Episode 195: Trans Women and Trans Girls Belong in Women's Sport
This week Jessica, Shireen and Lindsay discuss the most recent wave of anti-trans bills being debated in state houses across the US and the ways that anti-trans violence is couched in the rhetoric of protecting women's sport. They also talk about the many benefits of including trans kids in sport, what collegiate governing bodies are doing (or not doing) and how transphobic policy in sport is a horrific on a global scale. You'll also hear The Burn Pile, Torchbearers of the week -- including new co-owner and executive of The Atlanta Dream, former Dream star Renee Montgomery -- as well as What's Good and What We're Watching.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Links
Find out which anti-trans bills are being legislated in your state: transathlete.com/take-action
Georgia considering “a panel of three physicians” to evaluate girls’ genitals for school sports: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/02/proposed-legislation-create-gender-panel-evaluating-athletes-georgia
Putting trans participation in youth sports in perspective: https://www.powerplays.news/p/putting-trans-participation
Justice Department withdraws support for lawsuit seeking to ban transgender athletes from girls' high school sports: https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/30953477/justice-department-withdraws-support-lawsuit-seeking-ban-transgender-athletes-girls
Student-Athletes Kneeling Is The Latest GOP Suppression Target: https://firstandpen.com/student-athletes-kneeling-is-the-latest-gop-suppression-target
6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since World Cup awarded: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/23/revealed-migrant-worker-deaths-qatar
John Geddert’s Death Reopen Gymnastics’ Deep Wounds: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/sports/john-geddert-gymnastics
PWHPA’S FIRST GAME AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN TO BE BROADCAST LIVE ON NHL NETWORK AND SPORTSNET: https://pwhpa.com/pwhpas-first-secret-dream-gap-tour-game-at-madison-square-garden-to-be-broadcast-live-on-nhl-network-and-sportsnet
GoFundMe: Black Women's Player Collective https://www.gofundme.com/black-womens-player-collective
WNBA Approves Sale of Atlanta Dream to Larry Gottesdiener: https://dream.wnba.com/news/wnba-approves-sale-of-atlanta-dream-to-larry-gottesdiener
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Jessica, and on this week’s show I’m joined by Lindsay and Shireen. On this week’s show we’re gonna talk once again about transphobia in sports, especially women’s sports.
Lindsay: They’re using women’s and girls’ sports, something that all of us care about incredibly, something that drives our work on a day-in day-out basis, to wield violence against the trans community, and they have the power to do so.
Jessica: Then we’ll burn all the things that deserve to be burned, highlight the torchbearers that are giving us hope during this dark time, let you know what’s good in our worlds, and tell you what we’re watching this week. But first, before we get into all that, I have intense wanderlust. I’ve started doing this thing where I’m following all the Instagram accounts of beautiful hotels and the magazines that cover travel, just so I can literally look at other places in the world. I cannot stop thinking about where I’m gonna go whenever I get the chance to literally leave my house. My latest thing last night: we watched a movie on Netflix called Finding ‘Ohana, which is this very fun Goonies-inspired film, but it takes places in Hawaii and it stars a bunch of Hawaiians, and it just made me want to go to Hawaii, like, i just feel it in my bones.
I’m still set on Italy even though I have stopped doing my Italian lessons, because who has the bandwidth for that. We recently watched The Hobbit trilogy and the whole time all I was thinking about was New Zealand, and I just gotta get somewhere! I'm just feeling like…[exasperated groan] All I wanna do is be somewhere else at this point in time. What about y’all? Shireen, are you having this problem?
Shireen: I did. I haven’t been on a plane for a year.
Jessica: Yeah, same.
Shireen: As classist as that sounds, like, I just didn’t realize how much I actually traveled for work. At this point I’m so desperately missing my friends socially, and I get to see them outside – we go tobogganing and all that kind of stuff – but a friend of mine, Ahmed, tweeted this morning, “This pandemic has made everyone feel like a kid whose friends have all moved away.” And that really upset me this morning! [Jess laughs] I’m like, why did you say that! Because it’s true. I actually, Jess, I don't even have wanderlust. I just wanna sit in a restaurant with friends.
Jessica: Oh, I have that too. I mean, for sure.
Shireen: But in terms of traveling this is gonna sound incredibly unglamorous – I wanna go to Montreal. I miss my Montreal family very very much. I’ve got my friends – shoutout to Saf, to Mel, all those people, David Rudin, I love you, Tito, Curtis, we’re gonna go. I love these people and I love my Montreal family. I’m coming for Iranian food. I wanna go and see them and hang out with them and sit there. I also really really truly love Montreal.
Jessica: Montreal’s beautiful.
Shireen: I hate Quebec politics, but I love that city.
Lindsay: [laughing] Was that all one sentence?
Jessica: Yeah, that was one sentence. That was very well done. Lindsay, are you struggling with this too?
Lindsay: Yeah, I mean, I wanna go to the most crowded place I can and just hug strangers.
Jessica: Wow, from Lindsay Gibbs! Wants to go hug strangers!
Lindsay: Like, take me to Mardi Gras. And that is so unlike me.
Shireen: We’ve come so far.
Lindsay: Usually for vacations I wanna relax, d’you know what I mean? Get away from me, just chill. Right now I feel like I’m back in my early 20s, like I wanna stay out at bars til like 3am with strangers and just going wild. [laughs] So, wherever that can happen is just where I wanna go.
Shireen: You heard it here folks, Lindsay Gibbs wants to cuddle with me.
Lindsay: [laughs] I do actually wanna be in a bar at 3am with Shireen. That would be…[laughs]
JayCee Cooper: The feeling of just like the stress and restriction and pushing against that and really being in your own body and encapsulating that power and pushing against something that really wants to get you down…It’s much like being a trans person in our society, and for trans people it even takes on more meaning because you’re intentionally being in your body and physically doing an activity that requires strength, requires power. It requires this ownership of the activity that you’re doing. I mean, after doing it even that one time I was hooked and just needed to do it more.
