Smoke Break Psychology: The Real Nyla Rose Issue

The Distraction Nobody Needed

 

Before I get to the proverbial meat and potatoes quick disclaimer. My wife and I have two daughters (30 and 12 respectively) and as of 12:01am this morning they induced labor on my oldest. So as I sit here on my laptop, Dead Pioneers new album, Wagon Burner, playing on my speaker,  with some documentary I’m not paying any attention to on banned books in history on my television I’ll have to restart later, I keep picking up my phone checking to make sure I haven’t missed a call or a text message telling me it’s time to go meet my first granddaughter.

I should probably wait to write this, but the thoughts are here, they are fresh, and I want to try to get these coherent thoughts on paper while they are still dancing around in a cloud of neurons and THC.

I have been trying to decide how I want to write this one. This one won’t get clicks. This one may get love or hate, but sometimes a person has to stand by conviction.

Part of me thought about doing the usual thing. Make a joke. Light the joint. Find some dumb through line that lets me ease into the point without immediately walking into a comment section full of people who already decided what I was going to say before they ever read it.

The spoonful-of-sugar approach.

But I don’t think I want to do that here.

Not because I think I am above jokes. Lord knows I am not. I will probably make at least one before this is over. But every time I tried to soften this one, I kept coming back to the same thought:

Why am I softening it?

Why are we acting like transgender people existing is some kind of national crisis?

More specifically, why are we acting like transgender athletes are the thing that is going to bring down sports, society, civilization, and whatever else people need to pretend is collapsing this week?

Because the numbers do not line up with the panic.

Not even a little.

Transgender people make up roughly 1 percent of the American population. Depending on the survey and age group, you can find estimates closer to 1 or 2 percent, but we are still talking about a relatively small number of people in a country with more than 300 million people.

Then we get to athletes.

The NCAA has around 510,000 athletes. The NCAA president testified in late 2024 that he knew of fewer than 10 transgender athletes competing in that entire system.

Less than 10.

Out of 510,000.

That is less than 0.002 percent.

And I know how this goes. Somebody is going to find one clip, one headline, one story from somewhere, and act like it wipes out the entire point.

It does not.

Ten people out of more than half a million is not an invasion. It is barely a rounding error.

But somehow that is what has everybody ready to throw a national fit.

Not rent.

Not groceries.

Not health insurance.

Not the fact that a lot of people are one car repair, one hospital bill, or one missed paycheck away from being completely screwed.

Nope.

We have decided the biggest issue in America is that a tiny number of trans people might want to compete, participate, or just exist without becoming somebody’s debate topic.

That is where we are.

And somebody is probably already thinking, “Well, sports are complicated.”

Yes. They are.

There are different levels of competition. There are different governing bodies. There are policies. There are questions people can talk about without screaming at each other or acting like every trans kid who wants to play volleyball is personally responsible for the fall of Rome.

But that is not what most of this has become.

Most of it is not a serious discussion.

It is outrage looking for a reason to exist.

It is a distraction.

Nyla Rose in Oklahoma

A few years ago, I read an article about Nyla Rose and the Oklahoma Athletic Commission.

At the time, I either did not think much about it, got distracted by something else, or put it away in the back of my brain under the category of, “Well, that is stupid. Hopefully it goes away.”

It did not.

Nyla wrestled Alejandra Lion at a Ring of Honor taping in Oklahoma City in December 2023. This was a professional-wrestling match. Two trained people were paid to work a match, tell a story, and make it look believable enough for fans to enjoy.

Nobody got hurt.

Nobody said they were forced into anything.

Nobody had a scholarship stolen from them.

Nobody’s athletic career ended because of it.

But Oklahoma’s Athletic Commission issued a warning to AEW because Nyla Rose, a trans woman, wrestled another woman. The commission treated it as a violation of rules against “intergender wrestling,” with classifications tied to chromosomes.

Honestly, when I first saw the story, I had to read it twice.

Not because it was complicated.

Because I could not believe a government body was spending time trying to police a worked wrestling match.

And I am sorry, but this is where the whole thing gets ridiculous even by wrestling standards.

This is a business where a supernatural mortician has been buried alive, set on fire, murdered, resurrected, and then shown up on Monday to wrestle like nothing happened.

We are fine with that.

We can suspend disbelief for a demon, a possessed doll, a zombie, a cowboy, and a man whose entire personality is yelling “Yeet.”

But Nyla Rose wrestling a woman is where Oklahoma decided the line had to be drawn?

That is the thing that requires a warning?

That is the threat to the integrity of professional wrestling?

Come on.

I have watched wrestling long enough to see a man get murdered on pay-per-view and return six weeks later with a slightly different entrance theme. I have watched people get hit with lightning, buried alive, thrown off things they should not have survived, and then come back for the next premium live event.

But this is the emergency?

Professional wrestling is not the Olympics. It is not an NCAA championship. It is not a high-school state tournament where somebody is working toward a scholarship.

It is wrestling.

It is scripted.

The people in the ring agree to work together. They know the story. They know the finish. They know the bumps. They know what the match is supposed to be.

We have spent decades accepting the basic rule of wrestling, which is that a performer can be anything the story says they are. A dead man. A demon. A monster. A king. A guy who controls lightning. A spooky cult leader. A rapper who cannot stop yelling one word.

But a trans woman wrestling another woman is apparently where realism suddenly becomes sacred.

That is not about wrestling.

It is not about safety.

It is not about fairness.

It is about somebody wanting to make a point at the expense of a person who was simply doing her job.

