Episode 217: How Sport Protects Abusers
**TW: This episode contains content about domestic violence and sexual assault**
In this episode, Shireen Ahmed, Brenda Elsey and Jessica Luther start the show with their most memorable first day of school moments. For the main topic, they discuss how Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse (DVSA) reports are handled (and ignored) in sports. They talk about the various actions and in-actions taken by professional leagues and individual organizations to address DVSA reports, which has oftentimes protected the abusers. They also discuss the challenges journalists face in properly reporting on DVSA in sport and getting these stories published in the mainstream media.
Following this discussion is a tease of Shireen's interview with Kelly Lindsey, former coach of the Afghanistan Women's National Football Team, on how soccer was used in recent weeks to get Afghan athletes to safety.
Next, they burn more sports garbage in the Burn Pile. Then, they celebrate those shining light, including Torchbearers of the Week, the Canada National Women's Hockey Team who won Gold at the 2021 IIHF Women’s World Championship! With a dramatic overtime goal by Marie-Philip Poulin, Canada beat Team USA 3-2. Lastly, they wrap up the show with what's good in their lives and they they're watching this week.
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
Problems with the NFL’s Deshaun Watson Investigation: https://www.si.com/nfl/2021/08/13/the-problems-with-deshaun-watson-nfl-investigation
Benjamin Mendy: Manchester City player to remain in custody on rape charges https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-manchester-58408990/
Olya’s Story https://racquetmag.com/2020/11/05/olyas-story
Alexander Zverev: domestic abuse allegations https://slate.com/culture/2021/08/alexander-zverev-domestic-abuse-allegations-olga-sharypova
What we know about the Trevor Bauer case, and what we’ll never know https://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/story/2021-08-20/what-we-know-about-the-trevor-bauer-case/
2019: As WNBA faces domestic violence problem, new commissioner stresses ‘protecting the brand’ https://archive.thinkprogress.org/cathy-engelbert-wnba-commissioner-domestic-violence-policy-8be584f318f1
2019: Astros Staffer's Outburst at Female Reporters Illustrates MLB's Forgive-and-Forget Attitude Toward Domestic Violence https://www.si.com/mlb/2019/10/22/houston-astros-roberto-osuna-suspension/
2018: Sports Media Is Finally Covering One of the Biggest Stories of the Year. Why Did It Take So Long? https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2018/10/09/sports-media-is-finally-covering-one-of-the-biggest-stories-of-the-year-why-did-it-take-so-long
2017: Her Name Is Kathryn – The Woman Who Accuses Ronaldo of Rape https://www.spiegel.de/international/cristiano-ronaldo-kathryn-mayorga-the-woman-who-accuses-ronaldo-of-rape-a-1230634
2016: The legacy of the Kobe Bryant rape case https://archive.thinkprogress.org/the-legacy-of-the-kobe-bryant-rape-case-6a42f159be7b
2016: The deafening silence surrounding sexual assault in football media: https://www.unusualefforts.com/sexual-assault-football-media
2015: Accuser Claims Patrick Kane Overpowered And Raped Her: https://deadspin.com/report-accuser-claims-patrick-kane-overpowered-and-rap-1723073528/
2015: After rape case ends, Blackhawks' Patrick Kane says, 'I did nothing wrong' https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-patrick-kane-rape-case-decision-20151105-story
Transcript
Shireen: Welcome to this week of Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I'm Shireen, and I'm joined by Brenda and Jessica, and this week we'll be focusing on professional sports leagues and domestic violence and sexual assault policies that they may or may not have. Plus, later this week an interview drops with coach Kelly Lindsey of the Afghanistan women's national football team. Of course, we have the burn pile and our torchbearers of the week. But before we start these intense topics, I would like to ask my dear friends – this week, school has started for many of us. So, these two amazing scholars, school is a big part of their life. So let's talk about a great memory from a first day of school, or not a great time! [laughs] Jess, tell me about a first day memory.
Jessica: I don't know if I have a specific one. I was really trying to think. I feel like I don't have specific memories of so much of my life – which is maybe it's own thing. [Shireen laughs] But what I do remember is that I loved the first day of school, like, so much. I loved…I know this is a big thing for Bren, but like I liked all the school supplies and gathering them together and putting…Like, I was the dork. This will make so much sense to y’all. Like, when you had to put book covers on books, the precision of that work was so…I loved it. Like, I just loved all that kind of stuff around school starting, and I just liked school.
Like I, to this day, enjoy learning. I didn't always love the dynamics of being in a school with other children, [laughs] but I definitely loved going back to school.