Christina Ginther: I made my transition later in life at age 42 and if you are familiar with the process of gender transition, it’s not easy. I have lost a lot. The most difficult part was losing my marriage and a lot of circles of friends, a lot of in-laws that I was close to. So, I’ve been through this radical upheaval in my life. Going into my second year of transition, I was about 18 months in, I’m like I wanna rebuild my social structure. Where do I belong? Where do I sit? I’m like, well, I’m athletic and I’ve always wanted to participate in a team sport. Awesome. I show up to the open practice and it was awesome. A lot of the players were off to the side cheering me on as I was doing catching drills. I always wanted to be a wide receiver and I was having an enormous amount of fun and people were so welcoming. I’m like yes, this is it. This is where I wanna be.
Jessica: That is JayCee Cooper, who I recently interviewed for this show, and Christina Ginther from episode 89, each talking about what sport means to them as trans women. Cooper, a powerlifter; Ginther, who played tackle football. This week we’re gonna discuss once again the intense transphobia against girls and women in sport. I wanted to start with a reminder that these are real people who are affected by this transphobia, and that sport is great, and everyone should have access to it. This is especially relevant now because there are at least 23 states in the US with bills before the state legislature trying to discriminate against trans athletes – most of it directed at children, and mainly at trans girls.
One of the most extreme bills was filed in Minnesota this last week: HF1657 would ban transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports and would allow authorities to charge trans girls 13 years and older with a misdemeanor if they play sports with other girls. Trans girls could also be charged if found in a girls’ bathroom or locker room. We’re talking criminal penalties on children for trying to play sports. There’s also federal legislation: the Equality Act, which has passed the House, is a bill that would ban discrimination against people based on sexual orientation and gender identity. One of the lines of argument against the Equality Act is that banning LGBTQ discrimination, namely the T part of that, would somehow harm cis girls who play sports – as if the discrimination trans kids face already, including exclusion from sports, isn’t already hurting them.
There is, to put it mildly, a sickening amount of legislation aimed at trans people in the US right now, with girls’ and women's sports the heart of so much of it. One thing I wanna be very clear about is that a lot of these bills are violent. For example, in Georgia, a bill would mandate that a panel of 3 physicians examine the “reproductive organs and genetic makeup” of girls to make sure no trans girls get access to sport. The violation of bodies and privacy alone is so disturbing, but we also know that this kind of scrutiny harms girls of color, especially Black girls, more than their white counterparts. Determining in our society who is or is not feminine is often a racist project, and so much of this work to discriminate and even criminally penalize trans girls and women in sport is done supposedly in the name of “protecting” cis girls and women. Which is bullshit.
A classic example of how cis women, especially white cis women, are wiling to harm trans girls and women to “protect” women’s sport is the new Women's Sports Policy Working Group, which is spearheaded by former Olympian Nancy Hogshead-Makar. Lindsay, I know you burned this group’s horrible initial phone presser 3 weeks ago in episode 192, but would you quickly recap why their attempt at a “middle ground” is actually an extreme position?
Lindsay: Yeah. Thanks Jess. So, this group, the Women's Sports Policy Working Group, has been meeting behind the scenes for two years now trying to claim that there’s a “middle ground,” like you said, that they’re not transphobic but they really want to protect the sex separation in sports and that if they don’t protect sex separation in sports then it’s essentially as if men and women are just competing against each other, there are no more categories, it’s just a free for all – which is just [laughs] not at all what anyone is advocating for, and we have zero, zero proof that that is what is coming. But in advocating for this middle ground it becomes very clear that there is not a middle way in the way they say that there is. Their policy doesn’t call for arrest, but it sets the groundwork for that thinking. It says that the crux of the policy is that before the onset of male puberty trans women can compete in girls’ and women’s sports without condition, but trans girls and women who have experienced all or even part of male puberty must sufficiently mitigate their male sex-linked advantages through surgery and/or gender-affirming hormones consistent with the rules of their sport’s international federations in order to participate in any competitive girls’ and women’s sports.
So, there's two things here. First of all, the onset of male puberty is not a definitive date. [laughs] It’s not a definitive process, and figuring out when specifically that date starts, this Working Group claims, it’s just kind of a general exam that you would need before starting any sport. But I don’t remember my doctors discerning exactly when my puberty was starting in normal exams, d’you know what I mean? Like, I don’t remember that exact test being done on me when I was young and playing sports, right? I was never given a day of, oh, your puberty has started today. So, I mean, to figure that out, these tests would be extremely invasive. You can also see them being weaponized not only against trans girls and women who are of course the ones most harmed by this policy, but also let’s say against cisgender girls and women, particularly Black and brown girls who we already know are perceived as older, are perceived as being “threatening” in spaces.
So, you can see them being pinpointed to have to prove that they’re a girl much more often than white girls. The way that this is gonna be wielded is violent. I just don’t see any other way around it, that it is going to be violent. The reason that this group scares me so, so much is that I’ve seen up close what Nancy Hogshead-Makar can do when she is wielding her power. She helped write sex abuse legislation to protect Olympians and get it passed through congress, and after Nassar I was in DC, I was at all these hearings and saw her power in action. They have come out, they have policy proposals ready to go, and using the weight of the Martina Navratilovas…You know, these are former presidents of the Women’s Sports Foundation. Thankfully the current administration of Women’s Sports Foundation is against this, against what they’re doing and for trans inclusion in youth sports.
