March marks the 31st version of Women’s History Month, and like Black History Month, sports is increasingly part of that celebro-conversation. For every Paul Robeson or Jackie Robinson, there is a Babe Didrikson Zaharias or a Wilma Rudolph. For every Muhammad Ali, there is a Billie Jean King. For every Tommie Smith and John Carlos there is a Peter Norman. For every Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, there is Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Pat Summitt.
And for every LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick and Carmelo Anthony, there is Venus and Serena Williams and Megan Rapinoe and Breanna Stewart.
And we have for space and time reasons omitted hundreds of others.
But celebrating the past while forgetting the future is a dangerous pastime, because the future is merely now before we know it is. And the future for women in sports is radically different and differently radical than at any moment in the rearview mirror.
Not because celebrating women and their accomplishments is passé, mind you, but because what comes next will determine how much more there will be to celebrate.
The topic of women in sports changed the moment rhythmic gymnast Rachael Denhollander and a group of other women filed suit against U.S. Gymnastics trainer Dr. Larry Nassar citing years of sexual abuse as well as a systematic attempt to discourage the women from fighting back. It was the day that the discussion of women in sports moved forever from the right to play and to the right to defend and be defended from a system that actively connived to make them prey and keep them vulnerable.
The transition closely traces that of black athletes who chose to shatter the Stick To Sports wall around them in the wake of a series of police shootings of unarmed black men and women across the country, and represents a change in why women in sports should be celebrated.
Specifically, so that they can feel freer to speak out against the injustices visited upon them and their colleagues throughout history. Indeed, Denhollander and Aly Raisman and Jessica Howard and the other 150-some-odd women who filed suit and spoke out against Nassar at his sentencing hearings found not only their voices but those of the women who told the Orange County Register of similar abuses in the U.S. swimming program, and ultimately led to a series of resignations of powerful people who defended the status quo by protecting predators such as Nassar, going all the way to the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Scott Blackmun, who resigned Wednesday.
Many women have spoken out against the status quo in American sport before, to the ultimate benefit of women everywhere, and they should be remembered and celebrated with the same pride of ownership we have belatedly conferred upon Robinson and Ali and Russell and Abdul-Jabbar, et. al.
But the future demands more voices, and more action, and more resistance, so that Rudolph and King and Summitt and Williams and Stewart and the hundreds of others can be joined by thousands more, not only to commemorate what has been done but to forge the path to what must follow.
This is not a new message, but the women in Michigan who fought back took the idea of women in sports in a new and vital direction – past mere opportunity to play to the freedom to play without deliberate harm.
This is the future of sports as a part of Women’s History Month, and the history has only begun.
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