Episode 11: Reigning Women
In Episode 11 of Burn It All Down, WTA Insider senior writer Courtney Nguyen joins Lindsay Gibbs, Brenda Elsey, and Jessica Luther. They ruminate about sexism in tennis, the U.S. Women’s Open being played at Trump National Golf Course, and where Title IX is headed under the new secretary of education. Then they burn some stuff and praise some bad ass women before capping it off with the games they’re excited to watch this week.
This week’s episode is dedicated to Touna, our co-host Shireen Ahmed’s dear cat, who passed on earlier this week and has been a furry friend of the show. Rest well, Touna.
Intro (1:26) Wimbledon re-cap (4:23) How tennis media treats male and female players differently and how they get stuff wrong about women (10:36) Different child care accommodations in men’s and women’s tennis (13:38) Wimbledon champion Muguruza, her coach, Conchita Martinez, and Spanish media (18:00) when a national tennis press corp isn’t used to a top-ranked female player (21:36) back-to-back female grand slam winners with female coaches (22:18) court scheduling issues on Manic Monday at Wimbledon (29:30) U.S. Women’s Open was played at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, over the weekend and the literal intersection of politics and sports (45:50) Title IX under the new secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, and what that means for the issues of equity in sport and gendered violence on campuses (57:27) Burn Pile – Courtney burns British media (1:01:55) Jessica burns the Mayweather v. McGregor press tour (1:03:25) Lindsay burns the IOC (1:05:18) Brenda burns FIFA (1:07:33) Bad Ass Woman Of The Week: Venus Williams (1:09:01) Honorable Mentions: Wimbledon Champion Garbiñe Muguruza (1:11:49) Judy Murray (1:14:54) Girls Travel Baseball (1:16:22) Sporting events we are looking forward to this week (1:20:58)
Links
No Challenges Remaining podcast: https://nochallengesremaining.podbean.com/
Azarenka on family-friendly tour policies: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/tennis/wimb/2017/07/05/victoria-azarenka-speaks-out-wta-tour-family-friendly/452239001/
Conchita on Muguruza: https://elpais.com/deportes/2017/07/12/actualidad/1499855244_626939.html
Court scheduling: http://www.tennis.com/pro-game/2017/07/williams-vs-ostapenko-at-wimbledon-as-court-questions-arise/67523/
How Donald Trump is ruining the U.S. Women’s Open: https://thinkprogress.org/us-womens-open-trump-eb7375c2cd94?gi=6f7522cc1ce2
Why LPGA stars wouldn’t criticize Trump: https://www.sbnation.com/golf/2017/7/13/15956260/donald-trump-us-womens-open-2017-lpga-bedminster
Brennan on the USGA and sexual assault: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/brennan/2017/07/11/usga-denounce-sexual-assault-u-s-womens-open-donald-trump/469245001/
Fears about Title IX: https://thinkprogress.org/how-the-trump-administration-is-systematically-attacking-title-ix-21bde2f73fc6 and https://thinkprogress.org/betsy-devos-could-be-bad-news-for-womens-sports-5f82bccd678b
Title IX and the courts: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/15/opinion/fighting-college-sexual-assault-in-the-trump-era.html?_r=1
Burn Pile:
Mayweather vs. McGregor’s hellish press tour: http://deadspin.com/mayweather-drops-the-word-faggot-on-mcgregor-in-the-p-1796935588#_ga=2.34530785.1704286046.1500341497-1825753096.1466477751
IOC and Rio debt: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2017/07/09/ioc-balks-at-helping-rio-with-35-40-million-olympic-debt/103560604/
Women in Iranian soccer stadiums: https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/vva9am/stadiums-are-still-closed-to-women-in-iran and https://www.rferl.org/a/iran-soccer-karimi-shojaei-women-stadium-ban/28606648.html
BAWOTW:
Venus v. Muguruza in the final: http://www.wtatennis.com/news/wta-insider-live-blog-wimbledon-2017-day-12-final-venus-williams-vs-garbine-muguruza
Girls Travel Baseball: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2721039-girls-travel-baseball-team-mlb-youth
Transcript
Jessica: Welcome to this week of Burn It All Down. It may not be the feminist sports podcast you want, but it's the feminist sports podcast you need. This week our panel includes guest co-host Courtney Nguyen, a senior writer and podcaster at WTA Insider. She is also the co-host of the tennis themed podcast No Challenges Remaining. She joins us today from London, the basement of Wimbledon, actually. Lindsay Gibbs, a sports reporter at ThinkProgress in Washington, DC. Brenda, Elsey an associate history professor at Hofstra University in New York. And me, I'm Jessica Luther, a freelance journalist based in Austin, Texas. We have a great show for you this week. First, we're going to talk tennis, specifically about sexism that keeps popping up in the sport in different ways, but I'm sure we'll also fawn over these last two weeks of play at Wimbledon. Then we'll discuss the US women's open being held at Trump national golf course, and what is happening with Title IX under the new secretary of education. We'll cap it off with the burn pile and our badass woman of the week. So, let's jump right into topic number one. Lindsay, tell us about tennis.
Lindsay: Hello, everyone. This is my favorite topic, as you all know, to talk about. Unfortunately Wimbledon is over, but what a fortnight it was. As of this recording, we have Garbiñe Muguruza, who has taken the women's title with a commanding 7-5, 6-0 performance over our dear Venus Williams. Also, just to give everyone a lay of the land, our doubles champions were Elena Vesnina and the Ekaterina Makarova who took out Hao-ching Chan and Monica Niculescu in a double bagel, meaning they did not drop a single game. Men's doubles was quite the opposite, where you had Lucas Cobbote and Marcelo Melo taking out Oliver Marach and Mate Pavić 13-11 in the fifth set. Wimbledon is I think the only place besides Davis Cup that does five sets for men's doubles. And it's a bit ridiculous. As we are recording, this is Sunday morning and Marin Čilić and Roger Federer are just taking the court to battle it out for the men's title. And I should note that there will be a Brit winning Wimbledon this year. In the mixed doubles final, we have Jamie Murray and Martina Hingis who are taking on Heather Watson and Henri Kontinen, who are I believe the defending champions of the mixed doubles tournament.
So, we will not know the winner of that, but want to give everybody a shout out. Of course, here at Burn It All Down, as Jess mentioned, we're going to keep this focused on a topic that rears its ugly head every single year, which is sexism at Wimbledon. In my opinion, tennis is always a really interesting sport to look at the difference between how we treat genders and sport. This is a topic I write about across the sporting landscape, but for tennis you have this case where the women are making equal money to the men at the majors, they're playing on the same stage as the men. So it's the same tournament officials who are treating them and dealing with them. And it's also, for the most part, the same media who is talking about them, you know? You don't have the exact same media talking about the WNBA and the NBA, because there are different people on different beats. But at the tennis tournaments, the media is kind of one entity and they take the men's stories or the women's stories as they come. Of course, there are definitely always some who don't take any women's stories, but we can discuss that as we go. [laughs]
So, I always think it's interesting to look at the ways that women are not treated equally at Wimbledon. This year we had, among other things, court scheduling, some media issues and, I don't know, just a whole array of topics. So we're going to get into that. Courtney, you are in the basement of Wimbledon, literally. I wanted to bring it to you. I know that you get an up close and personal view of especially how the media treats the genders differently at Wimbledon. Was there anything that stood out to you this particular fortnight that was different?
Courtney: It's always interesting at Wimbledon, as you said, Lindsay, because every time this tournament rolls around, a lot of the same topics come up. There are these pet topics that, whether it's because it's the British media that kind of drive it, and obviously there's the beat writers within the British media who are alongside me every single week as we go to tournament to tournament. They know their tennis, they know the players, they know the backstories. But you also have the local media and what they call the news media here, who kind of parachute in, don't have relationships with the players, don't care to have relationships with the players, don't care if they piss somebody off or, or not. And they're just really driving headlines and trying to get clicks. And so whenever Wimbledon comes around, you start to see the same sort of topics, you know – grunting in tennis, equal prize money, a lot of fashion type stuff when it comes to discussion of the women.
