Man Harasses 9-Year-Old At Track Meet, Demands She Prove Her Gender

Kari Starr was watching as her daughter stepped up to throw a shot put at her school’s track and field event last week when she heard an older man yell at the crowd of fourth-grade girls to “get this boy off the field.”

Starr’s 9-year-old daughter had just placed second in the discus event and was lining up for the final event of the day. Starr didn’t think that the man was talking about her.

But to her surprise, Starr told HuffPost, the man pointed at her daughter, who sported a new pixie cut and “floppy boy shorts,” and demanded to see “certification” proving that she was assigned female at birth.

“I said, ‘Sir, you’re asking for a certificate determining what genders are in my daughter’s shorts. That’s not OK,’” said Heidi Starr, the girl’s other mother.

Heidi Starr said she approached the man and corrected him about her daughter’s gender.

She said the man, whom the school identified as the grandfather of a student from a nearby Okanagan Valley elementary school in British Columbia, pointed to her daughter and another student, who had similarly short hair, and said the two were “obviously trans.” She said the man’s wife yelled at everyone to “f**k off” and called Heidi and Kari Starr “groomers and genital mutilators.”

“The initial day was horrible. This is a girl that is very secure in who she is,” Kari Starr said. “She’s got two gay moms, and before we split, we were always proud and out and holding hands and we didn’t answer to anybody. So she never saw fear … but this really shook her.”

The Starrs’ story, which was first published by the local outlet Castanet last week, has been shared widely on social media, garnering outrage and concern from trans advocates in Canada and the United States at a moment when right-wing figures are furiously fanning the flames of bias and hatred against the LGBTQ+ community.

While Canada allows trans student-athletes to compete on their team of choice, in the United States, 22 states have passed bans on transgender students from participating on teams that align with their gender identities, according to a map from the Movement Advancement Project.

Kari Starr said her daughter burst into tears and was shaking as the man yelled nearby, while other parents surrounding them tried to comfort the girl with words of support.

“I said, ‘Sir, you need to check yourself. This is a grade four and five elementary school track and field meet. No one is trying to rig the results,’” Kari Starr recalled, adding that the man touted his past career as a professional athlete.

The child’s mothers asked HuffPost not to identify their daughter — who is cisgender — citing concerns for her privacy.

Heidi Starr said a group of parent volunteers came over and moved the shot put circle to a different area to physically move the girls away from the man. But Starr said the man and his wife would not leave.

The man, who was watching his granddaughter compete, denied to Castanet in a statement on Tuesday that he’d yelled at the family or asked whether the girl was transgender. He told the outlet that he had asked if the event was “co-ed.”

“I am not apologizing for that question that I asked. I think personally I have a right to ask questions, and I always will for the rest of my life,” he told Castanet.

The school district’s superintendent told Castanet that officials were taking steps to ban the man from all future school events. The Kelowna Royal Canadian Mounted Police said on Tuesday that they are investigating the incident.

The disruption at the track meet was upsetting and shocking for the Starrs, who said they have raised their daughter in a diverse environment and school district that is welcoming of people of all genders and sexualities.

However, Heidi Starr said that the incident was not a “one-off” in their bible belt British Columbia community where anti-LGBTQ rhetoric has flourished. By speaking out, she hopes to show people that hateful speech will and has had real-life consequences, she said.

“The real huge rise in anti-trans messaging has escalated,” she said. “But I’m asking that people take a moment when they see a hate-filled post … to just say something. People are so concerned with the backlash that we’ve stopped standing up. I’m hoping that this encourages folks to say something.”

Across social media, Canadian and American advocates have shown their support for the Starrs’ daughter — and have cautioned that last week’s incident is the result of rising anti-trans rhetoric.

David Eby, the premier of British Columbia, condemned what happened on Twitter. “This is awful. This kind of hate is not acceptable or welcome in British Columbia,” he wrote.

The National Center for Transgender Equality also warned about the increased surveillance of other people’s bodies.

“This is where anti-trans bigotry leads - to policing the appearance and the bodies of all women and girls. And that’s deeply wrong. Enforcing rigid gender norms and policing girls’ bodies hurts everyone,” the U.S. advocacy organization tweeted.

The Starrs said that despite the incident, their daughter is doing well and is busily distracted with soccer games and birthday parties. Heidi Starr said her daughter has nicknamed the man “creepy, crazy carrot dude.”

Kari Starr said that the day after the track event, her daughter wanted to watch a “Britain’s Got Talent” video, which she and Starr have watched every night.

In the clip, members of a diverse dance group — which includes a lesbian couple, a girl with Down syndrome, and a nonbinary person — express their determination to persevere in the face of discrimination.

“She said, ‘This is what it reminds me of,’ and she immediately took a strong stance. She knows there’s unkind and not nice people who are ignorant to all these things. So it’s been an education for her that [the man’s] beliefs are not hers, nor are they the majority [of] people,” Kari Starr said.