Why hockey needs a gender-identity policy in locker rooms

I was around 11 when my hockey coach suggested I might be more comfortable getting dressed for games in a separate change room, as I was the only girl on a team of all boys. I liked the idea, so I decided to migrate to a smaller, private room down the hall. Though I would miss talking to my teammates in the locker room post game, I wouldn’t miss smelling them. I also wouldn’t miss having to duck into the bathroom stall to change my bra, or look the other way when the guys changed out of their long underwear. On account of something called puberty, things had begun to get awkward in the dressing room. This type of separation, then, was fine by me and, I’m sure, fine by my male teammates.

It wasn’t fine, however, in the case of Jesse Thompson, a transgender teen from Oshawa who filed a human rights complaint against Hockey Canada in 2013 after an outdated policy prohibited him from changing in the same room as his all-male team.

Thompson argued that he had every right to get dressed in the same room as his teammates. The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal appears to have agreed with him. As a direct result of Thompson’s complaint, trans kids who play within the Ontario Hockey Federation (OHF), an umbrella organization of Hockey Canada, are now allowed to dress in whatever change room aligns with their gender identity.

But not only can they dress where they belong, this coming hockey season, volunteer coaches within the organization will be required to engage players in a discussion about gender identity, pronouns and discrimination. In fact, the OHF recently provided coaches with an educational checklist (authored by human rights organization Egale) that includes guidelines for addressing these issues. Guidelines such as:

“Explain that the standard of respect in hockey means that it is everyone’s right to be respected and treated equally and to enjoy an environment at hockey that is free from discrimination and harassment.”

“Explain that it is important to ask for and share gender pronouns, just like names, because it is not something you can always tell just by looking at someone. Tell players that it is OK to make mistakes but that it is important to show that they are trying to remember by simply apologizing and correcting themselves if they do slip up.”

In other words, a whole lot of Ontario kids will very soon learn from unpaid hockey coaches the kinds of things they no longer learn (as a result of the Conservative government’s sex-ed repeal) at school from paid teaching professionals. Who knew Doug Ford’s Ontario would include gender diversity forums in sports locker rooms. Wild.

Canadian hockey players typically don’t break out into dance when they score goals. When an opponent is injured but manages to limp to the bench, they tap their sticks on the ice in solidarity. When there’s a tragedy in the community, they show up and lend their support.

But hockey players do something else frequently, too. They call each other a myriad of homophobic slurs, “fag” and “pansy” among them. Homophobic slurs are not an anomaly on the ice; they are very much the norm. Andrea Barone, the only openly gay ref in professional hockey, told the CBC in 2016 that not only does he hear these slurs regularly, but “it’s just one of those things that gets labelled as part of the game.”

Until this attitude changes, locker room discussions like the kind instituted by the OHF are absolutely necessary.

When I was asked to start dressing in a separate room as a kid, I didn’t feel angry or excluded because my coaches made sure I was present at team events and postgame meetings. But not all coaches are made equal. Not all parents are made equal. That’s what this policy accounts for. It’s a safeguard against crappy leadership: a direct message to everyone in the dressing room that the official team position is one of acceptance.

Of course, some kids will laugh or roll their eyes when their coaches run through the seemingly never-ending list of gender pronouns. But everyone will be better off for it — and a few kids, by a lot.