This year, I think one of the big topics early on in the first week that was really reminding me that sometimes male sports writers just are a little out of their league, [laughter] or maybe they're just not quite as sensitive to kind of the things that the women go through. But a lot of the discussion around Victoria Azarenka's pregnancy…It just became nonstop, every single time. And Azarenka, as if people don't know, former number one, two time major champion. For a long time, when she was up there at number one, many considered her to be the only challenger to Serena Williams on the court. They had great matches. Serena would end up beating her generally in the slams, but on the tour level, Victoria Azarenka was always right there and really, really pushing her in a way that, like, for example, we don't see with Maria Sharapova and some of the other women on the tour, the marquee names on the tour.
She took about a year off, had a son, gave birth in December. And Wimbledon was just her second tournament back, which means that it was really the first tournament where Vika kind of had to deal with the mass amount of press kind of delving into her pregnancy and her comeback and all these sorts of things. And it just was mind-boggling to me as she's playing a great tournament at Wimbledon, she made the second week, which is fantastic for her. Got some great wins, you know, ended up losing to Simona Halep in straight sets on Manic Monday. But like 90% of the questions were about the baby and about being a mom on tour. And some of them were legit, you know, obviously it's a big part of her storyline, and she's happy to talk about it.
But the whole time that I was in the room, I was just kinda standing there thinking like, this woman's in the midst of competition, like, she's playing matches, matches that matter greatly to her. She's making a charge to basically try and win the US Open this coming fall. The X's and O's still matter. But at the end of the day, everybody wanted to focus on the baby and “How has it changed you?” and “How has being a mother changed you as a person?” and all these…It just got really old, in my opinion. And then of course there was the big moment that kind of went a little bit viral with a Swiss male reporter asking her, I think after her second or third round, win. The question was basically posited as, “There's been no tennis player that is balanced being a professional on tour and being a parent, like…” and I genuinely thought he was going to say Kim Clijsters, but no, it was Roger. It was Roger Federer. [laughter]
Jessica: Oh my gosh.
Courtney: And the kicker…That’s that's the shot. Here's the chaser. The kicker was, you know, “Do you take inspiration from him?”
Jessica: Oh my gosh.
Courtney: “As a parent on tour.” And bless Vika, she doesn't really fall for anything like that. And she said no, I got zero inspirational from Roger. I'm pretty sure we're in different situations. [laughter] I was in the front of the room because the room was packed, and so I was standing against the wall almost to the right of Vika. And I looked at all the women in the room, and everybody…We were all just exchanging, you know, Jim Halpert looks at each other, like, is this happening right now? Did that question really just get asked? It's that sort of thing where I'm kind of like, really? You really do think that it's the same for Roger Federer traveling with an army of nannies? The father who can sleep in a separate room with kids who are at this point kind of grown up? That it's the same for Vika traveling with what is a 16 month old child? And the different stresses. But the backlash to me calling that out was really surprising. I don't know why it was surprising. I should know better. [Lindsay laughs] But I was on a BBC breakfast show the next day, and I was saying, you know, yes, I do think that it's different for a woman to have a child on tour than the men, because there are just certain things that women can do that men don't have to do and that women have to do.
And the female presenter interrupted me and I think she was trying to pull the feminist card and it was like, well, hold on, everything's equal and the men can do things now and they take…I’m like, no, a six month child? I'm pretty sure there are certain things that only Azarenka can do, [Lindsay laughs] to the extent that if she's nursing, you know, all these sorts of things. Just like, really? Do I have to get in on this, you know, on the BBC right now? And those are those moments, you know, whether it's that, or Andy Murray calling out the casual sexism of forgetting the Williams sisters. It's nonstop sometimes in tennis, because as Lindsay said, the men and the women, the beat writers, you know, the players play side by side and then the writers are charged with writing on both. And a lot of times, sorry, fellow guys in the room, you're just not equipped to talk about the women in a sophisticated or even intelligent, basic way. And it's very, very frustrating.
Lindsay: Courtney, I think one of the things that really struck me about Vika was when she talked about the accommodations for mothers on the tour. Did you know about that? That there were just different childcare accommodations for the men versus the women, because it's so rare for the women to travel with their babies?
Courtney: It's interesting because I didn't know that there was a difference. So, I didn't know that the men had full blown nursery facilities at their tournaments. For the women, I knew that tournament to tournament it does vary. And so much of that has to do with…You know, obviously this is the big anniversary of equal prize money at the slams. And ever since that happened, people kind of assume that the men and the women are operating on the same financial base. And the thing about it is, and I hate saying it, but equal prize money is a bit of a misnomer on the tour level when you compare the ATP versus the WTA – forget the slams. But you compare the tour levels, the financial payout is massively different. There's a huge delta. So much of that has to do with the money that's going into these tournaments. And so therefore, a lot of the tournaments that we do have on the tour level maybe don't have the resources financially to provide for childcare and things like that. And so for the women, you know, Victoria Azarenka is not the only mom on tour. There are lower ranked players that do travel with their children who have taken time off and had babies and come back. They don't have Vika’s millions. They travel with their husbands who oftentimes are their coaches or part of their team. There's a lot of kind of…It’s cute. I mean, you go to the player lounge at some of the lower level tournaments and it's other players babysitting the kids while mom's out on the court playing.
Jessica: Oh, wow.
Courtney: I've been in instances where we had one player, Kateryna Bondarenko, and a couple of years ago at a tournament in Stanford she was out there playing Elena Svitolina, who's now the number four player in the world, and the baby was literally courtside, sleeping kind of under the tunnel. And her husband, who was also her coach, had to kind of stand over there and watch as his wife was competing in this really brutal third set. And the baby woke up and started crying, and on the changeover she could hear it as she's trying to play this match. She ended up losing, and was devastated by the loss because it was a big opportunity for her. But then she has to run off and immediately take care of the kid. And the dad literally was like, sorry, I don't know what to do. The baby's crying and only mom can take care of her right now, you know? And these are the things that, again, kind of happen in the shadows outside of the spotlight of the top players that we're definitely aware of. And I do hope that Azarenka, as she said in her press conference, becomes spearheads that change. I mean, we're going to have another high-profile baby soon on tour with Serena Williams. So I suspect that they'll be quite the models for change.
Jessica: Wow, thank you so much for that. That is so interesting. And as much as I know about tennis, I didn't have any idea. I didn't even think about that, which kind of blows my mind. Brenda, I wanted to bring you in. One of the things that we wanted to talk about with tennis this week is Muguruza and specifically her coach, Conchita Martínez. Can you tell us a little bit about what you were reading about Conchita this week?
Brenda: Yeah, thanks, Jess. So, this week I spent a lot of time perusing the Spanish media about Conchita Martínez because she's just come on, as I understand, pretty recently, though she's been the Davis Cup coach for quite a while. But she's come on recently. And so it's been fascinating to watch how El País treats her, and other Spanish media like El Mundo and stuff. And what I've found is that they have this caricature that they've built about Conchita Martínez as a snippy, cold a personality or a firecracker. It goes back and forth. Like, either she's dynamic and explosive or she's snippy and cold, and it's kind of this negative portrayal that I see coming up again and again. But I find it fantastic to see the generations of women here. I mean, Conchita Martínez is the only Spanish woman who's won Wimbleton until now. And she played Venus. And so I think that's so amazing to think about that. And when the Spanish press was going on and on and asking, you know, “How's your player doing? Garbiñe seems super cold.”
Lindsay: Oh, god. [laughs]
Brenda: That's what they kept saying. That was the question they just kept hammering her. “She seems really cold. She doesn't seem herself.” and Conchita was great. She said, “She's perfect.” She's perfect. I have no idea what you're talking about. So, the entire tournament, she just like shut them down in this fantastic way, which of course she must have a lot of experience with, because she's been dealing with captaining the men's Davis Cup squad for Spain, which is a huge deal. I've just been fascinated to watch her, because as much as Garbiñe’s been concentrated in her game, man, Conchita’s just shutting down the Spanish press around it. She is fine. She is not cold. She is perfect. She is what we call concentrated, fellas. She is focused, you know? And I'm sorry she doesn't want to kind of pal around with you, but she's perfect. So, I just was really happy for them both. And I said it was really a beautiful thing that a former player who played Venus would now be coaching her own. And it just seems like they could have done a great series on that, that they didn't, you know? What does that mean, to see the development of the women's game, and things like that over time. So, anyway, that's what I've been doing this week in Spanish media. I'm always a little scarred when I pay too much attention to Spanish media and its coverage of women. [laughs]
Jessica: That's so interesting. And didn't she…You were telling us before, like, she's gotten a bunch of pushback within Spain for being the coach of the team, which we've talked before on this podcast about, how rare it is for female coaches in tennis, just generally, even on the women's side. So like, her presence is a big deal just in that fact, but then she's also gotten pushback within her country for being the coach of the Davis Cup? Do I have that right?
