Illustration: Elena Scotti
Modern roller derby is a women-dominated sport that was created by and for, and still is run by women—one of few (if not only) sports that can claim this. It’s synonymous with women’s empowerment in the minds of many, and it promotes itself as an inclusive, safe space where women find and take pride in their inner badasses. I’ve played in three leagues over the last decade, and in my experience, this perception is largely accurate.
So it’s probably one of the last places you’d expect to see a textbook example of #MeToo: A man with considerable popularity and power within a community is accused of sexual harassment and assault. And the response from this majority-women, very empowered community? Not a universal condemnation of the accused. Plenty of men and women stood behind him, including four people who showed their support on the biggest platform they had available.
Although the sport is dominated by women, from its inception, men have served as roller derby coaches, referees, and volunteers—valuable contributions that most leagues can’t function without. Then some men decided that they wanted to play, too, and went about starting their own leagues. There is now a governing body, the Men’s Roller Derby Association, or MRDA, sponsorships for male athletes, and a Men’s Roller Derby World Cup. Basically, it’s the same as women’s derby, but less popular and done at a smaller scale. (Think of it as the women’s version of basically every other sport.)
On January 31 an article appeared on a niche derby news site that accused Mo “Quadzilla” Sanders, a major figure in the roller derby world, of sexual misconduct. (The author of that piece declined to comment to Jezebel.) Emboldened by the #MeToo movement, the author wrote that she had decided it was time for the roller derby community to address what she saw as its sexual harassment and assault problem, using her own experience as an example. Several years ago, she attended a skills camp, and on the final night, some of its participants hung out in a hot tub. She wrote that Quadzilla, the camp’s coach, sat down next to her, put his hand on her thigh, and moved it upwards. She also wrote that she removed his hand three times before he stopped. An editor’s note that accompanies the article also accuses Quadzilla of grabbing a skater’s breasts and sending the editor an unsolicited and inappropriate message.
The post was a very big deal in the roller derby community because Quadzilla himself is a very big deal in the roller derby community. His involvement with the sport predates its early 2000s revival: He was on RollerJam, a short-lived attempt to bring roller derby back to television in the late ’90s. He’s been involved with modern roller derby for almost as long as there’s been a modern roller derby: coaching women’s teams, leading skills camps around the world, developing his own line of skates for Riedell, skating on men’s teams, and playing for the U.S. team in the first two men’s World Cups. At the time the allegations emerged, he was preparing to play in the third World Cup and had just announced a collaboration with the skate line Chaya.
Roller derby is probably one of the last places you’d expect to see a textbook example of #MeToo.
Quadzilla would not comment to Jezebel, but he did make a statement almost a week after the original article containing the accusations was published, posted to both his personal and public figure Facebook pages. (There were also two other statements posted as the allegations first surfaced on social media but before the article went up). He wrote that he had apologized to his accuser, but that he didn’t remember the incident—nor did he believe it happened as she described. From his statement on Facebook:
It’s possible that I touched her leg, and it’s possible I did it twice. What I won’t say is that I continually groped her or forced myself on her. I would not do that nor have I, period. I know what verbal and nonverbal cues/signals are, and I know what consent is and I would never knowingly touch someone in a sexual way without consent.
He also wrote, in his statement, that there were more accusations against him, including groping someone in a cab, more breast-grabbing, and unsolicited Snapchats. He admitted that he had “made mistakes,” including “inappropriate comments and jokes.” He wrote that he felt attacked, piled on, and judged before he had the chance to defend himself. He claimed to have considered leaving the sport, but he had also received public and private messages of “love and support,” including from “key figures in derby.” (You can get a representative sampling of them in the comments under his posts, which are replete with #IStandWithQuadzilla hashtags.) These were apparently enough to convince him to stay: “I’m not going anywhere,” Quadzilla wrote. “There’s no way I’m leaving the sport I love.”
Instead, it left him; Chaya dropped Quadzilla’s line, skills camps were canceled, and he was banned from his league. Three days after saying he would never leave derby, Quadzilla resigned from the World Cup team, writing: “It’s not fair for me to drag others down for my actions.”
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