But I’m scared of this because we’re already seeing her testifying in South Carolina, testifying in local legislatures. She wants to make this a very clear point that her policy is the middle ground, but it’s only being used and wielded on one side of the aisle, and that is the side that promotes exclusion. So, what I don’t wanna lose here is the fact that oftentimes we don’t want to give space to these horrible and violent polices and we don’t wanna give them more attention than maybe they deserve, but in this case they’re using women’s and girls’ sports, something that all of us care about incredibly, something that drives our work on a day-in day-out basis, to wield violence against the trans community, and they have the power to do so. I’ll be honest, I’m just terrified.
Jessica: Yeah, and I think it’s particularly terrifying because the views being put forward by an organization like Women's Sports Policy Working Group – what a fucking mouthful – these are targeting children, and I just wanna keep emphasizing that we are talking about children. We’ve gotta keep our focus there. So, here’s Katie Barnes from episode 95 and Ashland Johnson from a hot take in March 2020 talking about trans youth and sport.
Katie Barnes: There’s an element of policing that occurs with elite athletes that is just a separate conversation, especially when we talk about monetary stakes, talk about what’s on the table. It’s just completely different than whether or not a 5-year-old who is thinking about gender differently can play against other 5-year-olds or if we need to sex-segregate at that age. That’s very different than a high schooler who is beginning a social, and perhaps a medical transition, wanting to run on her track team. A lot times, people will use comments like the ones that Martina made, and the authority that comes with that as both a former elite athlete and also a member of the LGBTQ community, to reinforce their own biases that they have about the topic to begin with, and then project that onto kids.
Ashland Johnson: The thing about youth sports is we know that it is about building character, it’s about building confidence and having people be a part of community. That’s why we have Title IX, that’s why we have equal access to sports for youth, because we know that these are the benefits of sports that are lifelong benefits. So, when it comes to trans youth, trans youth already face a lot of discrimination, already face a lot of isolation and victimization. So, we know that when it comes to mental health wellbeing that trans youth are already at a higher risk for negative mental health outcomes.
What we also know about sports is that when youth participate in sports they have higher levels of self-confidence, they have higher grades, they have a higher sense of community. We know this particularly too about LGBTQ youth who play sports. They tend to have a higher sense of well-being. So, we wanna make sure that all youth have access to sports, especially trans youth considering a lot of the social stigma and discrimination they’re facing. Having access to these sports communities could be life-changing.
Jessica: I love that bit from Ashland. So beautiful. Linz, there was, I think it was a recent report from the Center for American Progress about…It was a study about the importance of trans participation in sports. What did we learn from that?
Lindsay: Yeah, I think we learned so very important things that go on what Ashland was saying there. A few of the statistics from this study, which did a good job of compiling other studies and doing some research of its own: LGBTQ athletes, in particular transgender and non-binary athletes, have higher grades and 20% lower rates of depressive symptoms than LGBTQ non-athletes. That points to the importance of sports in their life. But you’ve also had the fact that exposure to gender discriminatory school policies and practices such as these trans bans in sport was cited as the underlying reason why more than one third of LGBTQ youth did not expect or plan to graduate high school. I wanna repeat that again – and other studies have affirmed that – according to the Gay and Lesbian Student Network’s 2019 national school climate survey, transgender and non-binary students in schools with transgender inclusive policies were less likely to skip school due to safety concerns, felt greater belonging in their school and community, and were less likely to hear anti-LGBTQ remarks or experience victimization based on their gender identity.
That’s not even just athletes – that’s all trans and non-binary, so whether you wanna participate in sport or not, because not all trans people wanna be athletes! [laughs] That’s another thing none of this seems to get at. But the signals that that sends…CAP’s analysis found that transgender students in states with fully inclusive policies that allow participation without restrictions in youth sports were significantly less likely than students in states with no guidance to have considered suicide in the past year, and those in fully inclusive states were the least likely to have done so. I like to say that this is twofold, right? Not only is access to sports very important because we want the benefits of sports to be available to trans and non-binary youth, right? But not only are you taking away the benefits from those who wanna participate, you are damaging the mental health and the very likelihood of graduating school, of staying in school for all trans and non-binary children. This study went on to find that when transgender youth are allowed to play the only result is that more women and girls – not fewer – are playing sports.
I know I’ve gone on for a long time but I just wanna say that if our cost-benefit analysis is every now and then a cisgender athlete might come in second place to a transgender athlete in competition but on the other side trans athletes who compete – and who don’t compete, if they’re banned from sports – will be less likely to graduate high school and more likely to commit suicide. That’s a cost-benefit analysis that is just a no-brainer, right? A cisgender athlete might have to come into second place, but losing is part of life. Losing occasionally in sports is a part of life, and I’m really sick of the fear mongering over that doing real harm.
Jessica: Yeah. This idea that, like, real harm vs “fairness” in sport, it just doesn’t…It just doesn’t make sense on its face. Shireen?
Shireen: I often point to this thread that friend of the show Katelyn Burns has, and she actually talks about this idea of will it be unfair and what that actually looks like in practical terms and how often trans women win, which is not…There’s an idea being peddled that they come in and take over everything, which is actually not the case.
Jessica: It’s a sexist idea that like–
Shireen: Absolutely!
Jessica: The sexism is the basis of that.
Shireen: And I think it’s really good because it’s a pretty long thread, and we’ll put it in the show notes, but just that idea and how we’re being misguided intentionally, which I also think is extremely violent and unnecessary.
Jessica: Yeah. Fear mongering is just such a great way to think about it. So, this is a moment when organizations with a lot of power – say the NCAA, which we talk about endlessly on this program as wielding so much influence within our society – they could be helping, and instead are…What, Linz? Are they doing nothing? What are we hearing from the NCAA in this particularly fraught moment for trans athletes?
Lindsay: Yeah, I wouldn’t say they’re doing absolutely nothing, but I would say that they’re being reserved for their typical statement.
Jessica: Okay.