Brenda: Yeah. I mean, most prominently what I've seen is criticism coming from Rafael Nadal’s uncle Toni, who was his coach also until quite recently, and his sort of criticism and implication that he should have been chosen for that position. Which seems odd, because Conchita Martínez has a lot more experience playing and coaching a variety of players versus her nephew. And so yeah, she's gotten criticism kind of all around on that point, but Toni Nadal most prominently, at least from the research that I've done, has been her primary credit. And he has retired right now from coaching Nadal, as far as I understand. Correct me if I'm wrong here. [laughs]
Courtney: He’s about to, yeah. You’re on it.
Brenda: Yeah. So I think Conchita is gonna come out ahead in this, like, I think she's managed it just with a ton of grace.
Jessica: Courtney, what are your thoughts on what's going on with Conchita and Muguruza in all this discussion?
Courtney: You know, so often when you have these national press corps…And again, it's an interesting thing within tennis because you are charged with covering the entire sport. But the way that it works, especially outside of the States, is that you really do focus on your national players. And when you don't have…You know, in the States we are so spoiled because we constantly have top women in the WTA. So the men who are sportswriters in tennis are actually really well equipped. They've lived through it. They're great. I have to say that about my colleagues. But in other countries, when they get their breakout star, the star that now deserves the attention and the coverage, they're kind of just not trained with how to do it. And one thing that I've really found, you know, following not just Muguruza but maybe for example Britain with Johanna Konta, they have a player who's in the top five on Monday and it's been a long time since a British player has been that good. Simona Halep, it’s been a long time since a Romanian female player has been that good. The national press doesn't know how to deal with it.
And so these basic things about…Like, Garbiñe Muguruza is a professional. She’s professional in the way that she goes about her business. The fact that she does not sit there and smile and flirt with you during interviews, she doesn't make you feel good and make you feel, oh, this is just a lovely fun interview. They ended up internalizing that and it becomes part of their writing. “She's cold, she's uninteresting, she's boring.” You know, like Johanna Konta had a great run to the semifinals, losing to Venus. They were like, “She's having a great run here, but she just doesn't engage with the crowd enough. That's a problem.” It's like, oh my gosh, you guys have not had a British champion here in 40 years, and this is what you're complaining about? She could win this tournament! What are you talking about? They just can't focus on the tennis. It's so difficult for them to do it. And so they're constantly trying to find other angles. And I don't think that necessarily they mean too. I mean, I know a lot of the Spanish reporters and they're great people, but that's what they focus on, is they're so much more inclined to focus on personality and spin things negatively than to focus on a person’s tennis and just be like, she's good, she's your two time major champion, she’s potential future number one, she's putting Spanish women's tennis back on the map.
And so with Conchita, I can absolutely understand her reaction being that way. And so often you'll see with some of these women who stay in the game for a long time, it's a lot of times the sins of like 10, 15 years ago. Maybe the Spanish media who are still around, they didn't like Conchita then, they don't like her now. And it all kind of comes up. And because, you know, we see this all the time when it comes to women's media or women in pop culture or whatever, if there were more Spanish champions, if there were more female tennis players who are Spanish in the top 20, maybe things wouldn't be that big of a deal to them because they'd be desensitized to it all or they'd be used to kind of the way that the women's tour is. But everything is so alien to them that it's so frustrating to hear about their coverage and to see their coverage, because they just don't bring any nuance and they don't try to. They just don't care to.
Jessica: I don't want to necessarily go here, but it does remind me of maybe like a political campaign season that we might've just gone through. [laughs] Lindsay, do you have thoughts on Conchita?
Lindsay: Well, I just want to just very quickly note…I mean, this is obvious in our talk and if you've been listening, but it needs to be stressed. We've had two back-to-back grand slam champions with female coaches, and that is incredible and very rare. So, you had Ostapenko who had Anabel Medina Garrigues coaching her, another Spanish player. And then now we have Conchita Martínez. And for a sport that has lacked female coaches and for the men who have taken over the titles of the super coaches, this is a huge deal. And I hope to see a lot of writing on it. Although I’m guessing I won’t. [laughter]
Jessica: It's like you have experience on this, Lindsay. The last thing that I live to talk about with tennis for now in the podcast is court scheduling. I feel like there was a lot of fervor on Manic Monday as it's called at Wimbledon this last week around court scheduling. And I feel like this is like real inside baseball for people who don't follow tennis. So like, Courtney, will you talk us through what were people upset about? Why does court scheduling matter so much? And like, why were people so upset about what happened this year?
Courtney: Sure. I mean, court scheduling is a funny thing. And as you said, it's very inside baseball. But when you're sitting at home and you're watching, court scheduling doesn’t matter. Let's just put that out there. You see a court, it doesn't matter. The players play and it's fine. But it is seen as an issue of respect and an issue of opportunity, you know? At the end of the day, if you schedule certain players not on the center courts, not on the big courts, what you're saying is that we just don't think that they're worthy of it. And at a tournament like Wimbledon, which prides itself in kind of being this arbiter of what is worthy or not worthy, or the pursuit of greatness is their motto. It's taken very, very seriously when they disrespect or it's perceived to be that they've disrespected great champions. And so on Monday…And again, just a little bit of background, there's multiple courts here, obviously, at Wimbledon. The two main courts are Centre Court and No. 1 court. In both of those courts, play starts a little bit later on those courts. It starts at 1:00pm, and there's typically only three matches scheduled on those courts.
Now, that's in stark contrast to the French Open, the Australian Open and the US Open, where typically there are four matches minimum scheduled on those courts. So, with three matches on each of those courts, there's inevitably going to be an imbalance. And at Wimbledon, it's almost always favored the men in a vast…I mean, it's not even worth looking up the statistics. It's just always two men's matches, one women's match. Occasionally they'll mix it up, but they definitely didn't do it here. Throughout the first week, Venus Williams was never put on Centre Court. She's a five-time champion here, and she'd never been put on that court. On Monday, she finally got the position on Centre Court, and it was ironic because actually the match that she was playing kind of didn't deserve to be on Centre Court. Like, it wasn't one of the best matches of what was the incredible day of women's tennis. You had world number one Angelique Kerber and Garbiñe Muguruza shunted to No. 2 Court. You had Simona Halep and Victoria Azarenka shunted to No. 2 Court.
So it was a bit of an odd schedule, and it comes down to and opened up the discussion of why does this always happen at Wimbledon? Every year we talk about how in particular Serena and Venus have always kind of gotten the short end of the stick here at the club in terms of their court assignments. You know, you would never see the number one male player, regardless of who he is, having to play on No. 2 Court or No. 3 Court. And yet, in years past, we've seen that with Serena and we've seen that in terms of like the multiple champions. We've seen that with Venus, you know, really have to stick in until the second week until she gets onto Centre Court. And so it's opened up a discussion. Andy Murray, the feminist that he is, and the only person that really will speak out on these issues with respect to the men, he was on the BBC and he said I don't see why Centre Court and No. 1 Court can't start earlier and we put four matches on there, and then you can have two women's matches and men’s matches. Easy done and dusted.
The tournament will most likely say no, we like our tradition. And also, you know, we don't want tons of matches played on the main show courts because that's where all the matches will be played towards the end of the tournament, and grass does wear down – that’s another storyline for this tournament. So, it's all a thing, but I think at every tournament there's always an instance where you look at the order of play that comes out the day before, and you're like, well, that's weird. Why wouldn't they put this woman on this court? It’s just an easy thing, I think, for the All England Club to fix. And maybe as Murray keeps bringing it up or supports it, maybe it'll change. But they do love their tradition here.
