GODDAMN IT, LET'S TALK ABOUT TAYLOR SILVERMAN

Dealing With Transphobia, Virtue Signaling, and Skateboard Contests

Before we get into this week’s Newsletter, I want to say a few things and this is not a disclaimer. My apologies in advance if I get anything wrong here or refer to things incorrectly. If I do, please let me know and I’ll update the post and do my best to make sure I educate myself more to avoid mistakes in the future. I don’t have an editor and didn’t want to exhaust anyone by having them read a draft. Instead, I wanted to address this issue as it’s been on my mind all week, and made the decision to publish it with as much insight as I could provide if I have to go back and edit it, I’ll make note of any of my errors.

Thank you.

OK, let’s talk about Taylor.

Earlier this week a skateboarder named Taylor Silverman made the following post on Instagram (there’s no way in hell I’m linking to it though):

She tagged Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, The Daily Wire, and a bunch of other Conservatives or whatever they call people who hate equal rights in 2022, along with Red Bull.

The gist of her post is as follows, Taylor—a female-identifying skater who once entered the male division at a contest and bragged about her finish—entered a Red Bull Cornerstone contest in Lincoln, NE last December and received second place. She won a total of $2,750 in prize money for riding her skateboard but over the previous six months a trans woman beating her really upset her. She implies that during the last six months “people” have been looking to silence her BUT—check this—she has a lil’ ace up her sleeve called social media, so she “spoke out.”

The New York Post tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp® reported on this outrage (I had to edit the below for grammar because those redlines were driving me wild):

“I am sick of being bullied into silence,” Taylor Silverman, 27, complained on Instagram Wednesday, already landing more than 17,000 likes, as well as a flurry of attacks accusing her of being transphobic.

Silverman, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, complained that she has competed in “three different contests with trans women, two of which I placed second.”

She shared a letter to Red Bull complaining about the “unfair” competition she faced at its Cornerstone competition, which skateboard blogs say was won by trans skater Lilian Gallagher.

“A biological man with a clear advantage won the women’s division, best trick, and also won multiple qualifiers,” Silverman wrote in the message.

“This took away the opportunity that was meant for women to place and earn money,” she wrote to Red Bull Senior Sports Marketing Manager Erich Dummer."

Like myself, many folks who follow skateboarding had no clue who she was, and that makes sense—there are so many people who ride skateboards and are “pro” or whatever. So after this post many people looked at her clips, read her words, and a lot of top-shelf pros got in the comments to kook her, including Nora Vasconcellos (Someone make a LISTEN TO NORA T-shirt please) and Chris “The Muscle” Russell, the latter being an unexpected voice of support for the Trans community to many. (No diss to Chris at all, but I think a lot of people were surprised by his takedown.)

Things got very contentious and Timmy Pool came to her “rescue,” offering Taylor the lost wages and platform she was so thirsty for or something. You see, as Taylor knows, these “Well, Actually Liberals” like Mr. Pool are salivating for a story like this to jump start Roganesque talking points about “what science says” and “facts about biology.” You see, neither Tim or Joe is a journalist but if you look at Tim’s Wikipedia, he’s listed as one, I guess because he worked at Vice. Rad, I guess I’m a bonafide journalist too (BRB updating my CV!).

TBH I don’t know much about Timmy and the brand of “liberalism” he subscribes to which is kind of akin to that old “I’m not racist, I hate everyone equally” bullshit that most racist and all-things-phobic people hide behind. But I do know that Taylor bummed out an entire community and targeted Lilian Gallagher in the process, forcing Lilian to go private on Instagram due to harassment. All over contest money.

Most of us that are consumed by skateboarding and watched Taylor’s footage can draw the following conclusion without having been at the contest:

Taylor is objectively not that great at skateboarding compared to the through-line level we see in competitions.

This is not a dig, it’s an observation based on my experience and many others.

