When was the first time you felt discriminated against because you were female?

I’ve never forgotten the hollowness and the nausea of that feeling when I was turned away….or the bafflement I felt at people who would describe themselves as good people, like Mr. L., just being ok with participating in injustice and discrimination.

My brother and dad and I arrived at the school gym to register. My brother signed up, no problem. My dad turned to me and said “go ahead, honey,” and I asked the man at the table to sign me up.

My dad knew immediately what I meant. We had a talk about it, and he said that he was proud that I hadn’t let it go… that it still bothered me, because injustice SHOULD always bother you. I told him that what I didn’t expect to hurt so much was realizing that Mr. L. didn’t have any memory at all of what, to me, was so momentous and so crushing. I was upset at how casually he excluded me… that it didn’t bother him in the slightest, like it was all in a day’s work.

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He said “I’m sorry honey, but girls can’t play baseball.”

My brother played in that league for years.

The man shook his head and said “no, honey, I mean girls aren’t allowed to play baseball… but I’m sure there’s a nice girls’ softball team you could join.”

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Five years later, the league changed their rules to admit girls, and my sister joined… and made the all-star team in her first season. At the all-star game, I ran into Mr. L., the man who had turned me away years before, and I said “gee, I guess girls really CAN play baseball.” He had no idea what I was talking about and just congratulated my dad on my sister’s skills.

Even at 8 years old, that seemed both stupid and unfair to me… stupid first because girls CLEARLY are able to play baseball as I’d been doing so for years, and second, because if I’d wanted to play softball, I’d have asked to play softball. Unfair because I knew I was being fobbed off with something inferior and being treated as different and lesser simply because I was a girl, and that outraged me.

I was 8. My brother brought home a flyer from school about a baseball league, and I wanted to sign up. I didn’t realize why I didn’t get the same flyer, but my dad did, and when I said I wanted to play, my dad just said “we’ll see what they say.”

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I was furious as we left, and I stayed that way. Driving home, my father asked me if I wanted to play softball instead and I said no. I’d never liked softball anyway - the ball is too big, and hitting a softball feels flabby, like swatting a dead squirrel - but after that, I absolutely refused to accept second-best. I never did play organized ball.

I told him “yes I can… I can bat and catch and throw and I play second base when we play with our friends,” while my brother chimed in with “yeah, she does.”