Jessica: Yeah, they do. I mean, I think one thing that's interesting about…You know, this is the 10 year anniversary of Wimbledon finally doing equal pay for the winners, and they were the holdout, man. They like their traditions in ways that are problematic maybe is the nice word. Lindsay, do you have anything on court scheduling?
Lindsay: Just that I'm over it, [laughter] as far as this keeps happening every single year. I feel like every single year I write an article on it. Last year, I wrote about Venus Williams calling them out. I know that it just keeps happening and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. People know that these are signs of respect, and so when you're deciding that these matches are worth less and should be valued less, it turns out they end up being valued less, you know? These things do matter, and like we've said, there's an easy fix here. This is not rocket science. We can fix this. So, let's fix it.
Jessica: Courtney, last word on this?
Courtney: Yeah, just like what Lindsay was saying, you know, the constant refrain from people who were anti equal prize money is “nobody cares about the women,” that broadcasters don't pay for it. They want to see people queue up overnight in line to see the men. We gotta give the people what they want. But here's the thing: Johanna Konta and Simona Halep played an incredible quarterfinal match. That match in Britain on the BBC, they canceled the 6:00pm news, which is like a big deal apparently, to continue to hold that match on BBC One, the primary BBC channel. That match peaked at like 7.5 million households, which is more than what Rafael Nadal and Gilles Müller two days before got in their five set epic that ended 5001-5003 in the fifth set. [Jessica laughs] If you give them the stage, if you give them the opportunity, these women will surprise you. And to the extent that the club or any situation in tennis – it's not just at Wimbledon, this happens everywhere in tennis, but it's particularly onerous at Wimbledon because of how they schedule the main courts.
You know, you're constantly forcing the women uphill, and you're constantly stacking the deck against them. And as somebody who covers the tour on a daily basis worldwide and travels with them, like, this is the fight that we fight every single day, is this uphill battle to get the women in front of the camera, to get them in front of microphones, to get them in the paper, to get people to care about them. And when you limit that, don't sit there and friggin’ complain to me that nobody cares. It just doesn't work that way. It's incredibly infuriating.
Jessica: Let's talk about a different space right now where the cameras are on a women's sport that doesn't necessarily get that all the time. So, the US women's open is currently happening at Trump national golf course. Brenda, you wanna walk us through…I mean, I think maybe that little teaser explains why there's news about this, [laughter] but do you want to give us more on this?
Brenda: Yeah. This is the 72nd iteration of the US women's open, and it's running from July 13th. It started Thursday, wraps up the 16th, today, Sunday, and it's at Trump national golf club. This is in Bedminster, New Jersey, and it's also gotten a lot of attention because the prize money is up to $5 million this year, which is as high as it's ever been. And of course, since the election of Donald Trump – this was already scheduled, by the way, years ago. But since the election it's become a lightning rod for those who wanted it to be moved and those who were very excited that Donald Trump might be involved, appear, you know, it has some sort of association with it. And even several US senators…And Lindsay has a great piece on this this week at ThinkProgress, so she’ll talk about this too. But several US senators urge the USGA, the United States Golf Association, to move the tournament. And they did so because of “a pattern of degrading and dehumanizing women.” And so this has really sparked a big conversation beyond golf, and both supporters and protesters showed up. Trump himself appeared. People were wondering if he would or not. And there were chants of “make America great again” and then there were signs protesting.
What kills me about this issue is that the USGA executive director Mike Davis says that “this isn't about politics,” which implies that protesting this is a partisan position. So basically people that think women and immigrants deserve respect are making what I consider to be a human rights, basic human rights issue, a partisan issue. Like, “Well, I disagree with you about a budget, and we need to spend X on the military defense.” That's a political argument. Women shouldn't be sexually assaulted is a universal human rights argument. So it makes my ears smoke when I hear Mike Davis say that this is a political issue, because it casts the people who have objections to this as somehow like angling to do this, you know, self-serving stuff. So anyway, it's been going on, and a couple of things jumped out at me. And one is that the membership to Bedminster or Trump national golf club is $300,000 a year. So–
Lindsay: Christ. [laughs]
Brenda: I’m just going to throw that out there. I don't know how many people can afford that. But one of the ways that Trump has sort of ingratiated himself in the LPGA, which doesn't run the tournament, but obviously is connected to it, is by offering young top talent membership to these golf courses. [Jessica groans] And he has not just one, but he says himself that he owns almost 20% of golf courses in the United States. I have no idea if that's true, but that's something he's actually said. And a number of top golfers, like Lexi Thompson, says she loves playing golf with Trump. Natalie Gulbis, who's now not a top player but certainly was, spoke at the Republican National Convention on behalf of him. A lot of people have expressed being really happy. And then there's this really awkward thing happening for me, or a changing landscape that I'm trying to understand, because when you look at it, only 1 of the top 10 women's golfers is from the United States.
So, for the last 10 years, it's been a majority of international players, especially from China but also Korean players, Thai players. And so it's kind of fascinating because you have this really global sport and then you have an injection of this figure who's been really polarizing in terms of immigrants. So, the one person that I saw was Lizette Salas who expressed her dismay. She’s Mexican American, both her parents are Mexican. And her dismay about how she felt upset about the immigration talk around the Trump campaign. And so she was the only one I found that had actually come out to express some dismay – not about the golf itself, but about that politics. So, I don't know. I'm just really curious as to what's gonna happen with this within golf.
Jessica: Lindsay, you wrote about this this week, and you called this a lose-lose situation. Can you talk more about who we should be looking at here around this issue? A lot of focus has been on players. How do you feel about this?
Lindsay: I would love to. As anyone who knows me or follows my work, I love athlete activism. I love when athletes speak out and use their voices and use their platforms, especially female athletes. I do not think that the anger that people who are frustrated with the things that our president stands for, I don't think that that anger should necessarily be focused on the players, in this case. I think it should be firmly placed with the USGA and the LPGA for allowing this to continue when they could have stopped this. Mainly, it's because golf is so conservative. These women are playing already for a much smaller part of the pie than the men are. They're fighting for attention. I mean, look, the LPGA is a very healthy professional sports league. Don't get me wrong. These women are doing really well. But it’s not anywhere near the money that their male counterparts are making, and they don't get the benefits that tennis does of sharing the stage.
So, you've really got to think that this is their biggest tournament of the year. They play for an audience that is overwhelmingly male, white and rich, which we know that demographic skews overwhelmingly conservative. Trump has, of all the things I can hate Trump for and do speak out against Trump for, he has been a supporter of the LPGA tour throughout the years. And for many of them he's been, you know, he's invited them to play. Natalie Gulbis said he used to talk to her about equal prize money. Now, I don't think that these are things that we should all say and start getting a soft spot for him. But there are things that these golfers have experienced. I just think that these players are in, like you said, Jess, a lose-lose situation. I know that Cristie Kerr was asked by a New York Times reporter…They were doing a piece on this and she was doing an interview with a New York Times reporter. She happened to be doing this interview within a house on the course because it had just started raining during a practice round.
So, Karen Crouse was asking her a question about Trump and, you know, the politics of this all, while she was in someone's kitchen who had let them come in from the rain. And while she was answering this question, which was a very mild way to answer, but saying that yes, his bullying can be problematic, but that it wasn't a “I hate this guy” or anything, or, you know, “down with Trump.” It wasn't a very resistance-filled message. But the owner of the house started filming her, and she said she felt really uncomfortable and she wanted that to stop. And then he essentially kicked her out. I mean, not in so many words, but it got to the point where she felt like she couldn't say anything bad at all about Trump while she was in this person's house who was giving her shelter during the rain, and he was giving other players shelter as well.
But I think that just really sticks to the conundrum that these players are in. Most of their sponsors are conservative. Most of their fans are conservative. The people who are running these events are very, very, very conservative. And if they speak out, they're risking a whole, whole lot in a career that is very fragile. There's no guarantees. It's like in tennis, you're not playing under guaranteed contracts here. You have to go out every week and win in order to make a living. So, I really think that it's ridiculous that the USGA allowed it to get this way. Let me just be very clear about this. There is no de-politicizing an event that is held at the golf course owned by the current president of the United States. [laughs] Like, you don't get to stick to sports when that happens. It's natural that reporters are going to be there. They're going to be asking questions, especially when there's a president who has been so demeaning to women.