Now, one could ridicule her for that and also point out that had she been focusing on skating rather than complaining, she might have won more money but I’m not here for that because many people already have. The shots have been fired, the message has been sent, and more importantly, this human many had no knowledge of hurt many people over contest money and also, sparked all the part-time scientists, gender studies experts, etc. to spark debate over gender and chromosomes and biological advantages and studies they didn’t really read and whatever the fuck else on message boards (no way I’m typing that four-letter word) and Instagram and Twitter.

What I just mentioned is important and an exercise in empathy. For all of us who are not trans and have never dealt with how society views trans people, you have to think about how terrible it is that a single post about a skateboard contest could now spark debate about their gender and the validity of being trans.

Pause.

Long pause.

It’s awful and it’s really hard to hold back debating people who are transphobic or just straight-up calling them assholes.

I chose to write this newsletter rather than debate my belief that trans women are women with a bunch of MAGA trolls because I wanted to speak directly to skateboarders, especially people who read this who might not be aware of how harmful a post such as Taylor’s can be. Also, I don’t have the knowledge and toolbox to debate people who memorize articles and flawed science in order to “own the libs.” I’m still learning and I’m not informed enough to engage in any debate other than stating my unwavering support for the community and anyone’s pursuit to feel not only comfortable in their body but to feel accepted and equal by others.

Trans Women Are Women. That’s it. I’m not interested in what Jordan Peterson or Bret Weinstein has to say and yes, I did link to Bret because said tweet from 2019 is relevant to this discussion. Sadly.

Instead, I want to focus on sports because skateboarding is considered a sport to many and also, contest skaters are a real ass thing, mostly because of money.

Contests have long been a part of skateboard culture. People used to line up barrels and jump over them in the ‘70s. There were freestyle competitions that looked like a fusion of ballet and gymnastics (we’ll get to that later). Then the Zephyr team showed up to the Del Mar Nationals in 1975 and got “low and aggressive” and changed skateboarding as lore, documentaries, and Wikipedia tells us, followed by the revelation that you could ride skateboards in a pool and later, on ramps. Concrete skateparks were in the ‘70s and ‘80s and competitions were held. Competitive organizations then followed. There were so many contests throughout the ‘80s both formally and in backyards across the world—so many people going back and forth on a wooden ramp, some going higher than the others, some doing harder tricks.

And you could judge who was better!

Kind of.

This is what we call the Hawk vs. Hosoi Conundrum: Is it what you do or how you do it… or both.

We still don’t really know the answer to that question but in 2014 I asked some skate judges about it. You can read that here.

Former pro skater and avid Star Wars collector, Jason Rothmeyer told me the following:

“The biggest thing that is difficult is all the factors involved: style, speed, difficulty, consistency, trick selection, and originality. You’re judging on an overall impression for most run and jam-based contests. I don’t judge Street League so they have their own system that is more trick based, so I can’t speak for them, but for us, it’s an overall score after we’ve seen the whole body of work.”

I’m not privy to the SLS Offical Point System but even if it’s like, some number for a back lip on a rail and some other number for a switch back lip, what if Person X does either or both better than Person Y? Do you get a higher number and what denotes better? Is sketchy definitive? Wouldn’t that disqualify every trick Cardiel pulled out of his ass at the last minute? I have no clue but if you have insider info, holler.

That’s the thing, we exist in this world where you can skate contests competitively like a lot of SLS or Red Bullsters, you can have fun or just dork around as many Tampa Pro and AM Vets do, you can be a “real street skater” who also enters contests for the money and experience, or you can completely ignore them all together… until you don’t.

Skateboarding and its base are not like people who follow structured sports such as professional basketball where there are very clear leagues and rules—there’s a defined structure to the professional level. You can’t turn yourself pro for the NBA on your phone but you can order your own pro model off some print-on-demand site and guess what? You’re pro as fuck!