Shireen: Bren?
Brenda: I never left school. I've never left school. [laughter] I’m still in school. And I remember someone telling me once I got my, you know, tender…Tenure. [laughs] My tenure track job, my tender job. [Shireen laughs]
Jessica: That's very sweet
Shireen: I thought you were talking about chicken tenders, like, you get chicken tenders on the first day!? [laughs]
Brenda: They are at lunch quite often. Although now they call them “herbed breaded chicken strips” to try to make school lunch not sound like the bar food that it is. [Shireen laughs] But I definitely loved school. I never left school. When I got my tenure track the job, I remember my advisor saying, “Now you're going to be perpetually like a fourth grader when summer ends. Every single year, you'll be a little bit sad and a little bit excited.” And so I remember that emotion. I love a routine. As Jessica mentioned, yeah, the routine. I love a routine. I love the fantasy, the collective fantasy of thinking that I know what I'm going to be teaching in 2023 and that that's going to happen in just the way I plan it – Monday, Wednesday, 2:50 to 4:50, you know, stuff like that. And school supplies. Yes. The smell of pink erasers, highlighters, paper. I never had a ton of money for like very fancy trapper keepers, but it was still a splurge, you know, before. So that was so exciting.
Shireen: I love that. After a long time away, I went back to school last year and I finished, but I'm going back in a different role. I'll be instructing the class. So I supplied myself with all these sticky notes!
Jessica: Oh, I love…I have a whole bin of sticky notes. [laughs]
Shireen: I just, they make me feel…They make me feel affirmed. And there's a couple of programs online that involve sticky notes. One is through Google Docs. I did it actually in an EDI session that I had the university. I just remember being, “What, what is this?!”
Jessica: Virtual post-its!
Shireen: How come I was not apprised of this before? Love it, love all of it, especially…My favorite thing about the first day of school was my lunch box. I used to have a lunchbox and a matching thermos and it made me feel really good. And first day of school, I would plan out my outfit. By the time I got to grade four, I wore track pants all the time anyway, so it didn’t really matter.
Jessica: You’ve got to have the right track pants.
Shireen: I think I just wore what was comfortable for me and what I can play dodgeball and soccer-baseball in. So yeah, that's wonderful. And to everybody out there, I wish you and your families, if you're going back, not going back, safety and health and joyous learning. This next segment we would like to offer a trigger warning to our listeners. We will be talking about domestic violence, interpersonal violence, and sexualized violence in sport.
Brenda: It's sad but true that we often debate when and how we want to talk about sexual violence and rape culture in sport. We could probably have episodes on this more frequently than we'd even like to admit. And so behind the scenes, we're always sort of struggling with, you know, questions of how you want to cover it? How can you escape being part of the systems that have failed survivors? How can you try to report differently without exhaustion, without retraumatizing people? It's all really a painful and fraught process that isn’t exactly the fault of our own, but it's still a responsibility that we have. This past week or a couple of weeks, to borrow a phrase from Jessica, has felt like we've reached critical mass. The case against Benjamin Mendy, the Manchester City player, and his arrest for several counts of sexual assault was shocking – if you can still be shocked. Deshaun Watson, Trevor Bauer…It just has felt like an even bigger snowball of terribleness than usual. So, we do want to talk about it today, and we're going to do the best we can.
Shireen: I'll start us off about, actually, do leagues have individual policies – men's and women's leagues? And the reason that I ask this is because I know for a fact that the NHL actually does not. I had a quick conversation with friend of the show, Jashvina Shah, who was telling me that the NHL has spoken of it. And you're like, what? How is that even possible? It's very possible when decision-makers aren't affected or don't seem to care or aren’t invested. And those that, you know, survivors or victims, this is very possible. And so that's just one thing I wanted to get out of the gate, that the bar isn't “low” – the bar doesn't exist in many cases. So that's just something that we need to think about as we interrogate whether or not there are actual policies. Jess?
Jessica: Yeah, that's so wild that the NHL doesn’t, because the NFL does, and very famously after the Ray Rice case in 2014 – that was the former Baltimore Ravens player who was caught on video beating his now wife – and that led to the NFL creating a whole new policy and process. The MLB followed in 2015, they created ones like…It’s interesting that the NHL has escaped that sort of public pressure when other leagues felt it, even though it wasn't necessarily their league. And so the NFL, MLB, they've had these for years now. We've seen each of those two leagues investigate and punish players under their policies. They have these internal processes for investigations, but those of course, like all of them, there's no good system for reporting. And they've come under scrutiny, especially by people harmed very recently. And Watson, the Deshaun Watson case, he's the quarterback for the Houston Texans in the NFL. Two women of the 22 who have reported him recently told Jenny Vrentas at Sports Illustrated that the questioning from the NFL's investigators made them feel bad, made them feel shamed. A lot of victim blaming involved. That's not uncommon.