The USGA I think addressed, broached the subject of moving this tournament in 2015. So this tournament was awarded in 2012. They broached the subject of moving it in 2015, when Trump first announced his candidacy, and essentially Trump threatened to sue them and they felt that they were stuck. They said, well, that's it. Look, the USGA has a lot of money. This is not owned by the women's tour. This is owned by the USGA. They have a lot, a lot of money. And I think it's really sad that they backed down as opposed to just taking a stand then and just saying, look, we don't support this. And I'd also like to say that it's ridiculous that Trump wouldn't allow that and that he has now gone to this event so much, which is slowing down the play. The players are having to go through so much extra security because he's there. And also there's a thing that he's tweeting and promoting an event that is held at a business that he is profiting for while he is president. [laughter]
Jessica: Oh boy. Courtney, so, golf and tennis often get compared a lot in the ways for female and male athletes and, you know, talking about the two different tours and all these sorts of things. What kind of comparisons make sense here? Which ones don’t? Like, what is your takeaway about what's happening right now with the women’s open?
Courtney: Yeah. I mean, so much of it sounds familiar for me as someone in tennis, insofar as like the women players getting dragged into conversations they had no business starting. They're not even a part of it, but they get put into situations where they become somehow the lightning rod because they do speak up or they don't speak up or they speak up in the way that you don't want them to. And it becomes this whole mishmash of things. You know, so long as we've seen it in tennis, even recently this year, you know, Simona Halep, a Romanian, there was a big ol’ up during a Fed Cup tie between Romania and Britain, and their Fed Cup captain Ilie Năstase, the nasty one, as we know, from the old days in tennis, ended up just, I mean, verbally abusing the British team, the British captain, making some highly sexist remarks against Anne Keothavong, the British captain. Like, they have to do a ceremonial handshake, and he asked her what her room number was. This is all like in public, in front of everyone, and things like that. And somehow the ire then focused on Halep and what she would say and what she wouldn't say. And, oh, you know, she went so far as to say that was unacceptable, and that she doesn't agree with it, and things like that, but she didn't go so far as to say that he should be banned from tournaments, and all those sorts of things as well.
I remember going onto Twitter and defending her a little bit to people who thought that she didn't make a strong feminist statement, and kind of saying, you guys realize she's Romanian, right? She is the number one female athlete in Romania. She has been well-supported by Ion Tiriac who owns the tournament that was in question. She is not in a position to beat back on the man who helped fund her career while she was younger. I mean, these are things that are…And why are we, again, focusing on what Simona Halep said or didn't say, as opposed to what Ilie Năstase did? It just always seems that whenever a man does something idiotic and stupid, and then the women say or don't say what people want them to say, it's like, oh, well, they're stupid or they're not helping the cause. Things like that. I mean, in tennis, even in the States since the election, you've had a handful of players, women, who have just been quite open about how they feel politically about the situation. And you've had a lot that have completely been silent, and that's okay too.
But invariably, I don't know. It just seems like the women are always the ones that have to bear the brunt of it. And it's incredibly frustrating, even for…I know in tennis, with the Russian players, in the wake of all of the Russian hacking stuff and all this stuff with Putin, you know, they get constantly asked, you know, “What's it like being in America? Does it feel weird?” And you know, all that. And the Russians are like, dude, this has nothing to do with us. What are you talking about? But I don't see Russian men's players being asked those questions. It's a very odd thing. It’s a lot of times just the women getting dragged into conversations that they have no business being a part of. It’s not their fault that they're in them, and then everybody judges them – and harshly, more often than not – for what they say or what they don't say. Again, it's just incredibly frustrating.
Jessica: Brenda, last word on this one.
Brenda: Just that I agree with Lindsay too, in regards to bearing the burden here will be the USGA. And I think there's going to be a lot of serious questions going forward because it's emerged that Bedminster is actually not ranked as the best place to even hold this tournament. And so why they would've made this deal and how it's being used to put forward a brand, a business brand of a political figure, is something I think that they're really going to have to grapple with, because even if their fan base is incredibly affluent, and even as their website says “the most sought after sports fan base in the world,” because Rolex, period. [laughter] It's still something you're going to have to deal with if you want a fan base. I mean, look, younger people are the ones that you also want to capture, and they may or may not respond to that. So, it'll be really interesting to see going forward.
Jessica: Yeah, one thing that happened that was very interesting was Christine Brennan, who is like a pioneer female sports reporter, she really went in on the USGA. She continually asked at a press conference, “Does the USGA have a position on sexual assault?” Because of all the things that have been reported about the current president of the United States whose name is on the golf course that these women were about to play at. And they didn't want to give her an answer basically, like, in-person they dodged her. They finally – she said three hours later – a spokesperson sent her an email that basically said the USGA has a longstanding policy on harassment. “Our staff code of conduct prohibits any workplace harassment,” that sort of thing. Very generic. In the column that Brennan wrote about this, she wrote, “The largest untapped market for golf is girls and women, especially the daughters of Title IX. Millions upon millions of them who will remain athletic for their entire lives, presumably with a fair share of disposable income,” right? She's really looking forward here as like, where's golf going to go? And the USGA needs to be really aware of that.
The last thing that we wanted to talk about today is actually Title IX. And I hope you guys will indulge me a little bit. It's very hard for me to speak quickly about this issue, in part because I know a lot about it. But so this week, the new secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, she made news when she had a day of closed door meetings with advocacy groups about guidance for Title IX. And so I want to explain why she was doing this and what it means. And so for those who don't know, Title IX is a federal education statute. It was passed in 1972, and it's actually only 37 words long, and this is really important. And I actually want to read it, because a lot of people don't even know what Title IX is. So, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” That is the entirety of Title IX. And what it means is that the federal government, they're not going to give money to an educational institution that will then use that to discriminate, right?
And we have similar measures. There's Title VI and the civil rights act around race; Title II, disability rights for people with disabilities. So, we need to be really clear in this conversation that Title IX is a civil rights issue. It's about protecting civil rights. It's about creating and maintaining equal access to education, no matter a student's sex or gender. Okay. So because the statute is only 37 words long, the department of education, they're the ones tasked with setting guidelines that tell institutions what they have to do in order to be legally following Title IX. And so some of these guidelines get flushed out in court when institutions get sued. But mainly it's the federal government setting these guidelines. And so, until a few years ago, the most well-known application of Title IX was increasing gender equity in sport. That's still a big part of this, but DeVos, the thing she was meeting about this week was to talk about what the DOE, the Department of Ed, under her watch is going to do about Title IX guidelines in regards to issues of sexual harassment, dating violence, stalking and sexual assault.
So the idea here is that if you're a victim of gendered violence, it's likely your access to education will be impeded if you have to share space with the person who harmed you. And I want to say it again: Title IX is about civil rights and access to education. So, there are a lot of opponents to these guidelines, which were put into place in 2011 by the Obama administration. These opponents are people who say they've been falsely accused of harassment or assault but punished as if guilty. These are people who shout about things like “due process rights” as if this is a criminal court of law, rather than a civil rights matter. These are people who claim, like Candice Jackson, the top civil rights official at the DOE – and you heard me right, this is a top civil rights official at the DOE – people who claim like she did this week that “the accusations, 90% of them, fall into the category of we were both drunk, we broke up, and six months later I found myself under a Title IX investigation because she had just decided that our last sleeping together was not quite right.”
Lindsay: Jesus.
Jessica: Oh my god. Flames on the side of my face.
Courtney: Same.
Jessica: Okay. So, she had to later retract and apologize because it was a blatantly false statement, right? These opponents are people who feel that the system is stacked against the accused, not the person who reported. And so it's tilted too far in that direction. So this week, DeVos met not just with survivors of assault and advocates who work with them, but with these opponents, these men's rights activists and accused rapists. So far, she hasn't said what she'll do about it. But the Trump administration has been very hostile to civil rights so far. I think that's, you know, a pretty objective statement actually. And she did say, DeVos did, at a press conference, that the stories of those claiming to be wrongly accused of campus sexual assault “are not often told” – which is wrong, and a men's rights activist talking point.