Skateboarding is a mix of many things all at once but it’s also an Olympic sport and you know what? The Olympics shifted its policy on trans athletes a few times. Most recently, “The International Olympic Committee announced Tuesday that their 17-year-old policy on transgender and non-binary participation will end effective March 2022, leaving individual sports to determine their own policies.” (Quote taken from Outsports, November 16, 2021).

I don’t know what any official governing body of skateboarding’s policy is but I’m fairly sure it’s in line with the IOC and that makes Taylor’s gripe all the cornier but let’s be real, we know what her actual endgame here and it’s not placing higher in Red Bull sanctioned events ;)

If you’re curious to learn more about these policies, you can watch this piece with Trans skater Ricci And Tres, interviewed by Robert Brink for USA Skateboarding as well as this Time Magazine article with Leo Baker.

So where am I going with this?

OK, I’m going to bullet this out for clarity:

• Taylor sucks. I’m not giving her a pass. She can stop sucking if she takes Nora’s advice and uses this opportunity to educate herself.

• Transphobia is not only vile, but it’s also rampant and everyone needed to address this and be aware of it.

• By nature, skateboard competitions are weird because you can and can’t really judge tricks.

• Skateboarding is not gymnastics or ballet where everyone knows what is harder and there’s a WAY you have to do shit to get max points.

• Sure, we can all mostly agree that one trick is harder than another for most people but that’s changing. In the 1980s, a lot of people with their names on a skateboard couldn’t even kickflip, now kids learn that trick before they can ollie. I know, it’s confusing.

• But also, you can’t land sketchy in a contest because they’ll ding your score unless you look cool landing sketchy doing something really hard or maybe you’re cool and not one of those people with an energy drink patch on your hat.

• Oh shit, I mean, some very cool people are sponsored by drinks, so there’s that too. Fuck.

• And if you do some wild ass NBD step-off flip-a-tron to 5-0 on a contest rail during an SLS competition, it might be impossibly hard but there’s no precident for it, so you probably ain’t getting Nine Club. I know…

• So maybe skateboarding contests are more like Beauty Pageants but the “talent” and “physical fitness” categories of said pageants are more important than looks… but still important, until they aren’t.

• Stay with me.

• This is starting to read like a Palace product description, fam.

• Back to beauty pageants, the Miss USA competition has no ban on plastic surgery so if Taylor was in that world instead of skateboarding, would she be ranting about someone with breast implants or a surgically augmented nose beating her in a pageant? Maybe… I dunno, do you win money for that shit?

• Fuck, I’m sorry.

• I confused myself.

• Attempts at clarity failed

• But.

• Trans Women Are Women and Taylor’s rant has done more harm than good.

• Maybe we can use this opportunity to learn, unlike Ms. Silverman

Lastly, some people suggested a ridiculous solution for Taylor’s plight. That proposition was to segregate skateboarding further and have a “Trans Division.” Not only is that extremely problematic—I’m thinking of the segregated leagues in baseball that lasted into the 1950s as one example—and further alienates and dehumanizes the trans community.

Not only is this a completely backward and terrible idea, someone as opportunistic and insensitive as Taylor could try to exploit this theoretical new division as a stunt—not that we think she’d do that—so this proposal really sucks.

Maybe the solution is to accept people, be kind, educate yourself, and realize that a skateboard competition—especially one you’re not participating in—is just a game that you can’t always control the outcome of no matter what you do, instead of using sports as flashpoints for culture wars.

Speaking of, maybe people such as Taylor and Timmy should direct their ire towards the NFL since Super Bowl Sunday* has historically been perceived as the most violent day for domestic abuse. Although this claim has been debunked, there are several studies showing a link between football and domestic violence, including several professionals committing acts themselves. What it has done is draw attention to a serious issue that should concern everyone.

Just kidding, we know they don’t give a fuck about women.

*An earlier version of this post contained a misleading statement about Super Bowl Sunday and was edited for clarity and accuracy.