Tony Khan Did His Job

The story came back around when Nyla talked about being surprised that Tony Khan stood behind her.

And I get why she might have been surprised. People with power do not always stick up for people beneath them. Plenty of bosses will tell you they are “like family” right up until that family becomes inconvenient.

But from Tony Khan’s side, what else should he have done?

Now, I am not going to sit here and act like Tony Khan is perfect. The man can turn a simple question into a five-minute answer. He can get into arguments online that he absolutely does not need to get into. Sometimes he acts like he has three energy drinks, twelve open tabs, and a lifetime supply of Twitter notifications running through his head at once.

Maybe he needs to log off sometimes.

Maybe he needs somebody in the room who can say, “Tony, buddy, just stop.”

Maybe he needs to come down to Southeast Missouri, sit on a porch somewhere, and let me share some good homegrown with him while we watch old Mid-South.

But even with all that, everything I have seen says Khan at least tries to take care of his people.

Nyla Rose is one of his people.

She wrestled a match. The company put her in the match. The state decided to complain about it. So the company stood behind her.

That is what should happen.

It should not be some shocking act of bravery for an employer to defend an employee who did nothing wrong.

The Part That Gets Me

This is where I start getting irritated with the broader conversation.

If you listen to the loudest people talking about trans athletes, you would think they are everywhere. You would think every girls’ team in the country has been overrun. You would think every championship is being stolen, every locker room is under siege, and every sport is hanging on by a thread.

But again, fewer than 10 known trans athletes in a pool of around 510,000 NCAA competitors.

I am not saying people cannot talk about rules, eligibility, or different levels of competition. Of course they can. I am not pretending every situation is identical, and I am not interested in acting like thinking about something makes a person evil.

But is this really the issue that deserves this much attention?

Is this really the thing politicians need to build their whole personality around?

There are people who cannot afford insulin.

There are people paying more every month for less food.

There are people working full time who still cannot afford an apartment.

There are kids in schools that cannot get basic resources.

There are families who have to decide which bill gets paid first and which one they hope can wait another week.

And we are supposed to believe the emergency of our time is whether a tiny number of trans athletes can participate in sports?

I do not buy it.

If somebody genuinely cares about women’s sports, great. Support women’s sports.

Talk about resources. Talk about pay. Talk about medical care. Talk about coaching. Talk about facilities. Talk about media coverage. Talk about the abuse women athletes get online. Talk about the fact that some people only remember women’s sports exist when they need an excuse to be mad at a trans person.

Because that is the part that gets me.

A lot of people who claim to be protecting women’s sports do not watch women’s sports. They do not support women’s sports. They do not spend money on women’s sports. They do not talk about women’s sports until they need something to throw at somebody else.

Then suddenly, they are experts.

That is not support.

That is using women as a prop.

The Same Tired Angle

Wrestling fans should understand distractions better than almost anybody.

A heel gets in the ring with a microphone, says the exact thing that will make the crowd mad, and before long the whole building is yelling. Nobody stops to ask whether the argument even makes sense. They react because they were supposed to react.

The anti-trans panic is that same kind of angle.

Look over there.

Look at the bathroom.

Look at the locker room.

Look at the school team.

Look at the trans kid who just wants to play ball with their friends.

Do not look at why your rent went up.

Do not look at why groceries cost what they cost.

Do not look at why people work harder and have less to show for it.

Do not look at companies raising prices because they can.

Do not look at politicians who love talking about morality but cannot find a solution for the actual problems affecting regular people every day.

Just look over there.

Be scared.

Be angry.

Argue with somebody online.

Hit refresh to see who said what.

The people who benefit from all that do not even need you to agree with them. They just need you distracted long enough that you do not notice what is happening right in front of you.

I am a Bahá’í. Unity is a big part of how I try to look at the world. That does not mean I think everybody has to agree with me. It does not mean differences are not real. It does not mean there are not difficult conversations worth having.

But it does mean I get suspicious when people are told to fear their neighbors.

It means I wonder who benefits when a tiny group of people becomes the country’s favorite punching bag.

And it means I believe trans people deserve the same things everybody else deserves: the chance to exist, work, participate, make friends, find community, and live their lives without constantly being treated like a political threat.

Nyla Rose wrestling a match in Oklahoma was not a crisis.

A trans kid joining a team is not a crisis.

People struggling to make rent is a crisis.

Families having to choose between groceries and medicine is a crisis.

People working themselves to death and still falling behind is a crisis.

The country being angry, divided, broke, tired, and constantly told to blame somebody with less power than them—that is a crisis.

Maybe that is all I am saying.

We keep getting handed the same distraction, over and over, and people keep taking the bait.

Meanwhile, the stuff actually making life harder for all of us is sitting right in front of our faces.

Forty-five minutes later.

Column written, proofread. A graphic very lazily made because I’m trying to distract myself, phone checked again, still no call or text.

Still no baby. Youngest has her clarinet and homework, on her way to school. Wagon Burner is on the second playthrough, which is fine by me. I suppose it’s time to smoke again because the time will come today that I have go out in public and deal with my anxieties so until the next smoke break, try to make someone’s day just a little bit better, even if it is to make them smile.

Currently:
Reading: Gospel of the Red Man: An Indian Bible by Ernest Thomas Seton, Victorian Psycho by Virginia Fieto
Playlist Artists: Dead Pioneers, Bad Religion, Mastodon, Rapsody, Rivers of Nihil, Amyl and the Sniffers