Lindsay: So, the NCAA does have guidelines that allow transgender participation in NCAA sports with some restrictions, but it’s supposed to be pro-transgender athletes competing in sport. So, when all of these anti-trans bills are popping up from Montana to Iowa to now we’ve got South Carolina, it’s about 30 states right now. We need the NCAA to be coming out with very strong statements that any single place that considers these bills, that puts these bills into action, will have zero play – zero NCAA championships, zero chance of hosting any of these big tournaments, and will not be in compliance with their by-laws and therefore honestly should be up for punishment. Instead we’re seeing very vague statements, a lot of guessing that the NCAA might pull championships based on what they did in the past for the North Carolina bathroom bill, and you have people just kind of having to guess at where the NCAA stands really on all of this.
The NCAA is issuing kind of general statements reiterating its own policies, but they’re not scaring anyone right now. They’re not wielding their power, and it’s infuriating because this is how things are going to change. It’s going to be as infuriating as it sounds. Organizations like the NCAA taking away things that these congressmen, congresswomen really care about, right? That’s the only way that we’re gonna reverse the bigotry. Everyone just needs to continue to get in the NCAA’s face and try and get them into this fight on the side of transgender athletes.
Jessica: Yeah, I’m thinking about how we’re about to host the women’s March Madness down in San Antonio and we have at least one of these bills in front of our state legislature right now here in Texas. Shireen, let's talk about Canada. They have something going on on their collegiate level?
Shireen: Yeah, in late 2018 U Sports, which is Canada’s association, it’s like the equivalent…[laughs]
Jessica: It’s the letter U. [Shireen laughs] I kept thinking Shireen was telling me about “Youth Sports.” U Sports! Okay.
Shireen: It used to be known as the CIAU, which is more respectable, because I was telling Jess it sounds like a theme park, U Sports! But anyways, not to be disrespectful of my own association. Anyway, they worked on this for 2 years with the Canadian ethics in sport committee; Dr. Charlene Weaving was part of it, she’s at St. FX University in Canada, in the Atlantic coast. It was intentionally done. Now, Dr. Weaving and I wrote about this for the Canadian university press, and the thing is that Dr. Weaving wants to make sure the policies are dynamic enough so it doesn’t penalize athletes that are transitioning, that it doesn’t go against the anti-doping regulations within, so it needs to be flexible enough that way. It’s pretty comprehensive and inclusive, and it immediately was applicable to the 56 institutions that adhere to the association. So, that means that there’s no choice, you can't opt out of it. It has basically become policy in Canada. One of the only problems was that student athletes weren’t consulted for this, so trans community athletes said that when trying to apply to be on a varsity program, sometimes the politics take long enough so that the season’s over by the time something was decided because varsity seasons are not very long. So they're trying to apply that practically and what that looks like.
But what I do like about the policy is that it’s not super specific in terms of at what point you can join. For this policy Dr. Weaving stated that if you’re getting testosterone treatments, that doesn’t correlate to better performance in sport. So I really appreciated that that was done. People are often misinformed scientifically and they think, “Look at the science, there’s more testosterone, ergo…” Like, that’s not how this actually works, and we know this from having Katrina Karkazis on the show so many times. So, I think that these are things to put into effect. For this particular issue, Canada is not the worst, is what the takeaway is. [Jessica laughs] I’m sorry to be so frank. But this was intentionally done with the benefit of the trans community in mind. My question again is why were there no trans athletes at the table? Because youth sport relies heavily on academics and researchers, etc etc, but I just think if you’re making policy about a community they should be at the table! That’s just me, though.
Jessica: Yeah, they should definitely be at the table for policy stuff, but at the same time they don’t need to be there in order for you, the cis community, to be learning about trans athletes and thinking about what you will do and how you will act and all those sorts of things once you do have a trans athlete, because that will happen. Right, Shireen?
Shireen: I wanted to also make the point that any type of learning or educational training doesn’t need to wait until you have a trans athlete on a team or at your campus, or they make a varsity team, etc. It should be part of an inclusive anti-oppression training, full stop, for sports educators, coaches, admin, support staff. We shouldn’t only try to combat transphobia when we meet or love someone who is trans, that’s not how this works. We need to start being proactive in terms of our understanding and unlearning, and with that strive to become inclusive because what happens is you’ve already created a culture of inclusion and a sincere attempt to learn so when somebody comes there you’re not staggering around trying to figure out what to do, you’ve already got somewhat of an understanding of how to be and how to make things seamless. This is an incredibly fraught process for…I mean, if we just think about what we're talking about, we’re literally talking about the lives of people. I find this appalling on every conceivable level.
Jessica: Yeah.
Shireen: So, I think that it’s not a lot to ask us to not be assholes, really. It’s not.
Jessica: Yeah. And as Lindsay said before, the more inclusive we are, the more inclusive we are! [laughs] The better everyone is in the end by being inclusive. It feels so simple when we talk about it, and yet here we are. I know we’re focusing a lot on the US today and rightly so because what is happening here is terrifying, just absolutely terrifying. But I also want to make sure that we’re clear that transphobic policies or laws in regards to sports are a worldwide problem. Shireen, you wanna tell us a little bit more about that?
Shireen: Yeah, let’s go international for a second. In episode 170 Jessica did burn the World Rugby federation and their horrifically transphobic policies, but then flip side to that, England Rugby were our torchbearers in episode 178 when they announced that they would not be adopting the guidelines set out by the governing body, which I love, this type of resistance within sport. I think it’s really important. I do wanna offer a trigger warning as we talk about gender testing, I think this is important. Although Iran – and people don't know this – actually performs the most gender reassignment surgeries in the world, its position on sports is fairly draconian in terms of allowing athletes. So, it requires mandatory gender testing, including genital testing.