Okay. Okay. So, we don't know where Title IX is headed. We don't know what this administration will mean for how schools will handle harassment and violence on campus, or what it will mean for how they manage equity in their sports programs, right? That matters too here. Okay. So, that was a lot. Thanks for letting me say all and sticking with me. I want to hear you guys' thoughts. If you'd just like to scream into a pillow for like two minutes, that'd be fine too. But Lindsay, why don't I throw it to you. Where are you on this right now? How do you feel after this week?
Lindsay: [laughs] I don't feel great, Jess. I don't feel super great. I went into all of this with Betsy DeVos and with Trump, and I very quickly, along with some of my colleagues, kind of planted out the worst case scenarios here. And I think even in the back of my mind, as I was planting this out, it seemed so bad that it just didn't seem like…I think I hoped that I was being alarmist, you know? Like maybe all these things people say about the media are right. [laughs] And I'm just being ridiculous. And it's turned out to be worse than I could have ever, ever imagined. And I think that Jess pretty well covered the impact that all of this will have on the sexual assault statutes of Title IX, which has been such an important part of the way that the law has developed throughout the years. But also that part is still very new and we still have a long way to go with that part. And so it's very frustrating that any progress we have just recently made is now seeming like it's going to not just stop, but go be thrown off the cliff. And that goes beyond just how damaging their actions are, but the words matter too.
I know that girls don't report sexual assault when they're victims because they're afraid. They blame themselves. They think about statements like the one the DOE said this week, that people think that 90% of it is just regret. These are things that girls and women internalize, and then it keeps them from not only seeking, you know, any sort of justice or protection, but from seeking any sort of mental health or any treatment options that they might need, whether it's for their physical or mental health, because they just blame themselves. So it’s just the most damaging thing. But quickly, I just want to elaborate on how the fact that the Title IX, that they are rolling back the budget for the office of civil rights. That's not just going to impact the sexual assault parts of the statute, but this is also really, really bad for LGBTQ rights, especially for the transgender community, because there have been a lot of people who are now in the office of civil rights who basically do not believe in protections for the transgender community, and instead believe that the rest of us women need protection from the transgender community, which of course is just the opposite.
And the ambiguity that the office of civil rights is making with their statements, refusing to follow the transgender guidelines that were set forth by the Obama administration, this is already creating a sense of lack of clarity and, like I said, ambiguity that is already wreaking havoc on the local level because students and parents don't know what their rights are when they're coming forward for cases of discrimination. And look, this also impacts athletics. I know that people think that the athletics portion of Title IX is done and that's already been accomplished. But the truth is that 80% of the complaints that go to the office of civil rights about Title IX are athletics related. That means that they are from women and girls in sports primarily who do not believe that they are being given equal access or equal treatment for sports. And so when you slice your budget and you take down the amount of these cases that can be considered and looked at, that's going to disproportionately impact athletics because that's where 80% of the complaints are coming from.
And look, right now, 2 in 5 girls are playing sports in school now, compared to just 1 in 27 before Title IX. So even though 2 in 5 girls are now playing sports in school compared to just 1 in 27 when Title IX was enacted, girls still have 1.2 million fewer opportunities to play sports in high school than boys, and girls are still twice as likely as boys to enter sports later in life, drop out of sports earlier in life, and be more inactive overall.
Jessica: Yeah. And we know that it's so important, what you get from playing in sports. Like, I've probably talked about it on this podcast before, but the United Nations has even done studies on this. Like, how incredibly important it can be. So, this is critical, right? Brenda, as a faculty member at a university, do you have something that you'd like to say about all this?
Brenda: I’m crying inside. I really am. The university functions only when students and faculty can feel safe, and that's how you have free exchanges of ideas. And that's what makes you as higher education a sought after place to be. It is the bedrock of what we do, and we are failing miserably. Faculty need to be leading the campaign to protect Title IX. We need to be educating our students, our colleagues, our representatives. I mean, what is tenure for, right? The reason tenure is there is so you don't get fired for trying to protect civil rights, for trying to make sure they happen. So if you have tenure, get yourself together and fight for Title IX! Get active in shared governance. You'll remember in Rutgers a few years ago, it was the faculty that forced Tim Pernetti to resign as AD, right? It's the faculty that can do that. They have that power in many universities. It's different in every one, and the administration will try to keep you out, but you have to keep knocking on that door. And so, you know, it is your job and your mandate. And I just feel like we really need to step up our game here.
Jessica: Yeah. This is such an incredibly critical issue and it feels like a really critical moment for it. I will say, the one thing about Title IX is that it is a law, and a lot of what's been worked out so far has been in law courts. No university has ever been punished by the federal government for violating Title IX to the point where they remove their federal funding, which is sort of the one big punishment that the federal government can do. The place where universities have had to pay is when they've been sued in court. And so, you know, that will continue, no matter what happens with these guidelines. And so that's like the one glimmer of hope that I hold onto at this point. Okay. So, after all of that, now it's time to release some of our aggression in the part of the show that we call the burn pile, where we pile up all the things we've hated this week in sports, and then set them aflame. Courtney, why don't you kick it off?
Courtney: I'm happy to kick it off. And I have just the right thing to start the burn pile, because everything that's burning needs a little bit of like kindling, right? So, paper is a really good way of doing that. And I gotta throw the British tabloids under the bus here. You know, one of my favorite things, kind of a guilty pleasure, I suppose, whenever I come to Wimbledon or when I'm in the UK, is to go through the British tabloids, because you do read them, they're around you pick them up. And it's just absurd headline after absurd headline. You just see, you know, just a lot of not casual sexism, just right and outright sexism in headlines and how they cover in particular women's tennis during the fortnight. And it's frustrating. And I feel like I’ve finally reached my tipping point where I no longer…It's kind of like how I used to love reading US Weekly, and then Britney shaved her head and had her meltdown and I was like, yeah, no, I no longer read any tabloids whatsoever. Like, you guys create this beast and I can't do it.
So, yeah, this was finally the tipping point. The piece in question that finally threw me over was Johanna Konta, as I was talking about before, British number one, she beat Simona Halep in a great quarterfinal. And so she had already won and I kind of thought, well, you know, obviously all the coverage will be about Jo making the semifinals and potentially becoming the first British female champion at Wimbledon in 40 years, which would be amazing. But so they did do some of the write-ups about the match, but then they also had to build in – and this was particularly the Daily Mail, or the Daily Fail as we all know – wrote a side story or embedded into their match report the fact that Simona Halep, when she was a teenager, had a breast reduction surgery.
Jessica: What?!
Courtney: So, it was all of this stuff about, yeah, she had breast reduction surgery – here are before and after photos. She went from a 36DD to whatever she is now. I don't know. And all this. And it helped her tennis, blah blah blah. And I'm like, really? This is in your match report? Like, with photo, with picture, with everything? And I was like, dude, I'm so over you guys. Like, I'm done. I'm just so done with all of it. They go into press conferences, they completely misrepresent what one player says to try and create discord with another player. They always key in on marginal controversial things that aren't even controversial. Like, oh, you know, it seemed like you got mad at the umpire there. It's like, no, not really. You know, they just missed a call and I was just correcting it. And then it's like, you know, blah, blah, blah player has a row with umpire over…And it's such…Because you have to understand Britain's role within tennis. They are the ones that drive the conversation, whether we like it or not. Wimbledon is the tournament that it is within the tennis calendar. It is the crown jewel, whether people like it or not. The spotlight on the sport is no brighter than at Wimbledon.
And so when casual tennis fans – or casual people, not even tennis fans – are picking up the tabloids and they're getting their news from them, which Britain still has a very robust print media landscape, and that's the way that the women's sport is being covered? You know, “Here's Johanna Konta’s muffin recipe.” [laughter] It's like, that's fine if that's one of a hundred legit pieces that are being written about her tennis, but when that's literally the only angle you have, like, screw you. I don't like it. It's really, really infuriating. It just makes me so, so mad. My shoulders right now are up at my ears. I can't do it anymore. I just can't. It used to be funny because it used to be a bit of a novelty. But now that I cover the tour full time and I see how much these women work and how much they sacrifice and how much it kills them to do this sport and the sacrifices they have to make, to have everything so trivialized for clicks and have a rabid public eat it up like it's fact? I just want to slap everyone. It just pisses me off to no end. So, British tablets, sorry, done with you. Never again.
