updated from March 27, 2025 It is an age-old, exhausting pattern: expecting Black women to absorb the impact, soothe, cushion, and hold space for m
updated from March 27, 2025
It is an age-old, exhausting pattern: expecting Black women to absorb the impact, soothe, cushion, and hold space for men and male biology, even at the direct expense of their own boundaries, safety, and fairness.
There’s been a growing outcry that cheek swabs to confirm male and female categories in sports will harm Black women. On the surface, it sounds like a protective stance. But peel back the layers, and you’ll find something else entirely:
Faux concern.
Performative protection.
Weaponized empathy with no real love.
Because when Black women are actually being harmed? The silence is deafening.
When you say, “This will harm Black women,”
But you do nothing when Black women are harmed,
You reveal your true priority:
Not us. Just your argument.
We will not be your scapegoat.
We will not be your rhetorical trick.
We will not be used to erase the very boundaries that keep girls and women safe.
Here are 10 reasons why this argument is not rooted in love for Black women—but in using us to deflect from other agendas:
You weaponize racism ONLY when it suits your argument.
Some of the same people crying racism over cheek swabs have never stood with Black women when we are stereotyped, dehumanized, overpoliced, or actually harmed in medical or athletic spaces.
Constantly weaponizing the idea that “Black women’s bodies will be scrutinized and humiliated” in public discourse reinforces a sense of vulnerability and helplessness, without actually building any protective structures or legal defenses for Black girls in grassroots sports.
You’re not listening to Black women—you’re USING us.
Black women have been clear: we want fair, safe competition. In spite of that silly myth that Black people don’t feel pain…..We can get hurt too, you know. Historical violence against us has people fooled. Black women like safety too. We have never stopped fighting for it. AND we want to protect girls’ sports. What we don’t want is to be used as shields in a debate that often erases us entirely.
The narrative assumes Black women only exist as victims of testing, completely ignoring that Black women and girls also value clear boundaries, fairness, and physical safety in sports. By claiming cheek swabs only harm Black women, it invalidates the Black athletes who actively want clear sex-category protections.
You say it’s about “all women,” but only mention Black women to derail accountability.
The selective invocation of Black women to stop a conversation about fairness is dishonest. If you only bring us up to silence others—but not to protect us in real life—you’re not for us.
You’re not talking about how over 60% of Black girls drop out of sports before age 14.
If you cared about our wellness in sports, you’d be fighting for resources, funding, protection from abuse, and inclusion. Not deflecting attention to manufactured fears.
You don’t address the erasure of Black girls when boundaries around girlhood are removed.
When sports categories blur beyond recognition, the first girls pushed aside are often poor, dark-skinned, and Black. We lose scholarships, spots, safety, and space. That’s not inclusion. That’s erasure.
You don’t call out the industries profiting from silencing and sexualizing Black women athletes.
Corporations, federations, and sponsors profit while Black women are hypersexualized, policed, or discarded. Faux concern doesn’t touch those billion-dollar machines. Why not?
You do not protect Black women’s right to define our own bodies and boundaries.
In every era, Black women have had to fight to define our own womanhood. You weren’t there to help us claim it—but now you want to tell us we’re hurting ourselves by defending it? That’s not allyship. That’s manipulation.
Black women have the absolute right to define what safety, fairness, and boundaries look like for themselves. Faux concern denies that right by deciding for Black women what they should feel, what they should accept, and what counts as “harm.”
You center theoretical harm over real, documented, generational harm.
You’re panicked over possible harm from a non-invasive test, while ignoring the real, generational trauma of being constantly surveilled, disbelieved, and dismissed. That tells us all we need to know.
You’re not calling for an end to performance-enhancing drugs or unfair advantages—only for an end to fair boundaries.
Cheek swabs don’t test for race. They test for sex. And boundaries aren’t inherently harmful. Erasing the category of womanhood while claiming to protect us is not protection—it’s gaslighting.
You ignore the history of Black women being erased or sidelined when we do excel.
When we win, we’re often accused of being “too strong,” “too masculine,” or somehow not real women. This is a form of misogynoir that needs real attention. But instead of challenging those systems, this faux concern reinforces them.
Cheek swabs are less invasive than the actual treatment Black women face in medicine and sports.
Let’s be honest—Black women have endured far worse in hospitals, at the hands of coaches, and in locker rooms. A cheek swab isn’t the problem. Systemic dehumanization is.
This argument ignores the voices of Black women athletes who support fair boundaries in women’s sports.
Many Black women—former athletes, coaches, mothers, doctors—have spoken up for clear sex-based sports categories. Yet their voices are dismissed as if they are confused, manipulated, or irrelevant.
The ultimate goal of the “faux concern” argument is usually to advance a broader ideological or policy stance—not to improve the material conditions, funding, safety, or competitive integrity for Black women and girls in sports.
Protecting Black women starts with listening to us—especially when we’re telling you that your concern isn’t care. It’s control.
Stop Using Black Women as a Shield
If you’re not fighting for our safety when we’re harassed, abused, silenced, underpaid, or forced out of sports—
If you’re not defending our right to excel without being dehumanized—
If you’re not showing up when it’s hard, painful, or unpopular—
Then please stop invoking us when it suits your argument.
We are not your deflection.
We are not your loophole.
We are not your rhetorical shield.
We are amazing women. And we deserve better. We have never stopped saying that. Perhaps one day we will be heard rather than spoken over.
Why We Test: The Hidden History of Fairness in Sports—and in Women’s Lives – WE Survive Abuse
We Must Stop Robbing Women of Opportunity—Then Judging Their Survival – WE Survive Abuse
Why Sex-Based Women’s Spaces Still Matter: 10 Things People Forget – WE Survive Abuse
No Test Can Measure What Women Have Been Enduring – WE Survive Abuse
15 Signs Someone Is Manipulating You Through Confusion – WE Survive Abuse
Don’t Say You’re in Our Corner—Fight Like It – WE Survive Abuse
Access to Women Is Not a Male Human Right – WE Survive Abuse
25 Ways Society Sends Harmful Messages to Black Women About Our Safety and Worth – WE Survive Abuse