These reports that we're gonna have in the show notes from 2015 that not a lot has changed, and what that was was the mandatory testing is just to ensure that let’s assign these athletes, and this is the football team at one point in 2015 it was actually reported that there was 5 – although they identified as women – they were scientifically deemed as men, and when you don't have policy or you don’t make an intention to unlearn and understand, this is where it gets into the problem.
So then what ends up happening is other countries in tournaments they competed against would report them, and I also find this really problematic. It’s very similar to what we see in the States – mothers of these youth or these parents are telling their kids to tell on, basically, another child, which is very petty and unnecessary, and not to minimize or reduce what’s happening but it’s very much like that in some ways. There’s something else that when we get into the idea of transphobia, that is being weaponized, like a gender identity is being used as a weapon against these athletes.
I wrote about this for Africa Is A Country: Equatorial Guinean player Genoveva Añonma had to undergo gender testing, although she identifies as a woman. It was very much connected to her performance and how well she did which, as Jessica said, is absolutely sexist in its underpinnings, just really really gross. Jiji Dvorak, former Chief Medical Officer at FIFA, stated that gender testing for FIFA requires is a gynecologist or urologist, an endocrinologist, a psychologist and a sports specialist. Just reading that was so upsetting. And the athlete is examined in a manner “to protect the dignity and privacy of the individual and also to ensure a level playing field for all players.” When you need a gynecologist, and endocrinologist and psychologist there, I don’t understand where the dignity piece is. I’m sorry, I just…No, I’m not sorry. It was terrible.
This is from the article as well: “Demanding that Añonma drop her pants at the convenience of CAF officials, isn’t exactly protecting the dignity of a cherished player. Although she pleaded for a proper medical test at a hospital, her request was denied. And she was bullied into a horrific situation of abuse at the hands of CAF officials.” I don’t even know what to say about this. This is horrible, and people could argue that “Oh, that was 2015, we’re coming along” but very truthfully for those of you that know these policies, these have not been tweaked. This is still very much in play. I wanted to draw attention to this because people use words like controversy, “this controversy” – this isn’t controversy, this is an inherent abuse and violation of someone’s bodily autonomy. Let’s not muck around with our words here.
Another example on the international level is England, and policies against trans folks in the FA, the football association in the UK, are quite stark. Yes, they’ve come a long way meaning they’re not horrific in nature, they’ve gone to, like, bad. What the FA does – we’ll also put this in the show notes [PDF] – is in the handbook for guidelines, and it literally states in a little chart box when you are considered to be “female.” Can you imagine the FA sitting around a table deciding this? It’s just infuriating. I’ve had conversations with friends in the UK because I do work there, and they’re like, “Well, it’s very different in North America.” I’m like, no, no no, I think the conversation level and the level of toxicity is global. I don’t think it’s specific to only Turtle Island.
But the way that trans athletes are spoken for and spoken about is also…And your point is taken, Jess, that they shouldn’t have to be there to encourage unlearning, but it’s just the way in which…And I find this very familiar because I am from a community where people talk about us and create policies about us – and I’m speaking specifically about a racialized Muslim community, and I’m not comparing and saying what’s happening to us is as egregious, I’m saying I understand what this is like, I can empathize with being part of a community that you’re treated based on what people think you look like and ought to be, and I hate that. I hate all of it.
Jessica: Yeah, so, this is absolutely an international phenomenon, this kind of hatred, and we know from other LGBTQ hate that it often is traveling internationally. So, we should be paying attention in lots of places. I do want to end on a positive note, because they do exist and I think it’s important to hold onto that in moments like this. There are individual school districts throughout the country that are passing trans and gender non-conforming student policies that are inclusive and good. What is your local school district doing around this? Utah’s bill against transgender girls in sport was defeated in committee; Montana’s bill against medical care for trans youth was also defeated, and Biden’s Department of Education is no longer supporting a lawsuit that Trump’s DoE did support, a federal lawsuit in Connecticut that’s seeking to ban transgender girls from participating in high school sports. So, all of those things are good. We can move towards the good. I know it can be frustrating to listen to all this and feel powerless against the systemic transphobia, so I asked Chris Mosier – an All American athlete, a six time member of Team USA, the first transgender athlete to represent the United States in international competition, the first transgender athlete to qualify for the Olympic trials in the gender they identify, and creator of transathlete.com – to give us some pointers. Thank you, Chris.
Chris Mosier: Thanks so much for having me on. As a professional athlete I know sports has been such a big part of my experience and my life, and every young person deserves to have that opportunity to learn all the great things that you get out of sports. But as you mentioned, we have just a horrible legislative session right now that’s criminalizing and targeting young transgender people, particularly in sports. We’ve seen a range of bills from requiring people participate according to their birth certificate to redefining sex altogether, to the most recent bill and the most horrendous bill which just dropped in Minnesota which would actually make it a misdemeanor for a trans kid to participate in school sports or use the locker rooms according to their gender identity. So, we’ve seen now extreme extreme bills and an extreme range of bills which, when you are imposing jail time on a kid for playing sports, suddenly requiring that a young person has their genitals inspected seems a lot less invasive, which is extremely problematic.
So, there are a lot of ways that folks can get involved in fighting these anti-trans bills across the country. The first would be to go to my website, transathlete.com, to the Take Action page, and see the map and see if there’s an anti-trans bill in your state or in a state that you have friends or family in, some affiliation with. The next thing would be to contact those lawmakers, contact your lawmakers, and tell them that you oppose these bills. We’ve seen more outreach from constituents to lawmakers around these bills than many other bills in the past, and lawmakers have mentioned that in session and it really does make an impact. So whether you call, whether you email, whether you use a form online to send a direct message, write to lawmakers, reach out to your lawmakers and tell them to oppose these bills. And if you have a personal story that you can add on, that’s even better. Share graphics and information on social media to spread the word – many people might not know that these attacks are happening and how critical they are in terms of the larger picture about equality and human rights.