I do want to mention one of the big cases recently. The US Open is happening. One of the top players – he just won the gold medal at the Olympics, Alexander Zverev – was reported for domestic violence by a former girlfriend. Ben Rothenberg reported on him a year or so ago. A year and a half? Time, what is time? Ben has a new piece at Slate that's has even more damning accusations. It's incredible reporting. It's terrible, of you go to read it, just prepare yourself. So the ATP, which is the men's organization in tennis, it has no policies around gendered violence. That's a difficult one because they're talking across borders. It's very international, players from everywhere. These incidents that she reports, they happened in different countries. But in the wake of Rothenberg's most recent and very good reporting about Zverev, and because the US Open is happening, the ATP feels some kind of pressure. So they have announced – which we can all just like, you know, oh, okay, they've announced a thing. But they're going to do an “independent review” of their policies, especially those around domestic violence.
The thing I find interesting is Zverev, who of course says he didn't do any of this stuff, he said this about the possible new policies: “I think it's good that the ATP is kind of renewing their rules a little bit because they've been there since the 80s and nothing has been changed, in a way.” Right now, there is another player actually on the ATP who's been charged with domestic violence, but no one really cares about him. Zverev is such a top-ranked player that he takes a lot of media scrutiny. Like, it's really interesting to me that the person under the most scrutiny, Zverev, of all people is like, sure, redo the policy. Sounds good. Which to me, that's just…If he is feeling that way about this, it does make you wonder, like, what are these policies? They don't seem to fear them in any way.
Brenda: Yeah. When it comes to men's soccer, the field is not much better. There's really loose language on websites about off-field player conduct. It's really unclear. The MLS, part of the problem is the very structure of the Ponzi scheme that it is, means that you would have to ask those individual clubs to really punish themselves. There's not exactly the greater authority of an independent US Soccer Federation as there is, let's say, the Premier League to the English Federation.
Jessica: Are you saying there's not an overarching organization?
Brenda: What it is is that they're financially connected in such a way. And we talked about this a little bit on episode 190, about the Federation is supposed to be the overarching regulator of the sport of soccer, men's and women’s, in every country. And the US Soccer–
Shireen: That's because MLS also goes into different countries as well. It’s in Canada, it's in the United States as well. Is that why?
Brenda: No, I wish it was something sensible like that, Shireen. [laughter] Their reason is nebulous, but let's just say, for example, the MLS’s marketing arm is hired by the FA to run its publicity for its tournaments. It's very complicated. But to tell you there's not an independent federation in the same way there is in other countries. So what it says, what the MLS site says – and you can go on their website and look at it – is that a player can be suspended if there is conduct, you know, that involves sexual violence. So it can be, but there's guidelines, there's no place on the MLS site – that’s easy to find, anyway, perhaps somebody can – about where you would report, who you would report to. So, if you worked for MLS and you wanted to report to the Federation, there's also not any channel on the Federation that's very obvious.
In addition to that, each club basically makes its rules. So it's like the wild west. And those rules are also nebulous. So you can look at Dallas and the issues it's had in its academy, and it's not clear that they have to follow any particular guidelines. This was also true of the Premier League and the English FA, because even though they're independent, the Premier League is so powerful that it by far overpowers its FA, right? In terms of what could be done. But what happened was an investigation that was prompted in England by hundreds of cases of abuse of boys, and that produced what you called the Sheldon Report. (PDF) And again, you can go and read it. It goes the last 30 years through English football and the rape culture, the culture of assault of minors, young boys in particular.
And because of that report, you can go to both the Premier League and they have, you know, where to report as an adult, where to report as a minor, resources. It also directs you to the FA if you want a different channel, because you're reporting something that could compromise you. It also talks about whistleblowing responsibility, about people that have to come forward and report if they're knowing of anything going on.
So, just to say that Sheldon Report has apparently done quite a lot. We're going to talk about how it hasn't done much in the professional game, but at least in the amateur in children's minors…At least you can find something? [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah. And it suggests that it's possible.
