Love reigns supreme as Californian surf contest ordered to include transgender surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson in women’s division

"You can't cherry-pick the rulebook. If you're going to use the rulebook, you use all of it."

Two weeks ago, the founder of American Longboarding Todd Messick got himself a little heat, and plenty of support truth be told, when he said no to inspirational T-Girl Sasha Jane Lowerson competing at the Huntington Beach Longboard Pro.

In a message posted to X, Messick said:

“It was brought to my attention yesterday that there’s a transgender athlete that’s entered into the women’s division and it threw me completely off guard. I didn’t realize I was going to have to address this just this soon, only into our second contest. But I do want to make clear that our policy is very much in line with the ISA. You’re welcome to go online, I’m going to post some things there, but right now we’re going to support biological males and biological females in their divisions respectively. If you were born a female, you enter in the women’s. If you’re born a male, you enter in the men’s.

“You guys can live however and whatever you want to do in life. That’s not for me to decide, but it is for me to decide what’s fair and not fair for the American Longboarding Association. So, that being said, we’re going to stick to our guns. I want to offer an equal playing field for all athletes and that’s the stand we’re taking so I hope that everybody respects that and allows us to just do our thing. This whole thing is about traditional longboard surfing and supporting that so that’s what we’re here to do.”

“It’s really this simple,” said the skateboarder Taylor Silverman, who ain’t into T-Girls in women’s sports. “Contest organizers just say no. Within one day of being made aware of this nonsense it was announced it would not be tolerated. This is the way. This is the future. This is the return to normalcy and sanity.”

Now, Messick’s dream of only allowing biological gals to compete against each other has evaporated after The California Coastal Commission ruled surf competitions could “not discriminate based on gender”.

“I was really disappointed and surprised [by the decision not to allow T-Girls into the contest”,” Sasha Jane Lowerson, a robust forty-seven-year-old strawberry blonde with terrific arms who blossomed into chemical-induced womanhood in 2020, told the BBC. “You can’t cherry-pick the rulebook. If you’re going to use the rulebook, you use all of it.”

One year ago, the World Surf League opened the door for transgender women to compete at the highest level despite Kelly Slater arguing for a “trans-only division.

A few caveats.

You had to’ve been a gal for at least twelve months and your male hormone levels gotta be real low ie less than 5 nanomoles per liter continuously for the previous 12 months (biological men hover between 10 and 35, bio-gals under three), although the WSL said it wasn’t testing, instead relying on each athlete to supply their own supporting documents.

Messick says he was “surprised by the anger” following his post but also, “What I found too is that there was a lot of people very appreciative of me speaking up. For me, I was trying to do the right thing. It wasn’t something I ever expected to have to deal with really, not in our little longboard community.”