Follow your local organizations doing this work on the ground in each state: there are equality organizations, LGBTQ+ organizations that are fighting these fights. Follow them on social media and follow their newsletters to see what you can do to take action locally, and then finally follow Chase Strangio and myself, @thechrismosier, on both Instagram and Twitter for more updates and action items. You can always go to transathlete.com/take-action for a list of action items and links that you can use to speak up and speak out about these bills. We need everyone to be involved here. We need to sound the alarms and we need to stand up for trans kids and non-binary kids and all girls and women in sport. So, hope that I can count on you to reach out. Thanks so much.
Shireen: Hey flamethrowers, Shireen here. I’m so excited about my interview with Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux, which drops on Thursday – yes, the sensational US hockey women who are literally responsible for crushing the hearts of Canadians in 2018, who are wonderful community activists, guardians of women’s hockey and the game, and also recently announced their retirement.
Jocelyne Lamoureux: It’s important that everyone is a part of the conversation. Gender equity is not just a women’s problem, and it’s not just men who “Oh, I have a daughter, now I want things to be equal,” which is a lot of the time where some of the conversations we have with men start – although it’s better than not having that conversation, it’s just a part of the bigger problem that I think our culture has.
Jessica: Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite segment that we like to call the burn pile, where we pile up all the things we’ve hated this week in sports and set them aflame. Mine is pretty straightforward this week: the men’s basketball team at East Tennessee State University took a knee during the national anthem at a recent game, and so because there’s nothing else to worry about right now every Republican member of the Tennessee senate has signed a letter addressed to the chancellor or president of public universities in Tennessee that begins, “In light of recent news reports, we want to address the issue of our student athletes kneeling during the National Anthem prior to sports competitions.”
It’s exactly as you imagine it. They don’t like and they want them to stop. That doesn’t make it any less anger-inducing though, no matter how much we expect it from them. The coach of ETSU’s basketball team and the school’s vice president of equity and inclusion, Keith Johnson, have very publicly supported the players. In a statement Johnson wrote, “The young men on our basketball team are not entertainers. They are living, breathing human beings who once they step off the court, have the potential to be the next George Floyd.” Yes, that's just it. You have to think of these athletes as actual humans to even begin to consider why they’re protesting, and it’s that bit that seems to stump so many. They could almost be forgiven considering most of our sports entertainment industrial complex flattens athletes and strips them of their humanity that is not in some way tied to their performance on the field or a court.
On the college level our society severely limits what athletes can do or say in so many ways, but we’re years into this now! We’re years into this! And it's clear that many, especially conservatives in this country, refuse to do any work to see Black athletes as people in the world. It’s fucking exhausting but we’re gonna keep pointing it out when it happens. On a final note: if you’re wondering if the GOP in Tennessee is going after trans athletes, you know they are. There’s a bill before the Tennessee senate that would bar all trans youth from sport consistent with their gender identity and require the use of a student’s original birth certificate for classification in sport. Ugh. Let’s just burn all of that. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Shireen, what are you burning?
Shireen: Thanks Jess. This is something, a story I’ve been following for a long time, pretty much forever. As we know, the men’s World Cup is slated to be 2022 in Qatar. There was a report – and I really really wanna highlight the work done by Pete Pattisson, Niamh McIntyre, Nikhil Eapen, Imran Mukhtar, Md Owasim Uddin Bhuyan, Udwab Bhattarai Aanya Piyari. This was a combined team from South Asia that worked also in conjunction with the Guardian and this piece highlights how more than 6500 migrant workers have died preparing for the World Cup in building stadiums, in trying to help with infrastructure. 6500 – from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka – and they’ve died in Qatar working in indentured servitude. This is over the last 10 years.
The results and the data from governments and also from migrant worker rights groups that are documenting this, and there are people on the ground thankfully that are taking in this information and compiling it because it needs to be documented. We’re still a year away from the World Cup and it’s almost like these lives aren’t valued, that this sport and this event is being valued over the lives of people. I would actually say, and reading this article that we’ll put in the show notes as well, is that that number’s actually higher – these are only the deaths that have been recorded. There's then again if there’s abuse and death at the hands of people that are in charge, construction companies or people that bring over the laborers, they don’t report those deaths.
The laborers live in squalor in camps and they work really hard to try and send money back home and their passports are taken, their identification. They don’t have freedom of mobility, particularly in a place like Qatar which is very strict with traveling in and out and that kind of thing. I just…This is the reason that I struggle with this sport. This is the base reason why I hate the World Cup so much, because we enjoy it in the moment, we enjoy the thrill, we enjoy the matches, but this place is literally being constructed on the life and the back and the blood of these people. I want to take that and I want to burn it all down. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Linz, what are you setting aflame this week?
Lindsay: So, I wanna give a trigger warning for sex abuse and suicide; just skip ahead a couple minutes if you wanna skip this one. On Thursday morning John Geddert was charged with 24 criminal charges. John Geddert, for those who need a refresher, was a coach on the US gymnastics team at the Olympics and the founder of the Twistars gymnastics club in Michigan. Geddert was one of the chief enablers of Larry Nassar – he had known Nassar since 1984 and at Twistars Nassar regularly treated and abused young female athletes in his back office. Of the 24 charges against Geddert though, believe it or not, 23 of them had nothing to do with Nassar. The only charge that had anything to do with Nassar was lying to the police. 23 of these charges were for Geddert’s crimes and Geddert’s crimes alone, including 20 counts of human trafficking. His forced labor and excessive training resulted in injury to 19 athletes, all of whom were minors.