Shireen: One of the things that we think about when we think of violence, as we think about men's leagues, but also it is important for it to be addressed and recognized obviously in women's leagues as well, and women's sport. And not just to protect everybody in the league, but to also prevent, you know, from further abuse to be perpetrated from those in the league – families and partners, et cetera, children even. So, the NWSL actually changed its language just this year and implemented very vague language is what I'm going to call it. I mean, I'm someone who works with words for a living. And part of what it is and this policy is that it doesn't need to be specifically disclosed if a team does release or fire someone. And very recently we heard Racing Louisville’s Christy Holly was fired because of quote unquote “causes.”
Now, I and the Burn It All Down team don't want a letter of cease and desist or of defamation. We are not accusing Christy Holly of anything. I'm just saying, for example, we could use this to say, did that fall under that particular policy, the new one rather? And it's very vague. And in my experience, and I'll defer to Jess and Brenda, vagueness isn't great when you're working with stuff like this, because it creates room for many, many, many loopholes, and there's no specific policy to adhere to. Things are not always black and white and I realize that, however just having broad interpretations open to something like this that's there for the protection of people is a huge problem.
And following that, I just wanted to add that as well, the WNBA’s own recognition of policy around this was really, really cemented two years ago when they reached the CBA, their collective bargaining agreement. There was enhanced mental health benefits and resources, and an augmented and holistic domestic intimate partner violence program that included education and counseling. So I think it's fair to say that it's pretty new even for women's leagues. And it's important, because, you know, there’s stories that have really, really…Like, Riquna Williams had been suspended and it was a very public and often badly reported – but we'll get into the media side of this later – badly reported incidents of this. I also wanted to...There’s a couple of articles by Lindsay that I will say, like, this was reported when Cathy Engelbert came in. Domestic violence was actually a problem in the league and it's something that hadn't been addressed in the way that it ought to have been. Lindsay's actual piece I'm putting in the show notes says that, “Cathy Englebert inherited a festering problem from her predecessors. Now her first big test will be solving it.”
So, I do also believe that educational roles are really important here. And that's something that's also mentioned in the WNBA one. As far as the NBA goes, the NBA's policy I would not say is comprehensive, but the fact that it exists more boldly than other leagues is something I'll take. Now, I can't even get into the way that the legal system plays a part in this. It gets very complicated, and how Jessica, you know, certainly reported on toxic culture and cultures of misogyny and violence within teams in the NBA, but all this to say, the NBA has a policy, whether or not it's properly implemented across the board.
So basically there's your bar, in hell, but there is a bar there for the NBA. Jess, and I'll throw this baton to you for ways in which you've seen in all your reporting, which is award-winning and exceptional, might I add, and may or may not be on someone's syllabus this semester. It is, we both know it is! Examples of different ways in which teams deal badly or well, with DV or SA?
Jessica: I would say mostly they deal poorly in it. I think, you know, the best ways to sort of get out of the way, say the right thing about survivors and get out of the way. So yeah, most of the time it's pretty bad. They lie about it. They minimize it, they ignore it. Some recent examples…You get the kind of lip service that we saw with the Portland Trailblazers, which we talked about on the show when they brought in Chauncey Billups as their new coach who had been reported for sexual assault many years ago. They just told us that they did their own investigation and were like, “You gotta believe us!” even though there was no evidence for it or how they did it. And they literally cut off the media asking questions about it. So you get that kind of lip service where they just are like, "Trust us. We're saying that we've done enough.” You get this kind of weird language all the time around second chances, and that's its own kind of conversation.
But I was thinking about it with Antonio Brown going to the Buccaneers after multiple women had reported him, and he had been in the middle of an eight game suspension handed down by the NFL when he was signed by the Bucks. And the coach, Bruce Arians, said at the time, “I think he's matured. And I believe in second chances.” But it's always like, how did he get here? Like, what did he do to earn the second chance? And that's never really addressed, in the language that they use. And then I just want to point out what the Astros did in 2019. They go after the media, right? So when the media finally does step up and do a good job, in 2019 the Astros won the ALCS – our listeners will probably remember this. An Astro's executive went after female journalists in the clubhouse, specifically rubbing in their faces that the team had brought on Roberto Osuna during the season. The Astros had picked him up during his 75 game suspension for domestic violence.
After Sports Illustrated’s Stephanie Apstein, who was our torchbearer of the week when she reported this, she reported this executive’s behavior. The team trashed her, saying, “We are extremely disappointed in Sports Illustrated’s attempt to fabricate a story where one does not exist.” Within like 24 hours they had to walk it back, because of course she didn't fabricate it! But that was the thing they were going to try, was to say that she was the liar here. And it just…I don't know. So you get these destructive ways…Like, I think the point should always be to mitigate harm. That's like my general rule in life. And when we see these teams do actively destructive things, that's when it's a problem.