Jessica: Burn. Burn it. So, my burn pile this week is pretty obvious and I just don't care because I want to do this. So, Floyd Mayweather, a perpetual visitor to the metaphorical burn pile, he's going to fight Conor McGregor. I think. I mean, I guess. I haven't really paid much attention to it. I assume it's a boxing match. But even with my ostrich-like attempt to avoid this thing, it was almost impossible this week to do that because the two were on a press tour promoting this fight. Patrick Redford at Deadspin titled it The press tour from hell, which is probably like a nice way to say what happened this week. It has been a sexist, racist, homophobic mess. I don't even want to begin to describe the things that these men have said to each other, about each other. It is truly disgusting. And so even if I was being the most gracious that I could possibly be and say that this is a performance and not necessarily who these men are, and I don't really think that's true, but even if I was going to say that this, it would just show how gross the sport is, that this is the type of performance that they think fans want to see. Is it possible, you guys, for me to wish to never hear anything about either of these men ever again, and that wish to come true? [laughs] I just want to burn it. So that's mine this week. Burn it.
Courtney: Burn it all.
Brenda: Burn it.
Jessica: All right, Lindsay, what do you have for us?
Lindsay: Oh, you know, our good friends, the IOC. [laughs] The International Olympic Committee, the corrupt people who hold one of my favorite events. So, that is a constant struggle for myself. But look, this week there's tons going on. They had these big meetings. They approved a plan to award dual Olympic hosts, which essentially is paving the way, people are assuming, for in September the official vote to come down to have the Olympics in Paris in 2024 and Los Angeles in 2028. I have been doing a lot of talking with some Olympic organizers and anti Olympic organizers in Los Angeles this week. I'm going to save that stuff for when I actually write my piece when I know a little bit more, but let's just say it's all crap. [laughter] But this week's specific thing I would like to burn is that the IOC has balked at helping the Rio Olympic organizers pay a debt estimated at $35 to 40 million. Rio is still in drastic debt from the Olympics that were awarded to them when they had the Olympics when their economy was at an all time high. And by the time the Olympics were held, their economy was at an all time low, and things were a disaster in Brazil. And right now, Rio is trying to pay this debt, but it also owes a lot of money to police, teachers and other public employees who are being paid late. So, that is super fun. And now the IOC will not bail them out, and so teachers and public servants are going to continue to go unpaid in Rio. Burn.
Jessica: Burn. Alright, Brenda, why don't you bring us home?
Brenda: Okay. It's the week of repeat offenders. In this case, FIFA. So, for the past 38 years, there's been a ban on women in sports stadiums in Iran, and these brave ass women protest their exclusion all year, every year. Okay? And one example is a group called Open Stadiums, sometimes known as White Scarves, which is a grassroots organization that these women founded seeking to reverse the ban. And so they've been fighting for decades, but there's been a recent upsurge in vocal support from male soccer players, which is amazing. And given that the Iranian national soccer team has just qualified for next year's World Cup, they seem to recognize that this is a good moment to press on this issue. So last month, Iranian national soccer team captain Masoud Shojaei used his meeting with president Hassan Rouhani to ask for him to remove the ban, which is pretty amazing. And then this past week, Iranian legend and former Bayern player, Ali Karimi, followed up in similar fashion, which is flipping amazing. And maybe he can start a woke dude movement with Andy Murray. [laughter] I'm not really sure, but it would be an amazing alliance there.
But it's really the women who need to be, you know, amplified here, because they've done all of this stuff, right? And so, despite facing prison and other forms of violence, they're out there trying to be able to take public space. But Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, in his cushy Swiss office, is like, hmm, that seems like troubled waters to enter. That seems like a little controversial. So, I'd like to throw Gianni Infantino into the burn pile for his astonishing cowardice, because if these women can get out and…I mean, what does he have to lose? Honestly. Just to support these women and these Iranian players who are also trying to be good allies. So, FIFA and Infantino, once more, I'm throwing you to the burn pile.
Jessica: Burn.
Courtney: Always burn.
Jessica: Now, let's celebrate some awesome women. The badass woman of the week is Venus Williams, and Venus Williams is our badass woman of the week because quite simply Venus Williams is the best of what sports is. Over the last two weeks, this 37 year old woman who has an autoimmune disorder that zaps her energy, she made a remarkable run at Wimbledon. The five time champion was focused, tough and poised. She started the two weeks with an emotional press conference regarding a fatal accident she was a part of earlier this summer. During Wimbledon, the police determined she wasn't at fault, though I'm sure that doesn't lessen the emotional angst of the entire thing. But she powered through each round and her play was remarkable. She was a joy to watch.
I'm so thankful that I got to grow up alongside Venus and Serena. I was born in between the two of them. And I still get to watch her play. Like, every time that I see her now, I still think, I'm still watching her play at this high level. It's so exciting. She lost in the final, and I think we're going to get to Muguruza in a second. But when asked if she had a message for her sister, Serena, who is currently off tour because she is pregnant, Venus said, “Oh, I miss you. I tried my best to do the same things you do. But I think that there will be other opportunities. I do.” I do too, Venus, and I can't wait. And that is why she is our badass woman of the week. Lindsay, honorable mention?
Lindsay: Yeah, definitely. Look, Venus did not play incredibly well in the final. And that is because of Garbiñe Muguruza who I think could have literally beaten anyone the way she played that Wimbledon final. It was remarkable. I like Muguruza a lot, and her game is incredible. She's got some attitude, she's got some personality. And look, I think she's great for the game. She's now won her second major. Every time she's made a slam final, she's faced a Williams sister. And imagine like you're growing up watching…Like, she was a kid watching these players, and now she's in her early twenties and they're still there every time she makes a grand slam final. [laughter] Like, I just think that's hysterical. But she's beaten two of them, so she's won two out of three of the grand slam finals she's been in, and lost to Serena once, beat Serena once, and now beaten Venus. So, there can be zero asterisk there. And look, I hope that she finds this week-in week-out consistency that we want from her. But if this is all we get, I love it. So, thank you Garbiñe. I also want to give a shoutout to Karolína Plísková who is I believe the 23rd WTA number one. Is that correct?
Courtney: Bingo. The 23rd.
Lindsay: Good. So, she did not become number one in the fashion that I know that she would have liked to, there was not a crowning moment on Centre Court. She lost in the second round to Magdaléna Rybáriková who made it all the way to the semifinal. So, that was not really a horrible loss by any stretch of the imagination. But if you want to hear about Plísková, you should listen to Courtney's podcasts, both No Challenges Remaining and the WTA Insider, where she really likes to talk about how much she loves Karolína Plísková. [laughs]
Courtney: I love her.
Lindsay: And I don't blame her. I think I'm probably quoting Courtney here, that if you had a tennis factory, you could create Karolína Plísková. And look, in my mind, these two players I'm talking about right now, Muguruza and Plísková, I see so much of the way the Williams sisters changed the game in these two players, from the power to the serving. I mean, one of the reasons that Plísková is so impressive is that her serve…She's the only player…I’m not gonna say she has a better serve than Serena Williams, because I think people would kill me, but her serve statistics are incredible. So, I'm excited for the WTA, and as sad as I was to see Venus lose in the final, the WTA is in great hands, as I tweeted, old, young and in between.
Jessica: And Courtney, you have one more tennis honorable mention for us, yes?
Courtney: I do because it's all about tennis. Give us our moment. But yeah, my badass woman of the week, it goes to Judy Murray. Just because, if it couldn't be Venus for me – which it is, so it's fine – Judy Murray gets the honorable mention because she not only is such an incredible representative in terms of just tennis within the UK and specifically Scotland. But she raised two of the wokest boys on the on the tennis tour in Sir Andy Murray and his older brother Jamie Murray, who was actually playing in the mixed final today. And Judy Murray, for those of you who don't know, yes, she's the mother of Andy Murray and Jamie Murray. As a single mom, basically was shuttling the boys around and pretty much built their games. I mean, she coached both of them from when they were very young. She scrapped together the finances to be able to send Andy to Spain, to train alongside Rafa when he was younger. You know, she was the one that kind of went to Jamie and said, look, it doesn't look like it's going to happen for you in singles, and we don't have the money to support a singles career. Maybe you should focus on doubles. And he became the doubles number one.