There were also 2 counts of sexual abuse against Geddert himself: one first degree and one second degree. Geddert’s abuse and enabling has been long known in the gymnastics community, and 3 years after Nassar was brought to justice it seemed that Geddert’s victims were close to justice as well. But on Thursday morning, shortly after the charges were announced, Geddert died by suicide. This is burn-worthy for so many reasons. First of all, that any of this abuse happened. Second of all, that it took so long for there to be any real movement on his case. And of course the fact that he was allowed to turn himself in, he was allowed this space to make his own decision at the end of his life and take the real opportunity for justice away from the women he abused. I wanna quote two people close to the case.
First of all, Angie Povilaitis, who was the lead prosecutor on the Nassar case. She tweeted, “A lot of folks may not realize how heavy & hard today's news of John Geddert's suicide is many victims or former gymnasts. Speaking to them directly: HE made his decisions & choices-ALL OF THEM. None of the weight of his choices or burdens should be yours to bare.” I also wanna quote Lindsey Lemke, who’s now married and her name is Lindsey Hull now. She’s been on Burn It All Down before to talk about the abuse by both Nassar and Geddert, and she told ESPN, “We can assume this stems from Geddert being guilty and knowing he was guilty. The hardest part about this is that we'll never know. The amount of work that the AG's office has had to put in for over the past three years to finally get to this day, all for nothing. The case is considered done, but we'll never have an actual ending.”
Geddert’s last act was to take more away from the women he had already spent his life abusing. I’m mad at him and I’m mad that we often give these criminals who are white so much more space, and I don't think that he should’ve been allowed to turn himself in. I think he should’ve been handcuffed and taken straight to jail as the charges were announced, and I just am sending love to all survivors out there. This is infuriating and I know a burn pile seems trivial in a moment like this and yet I can’t think of any better use for it. So, burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Now to highlight people carrying the torch and changing sports culture. Shireen, who are the Yes, Finally! More Please this week?
Shireen: Shoutout to SportsNet in Canada for being the first major network in Canada to air women's hockey. The PWHPA's Dream Gap Tour has commenced and will be televised – is being televised! So, find it on SportsNet.
Jessica: Lindsay, who is our barrier-breaker of the week?
Lindsay: This is Team Kenya, for making the finals of the AfroBasket tournament, and especially to their coach, the Australian Liz Mills, who is the first woman to ever lead a men's team in a major continental tournament. So, that’s absolutely thrilling. Go Liz, and we’ll be cheering on Team Kenya.
Jessica: This week’s moneymakers are the Black Women’s Player Collective which kicked off its first fundraiser. According to their GoFundMe page, all the money they raise will go towards “hosting free soccer clinics at our mini pitches across the country, presenting opportunities for kids to attend NWSL games throughout the upcoming season, and producing media that shares insights of Black women and their experiences in both sport and business.” Go get your money, this is great stuff. Can I get a drumroll please?
[drumroll]
Lindsay, who is our torchbearer of the week?
Lindsay: I haven’t been this excited to announce a torchbearer of the week in a long time! Renee Montgomery!
Shireen: Yay!
Lindsay: She is one of the 3 new owners of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream! Kelly Loeffler is out of here!
Jessica: Out, out!
Lindsay: And Renee is not only a co-owner but she's gonna be the vice president and she’s the first former WNBA player to become both a part owner and executive of a WNBA team. This is history-making in so many ways, but look, we talk about ownership a lot on this show, we’ve had a lot of detailed conversations about what we want to see as far as the next steps in ownership, and I cant–
Jessica: This is it!
Lindsay: This is it! Hello! This is it! Congratulations to the Dream, congratulations to the WNBA, and congratulations to Renee for, as she says, cheesy as it sounds, making her capital D Dream come true! [laughs]
Jessica: Aww, that’s good!
Shireen: Aww! Love her.
Jessica: Okay, what’s good with y’all? I am looking at Shireen right now, and [Lindsay laughing] she has a lot of stickers on her face? What’s happening over where you are, Shireen? What’s good with you?
Shireen: I waited! No, I just really like stickers and they’re right here–
Jessica: On your face.
Shireen: On my face. Why not? I’m just happy, and Renee, and I wanted to glitter and shine. Good for me is good food. I’m using these meal kits and the reason I’ve handed over–
Jessica: You’re so consistent on this point, Shireen. [laughs]
Shireen: It’s just so good!
Jessica: “What’s good?” “Good food.”
Shireen: Good food! Hear me, good food, and make me…What are those people called that you give them free stuff and they talk about how good you are?
Jessica: Influencers.
Shireen: Whatever. So, good food. Please send me food kits because I’ve handed off meal prep to my kids a couple of times a week because I’m in class and they love it and it’s really good food and easy and step by step and it gives them a lot of confidence in the kitchen, so, I love that. Then I can just dip and do what I need to do. So, there’s that. I also have baby twin nieces and I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that publicly but I am because I’m very excited, and I’m not allowed to meet them yet, obviously. I need to be vaccinated and they need to be a lot older, and I love them very very very much. They’re the two newest feminists to join the world, and I’m very excited. What else? I’m going skiing tomorrow! I was reluctant in whether I should talk about snow given what’s happened…
Jessica: Sounds cold.
Shireen: I’m so excited. I haven’t been out to the slopes yet. I’m very excited because I love snow and I love skiing and I’m really cute on the hill. But my niece, Yasmin, who’s a ski instructor, we’re all going to Blue Mountain which is about 2 hours north of Toronto. She’s making me wear a helmet and I don’t wear a helmet when I ski–
Jessica: That’s good though. Good for your knees.
Shireen: She was like, no, you have to wear a helmet. And I’m like, nobody wears a helmet! And she’s like, no, you will. But then she explained that if I don’t wear a helmet–
Jessica: Someone has mothered Shireen!
