“On September 1, 2022, during a volleyball game against a rival North Carolina high school, 17-year-old Payton McNabb received a devastating head and neck injury as the result of a spike by a male athlete who identified as transgender.

“Neither I nor anyone else on the team agreed with it [the transgender athlete being allowed to play] and were against it from the beginning. We were all just so confused by how it could be allowed, and I guess we just had no idea what to do,” McNabb said. 

The male athlete’s superior height and strength, McNabb said, forced her and her teammates to play “defensively.”

“We had to adjust our whole lineup and put our biggest hitter in the front row, and even with that, we couldn’t pass the ball back because he was hitting it so hard,” she said. “No one could even get a hand on it.” 

It was one of his powerful spikes that knocked McNabb unconscious for over 30 seconds toward the end of a game her junior year. While McNabb was lying on the floor, she was later told by onlookers that her body had twisted into a “fencing position,” which is indicative of extreme trauma to the brain. 

“My coach’s wife kept trying to push my arms and legs down, but they kept coming back up. She had no idea what was happening,” McNabb said. Meanwhile, “the boy who hit me and the girls on his team were standing on the other side of the net laughing at me,” she said. 

The Medical Community has an ethical duty to PROTECT women. What is it going to take to stand for women’s safety, privacy, and equality?!