She's amazing in every single way in terms of how she represents the sport. And what I really find so admirable about Judy is everybody talks about Andy and Jamie, but what she does on the grassroots level for tennis in Scotland and in the UK is incredible. Because she really thought that Tennis Scotland would use the Murray brothers’ success to really build Scottish tennis, she's been disappointed by how slow they have been to capitalize on Andy in particular. So she has gone around, she has this thing called Miss Hits, which is a bunch of clinics that she drives around in a van from tennis club to tennis club, getting young girls to fall in love with the sport, you know? Brings them rackets, brings them tennis balls, runs them around, shows parents – and this is really important – educates parents, look, tennis is, especially in the UK, an expensive sport. She didn't have the money, but she shows them, like, the boys, they learned how to be competitive. They loved competing with each other.
It rains all the time in Scotland, in Dunblane where they're from. So we in the living room, I would just blow up a balloon and they would play tennis in the living room with the couch as the net. There are ways to foster athleticism and love for the sport that don't involve, you know, paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to a local club to get court time. And that's really what Judy Murray is trying to teach parents, to teach young coaches, to teach young kids, especially young girls. I think we're going to see a huge boom with respect to women's tennis in Britain in the future, and it will be not because of the LTA. It will not be because of any federation. It won't be because of Jo Konta and it won't be because of Andy Murray. It'll be because of Judy Murray and the non-stop work she puts in. She's a badass lady and I have so much respect for her. So thank you, Judy Murray, for everything that you do in tennis.
Jessica: That was wonderful! I also want to talk about girls in youth sports. So, this week I wrote a profile for Bleacher Report about two all girls youth travel baseball teams. They're called Girls Travel Baseball. The girls in the piece are all somewhere between 10 and 13 years old. They all also play on travel teams where they're the only girl on the team. And they all just love baseball so much, and they want to be able to play it as long as possible, which is actually a really difficult thing to do, for girls in this country, even though baseball is our national pastime. Most girls get shuffled out of the sport of baseball before they hit double digits in age. The piece got a ton of positive responses. MLB teams were reaching out to the girls, the Baseball Hall of Fame contacted the organization. Kate Fagan named them her hero of the week on ESPN’s Outside the Lines. It was so exciting.
At the same time, they got a ton of backlash, mainly from men, some from boys, who just can't stomach the idea that girls play baseball or would want to dream of playing in the majors or whatever the hell it is these people are upset about. I don't understand it. And you know, these girls are just on the cusp...lot of them have social media, so they weren't, you know, sheltered from this response. And so I just want to give them a shout out this week. These girls are amazing. I was proud to meet them and get to write about them, and I want them to keep being badasses. All right. So, last thing on this episode, you guys, what sporting events are you looking forward to this week? Bren, what are you looking forward to?
Brenda: I am looking forward to the Euros. This is UEFA’s women's cup. So, for those that don't follow women's soccer, it's a continental tournament contested between the different national teams, and it kicks off Sunday, today we're recording, in the Netherlands. And since Europe's very much been the cradle of tournaments since the 1980s, it's super exciting that now it's 16 teams. It's expanded. So, the group stage powerhouse match for this week I would say is between Sweden and Germany, which revisits last year's Olympics game where Germany beat Sweden in Rio to win the gold. So, Sweden's coach, the former US head coach Pia Sundhage, and the German coach is Steffi Jones. So you've got two brilliant former players coaching. It should be the chess game of the whole tournament. So I'm really excited about that. And that's today. And then look for sentimental rivalries. One of the great things about this tournament is the frenemy matches – Scotland-England, Spain and Portugal. But for those more elegant and technical football fans, France should show up and I'm always a sucker for that team, and they're playing Iceland. If you want to watch it, it's on ESPN and Univision. And so I'm pretty psyched about that this week.
Jessica: Courtney, I think you might also be looking forward to some soccer/football?
Courtney: I am. I don't get to watch a ton of other sports just based on my travel schedule. So I'm finally going home back to California on Monday, very excited about it. And I'm very excited to kind of have a few days, at least, or a couple of weeks to get right back in with the NWSL. I'm looking forward to Saturday's showdown between the Chicago Red Stars and the Orlando Pride. They are two teams that I really enjoy watching. They're two teams that have a lot of the US women's national team players that I enjoy. So, the Red Stars are #2 at the table at the moment, behind North Carolina, and the Pride are down at #6, but the Red Stars are chasing that top spot. And yeah, I'm just really looking forward to settling in, cracking open a beer and watching Alex Morgan versus Christen Press. Marta! I just love watching Marta, and seeing her with the Pride is awesome. Julie Ertz, Sam Kerr. I mean, it's going to be fun. I'm looking forward to it. I just want to watch some badass ladies play some sports other than tennis, because obviously they do in tennis, but I need to see something different.
Jessica: Lindsay, how about you?
Lindsay: Yeah. On that theme, I'd like to focus on the WNBA. I have a very exciting trip this week. I get to go to Seattle on a reporting trip for ThinkProgress where I'm going to be working on a few stories, but a couple of them are WNBA related. I am going to be there as the Seattle Storm take on the Chicago Sky on Tuesday night. And this is their game where they're officially partnering with Planned Parenthood. So I will be there at the rally they are holding before the game, and I'll be there during the game. And I'm excited to talk to the players and to witness this historic moment in athlete activism. I will also be at the WNBA All Star game in Seattle on Saturday, so I'm going to book in my trip with two really exciting WNBA events. I am already practicing being composed around all these WNBA All Stars and just really can't wait. I mean, it's a really great lineup. I hope the injuries…We had a couple of injuries on Friday night. You have Brittney Griner who is now out for three to four weeks.
Jessica: Oh no!
Lindsay: Which is really sad. She was not voted as an All Star starter, which is ridiculous, because she's having an MVP season, but she would have likely been there as a reserve, but now will not. Elena Della Donne was also injured, as was Tayler Hill, and we're not sure the updates on their injuries, but regardless there should be a great lineup. And I think that game might actually be on ABC and there will be a three point competition. The WNBA hasn't done a three point competition in quite some time, but there will be one during halftime. So, everybody tune into that. It'll be fun.
Jessica: Wow, that all sounds so exciting. I'm really looking forward to the Euros and to the WNBA All Star game. So that's what I will be watching this week. Thank you all for joining us. This week's episode is dedicated to Tuna, our co-host Shireen Ahmed's dear cat, who passed on earlier this week. He has been a furry friend of the show, and we know how much he will be missed. Rest well, Tuna. A huge thank you to Courtney Nguyen for co-hosting with us today. Courtney, it has been a pleasure. Where can our listeners find you on the worldwide web?
Courtney: Thank you. Big fan of the podcast, so this has been so much fun. You can find the stuff that I do for the WTA at www.wtatennis.com. Also on the WTA Insider podcast, if you want to keep track with the women's tennis tour on a weekly basis; the No Challenges Remaining podcast, and I'm on Twitter @fortydeucetwits.
Jessica: This week's episode of Burn It All Down was co-hosted by Brenda Elsey, Lindsay Gibbs, and me, Jessica Luther. It was edited and mixed by Ellie Gordon-Moershel. If you would like to check out more of Ellie's outstanding work, her website is elliegm.com. You can find Burn It All Down on Facebook and Twitter. If you want to subscribe to Burn It All Down, you can do so on Apple Podcasts AKA iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Google Play and TuneIn. Show notes and links for each episode or on our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You can also email us from the site to give us feedback. We'd love to hear from you. And if you enjoyed this week's show, we'd love it if you'd share this episode with friends on social media. And please rate the show at whichever place you listen to it – the ratings help us reach new listeners who need this feminist sports podcast but don't yet know it exists. Please take some time to check out our GoFundMe page and consider making a small donation. We really want to improve this podcast and make it a sustainable endeavor. We're really grateful to everyone who has contributed so far. That's it for Burn It All Down, until next week.