Shireen: I got mothered. My niece mothered me, and I love Yasmin. She’s really…What’s the word? Practical. I’m so annoyed. She goes, “You have to wear a helmet.” I’m like, but I wanna look really cute! She’s like, you can do good eye makeup and you can look cute, and I was like, but a helmet…I can’t look cute in a helmet! She’s like, yes, you can, because if you don’t you’ll look like Beetlejuice because of your bulky wear. And I don’t wanna look like Beetlejuice, so I will be wearing a helmet.
Jessica: That’s good news. I’m with Yasmin on this, so that makes me feel good that Shireen will be wearing a helmet. Lindsay, what is good with you? I assume you’re not going skiing tomorrow.
Lindsay: Definitely, absolutely not. [laughs] 100% no. What’s good is that a lot of people in my life are vaccinated right now, and I feel very lucky. There’s actually a family lunch today for my aunt’s birthday and I was like, wait, this is really dangerous, what’s happening? Then I realize I’m the only one in the group not vaccinated.
Jessica: Wow, good!
Shireen: Wow!
Jessica: Well, not that you’re not vaccinated. But they are.
Lindsay: Most of them are above 65, so they’ve already gotten theirs. Then my cousin is a healthcare worker, so she’s gotten hers too. I was kind of like, oh, this is…Yeah, okay, this is cool! [laughs] This is good. It’s gonna be a long time before I get vaccinated I think. North Carolina is actually going pretty slow. But it’s exciting to see and to feel progress and that’s kind of keeping me going, you know? I’ve been reading a few things lately that have been pointing out that it's very easy to point to the worst case scenario and want to shame people and want to fret forever, and I think a lot of us – I know I have – have almost clung to that as kind of a coping mechanism though all this because we’re so mad at the people not taking things seriously who got us to this point. But the truth is it’s okay to feel like things are getting better and it’s okay to find ways to make yourself happy and to be around loved ones right now, so that is kind of keeping me going.
Jessica: Yeah. That’s lovely. I think our own Amira has gotten her second shot and whenever I think about that that makes me so thrilled. So, my what’s good is related to Amira because for many weeks now she has been pressuring me to watch WandaVision, which is the new Marvel Cinematic Universe show on Disney+ and I was always gonna watch it but she really after this latest episode was really, like, you’ve gotta do this. Actually, after episode 7. We’re now on episode 8. So finally Aaron and I did it, we binged it in 2 days, the 8 episodes of WandaVision that are up so far, and it is so good. It is so smart, it is so devastating, I will say. It’s about grief and trauma and Wanda dealing with death and…I don’t know. I don’t wanna say she’s not dealing with it well because grief is its own mess for everybody, but she’s a super powerful person who…So, her dealing with grief has huge consequences in ways that it doesn’t for other people. But I just think this show is beautiful. It reminds me of why I loved the first season of Jessica Jones, like, this deep dive on a superhero and what it is actually like to live as one of those people in the world when you deal with actual issues. It’s really great.
So, kudos to Amira for putting that pressure on me, and then the other thing this week that made me so happy – if you follow me on Instagram then you know all about this – is that I made a glazed orange bundt cake in one of my new bundt pans that my parents got me, and it’s the most beautiful bundt pan that’s kind of this swirl looking thing, and the cake came out beautifully. I had to zest a bunch of oranges and then juice them by hand in order to make it, but it tastes amazing, it looks so beautiful. It’s almost gone now but I took a million pictures, as if I was taking its yearbook photo or something. I took a million photos of this thing. It was beautiful, it tasted good, it made me so happy.
Shireen: I have questions about WandaVision. I’ve been reluctant because I don’t know if I have the capacity to deal with sad stuff–
Jessica: Episode 8 wrecked me.
Shireen: Oh, Jess. Oh my god.
Jessica: It did, I’m not gonna lie.
Shireen: My kids are watching it and Mustafa and I are hanging out alone for a couple of days, my youngest, and we ended up watching Frozen 2 together, which was lovely.
Jessica: Oh, which is so good. Yeah. I think we’ll see how it ends. I’m not sure how I’m gonna feel when it’s all over so maybe just wait til the whole thing has aired and then I can tell you whether or not you feel bad or good at the end of it.
Shireen: Okay. Let’s do that.
Jessica: Because after episode 8 I just…It ended and I was crying so hard.
Shireen: Kay, no. Why don’t you let me know, give me a yay or nay and tell me. [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah, I will. But it is so good.
Shireen: And lastly before I finish my what’s good, I just wanna shout out all the amazing curlers in Canada. The Scotties Tournament of Hearts wrapped up – we’re recording Sunday morning so we don’t know who the champs are yet, but this is a really big deal. Curling Day in Canada was yesterday and I’m really heartened by it because I love curling. It’s really really fun. I didn’t get to watch as much; I will watch today though and definitely will watch the championship. But I just wanna say curling is a lot of fun. Do I wanna see it more diversified? Yes, absolutely. I did have a quick conversation with Claire Hanna who’s been on the show before to talk about curling. There’s a lot of goodness in curling, it's kind of an underrated sport. But really it’s legit. So, yay, Scotties.
Jessica: Okay, so, this week what we are watching: Athlete’s Unlimited volleyball season has started. It's airing on the CBS Sports network and FS1, so check listings for times. The PWHPA Dream Gap Tour has also started, as Shireen mentioned. Their Chicago matches are this upcoming weekend: you can watch Saturday’s match on the NBC Sports network and for Canadians Sunday’s match will air on CBC Sports. That’s it for this episode of Burn It All Down. On behalf of all of us here: burn on, and not out.
Our producer is Tressa Versteeg, Shelby Weldon does our website, episode transcripts and social media. You can find Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If you wanna subscribe to Burn It All Down you can do so on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. All of the places. For information about the show and links and transcripts for each episode check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. From there you can email us directly or go shopping for our merchandise. As always, an evergreen thank you to our patrons for your support. It means the world. You can sign up to be a monthly sustaining donor to Burn It All Down at patreon.com/burnitalldown.