it, or approach it with anything less than total candor? A thing that we know can see through us.”
Not many. For the honor and honesty of “the most fun thing” we love, keep the competitions clean and honest. And give Silverman the first-place prize money she deserves.
Mark Judge is an award-winning journalist and the author of The Devil’s Triangle: Mark Judge vs. the New American Stasi. He is also the author of God and Man at Georgetown Prep, Damn Senators, and A Tremor of Bliss.