Shireen: Harm reduction and mitigating harm is such an important concept. And I think that there's a responsibility. We can use words like accountability and responsibility, but one of the worst things I've ever seen as a sports journalist and a sports fan, particularly was the case of Patrick Kane. Now, I want to thank the former Deadspin team, Barry Petchesky was reporting on this. There was many others that did as well. But at the time, and we're talking about, you know, early on of 2015, this was coming out, and there wasn't a lot of people reporting in the same way. And you know, again, props to Barry Petchesky who followed the story, but also follow followed how the Chicago NHL team took his side very publicly and defended…Which we know teams to do if there's somebody accused of this. And just the virulent way in which it was treated. Essentially what happened, there’s a young woman, I won't get into the details, who accused Kane, but essentially she pulled back, and to make matters even worse – and I'll just read from a Chicago Tribune piece from Jared Hopkins and co-written with Stacy St. Clair was also really important. And like I said, in 2015, and even now, there's very little reporting like this that is nuanced.
So this particular piece says, “The decision came out about a week after Kane’s accuser told prosecutors she no longer wanted to pursue a criminal case against him. Prosecutors said the woman had signed a rare affidavit declining prosecution, with sources saying she cited the emotional toll the investigation had taken on her and her family.” Chicago backed up Kane, egregiously, and so much so that I think two seasons later Kane, who has done very well in his professional life on the ice, was asked by one of the media members in a post-game presser, “Do you feel vindicated for this?” which is so angering to hear, because there's no correlation between how many goals you score and whether or not you were convicted of raping somebody.
And I think this goes around to say that this is a system in place to protect people like this, and whether or not there's a policy, I'm not even sure if it would have mattered at this point. And it's actually quite telling that the NHL doesn't have one, because again, I'm not sure anybody would have cared in, particularly when an organization with that much clout and that much decision to back him operated in the way they did. They backed him up when his decision was to, at one point, not to actually cooperate with authorities. And the way they did, they offered him counsel, legal counsel as well, which I thought was a little bit bizarre, because they shouldn’t. He should be getting NHLPA support.
So anyways, it was messy. It was, as Brenda used, fraught. And it was uncomfortable, and it was actually...You hear very little about him in the NHL. If you're reporting about him to this day, you don't hear anything about this allegation, because everybody will say that he was not convicted in a court of law – that I would like to remind everybody that being conducted in a court of law doesn't mean you didn't commit an offense or a violent act. Because it's not a system of justice. It's a system of law with its own loopholes. So, speaking of loopholes, Brenda, Mendy?
Brenda: Well, I think you're touching upon something that's really important, which is the question of corruption and how it works to protect and enable the rape culture in sport. So, the only way we know about a lot of the cases we do, like Cristiano Ronaldo's case where Kathryn Mayorga had filed charges against him with the police immediately after, in 2009, but there was hush money involved and a settlement involved. And we didn't know about it until Football Leaks, which was a website dedicated to uncovering corruption, dirty money, bribery in global football. And that's just really telling that that's how we found out. And that wasn't until 2017, when Der Spiegel had access to that, found Kathryn Mayorga, and she has now begun to participate in her own conversation.
And we're not saying…I mean, I think it's important that we say we don’t think carceral state expansion is the answer, you know? But we're not going to get to thinking about what reconciliation, reparation, healing, any of that looks like when there's these structures in place to silence survivors, to make sure that even if healing is them being able to tell their story to whomever they decide, that these types of arrangements and the way clubs put pressure, stymies all of that as a possibility.
So, Benjamin Mendy, right? He's a French international. He is a defender, if this is important at this point about his resume for Manchester City. It came out two weeks ago that he had been arrested twice previous, in October 2020, January 2021. And now at the time of this recording, he is in custody for violating bail. He is charged by three different people of sexual assault, at least one of which is a minor. And we heard nothing. We heard nothing about this. And Pep Guardiola wouldn't field any questions about it. And we would expect that the trillion dollar fortune of Sheikh Mansour, the owner of Manchester City, will come down on anyone, with a wrath that you can't imagine, to defend his brand. Whether that means Mendy as a man of color is going to get more scrutiny and they won't be willing to do it, or whether it means that they'll put up the same armory that Juventus has for Ronaldo, I don't know. But the constable or whatever, the Cheshire constable has no idea what's coming for them.
Shireen: One of the ways – and Brenda pointed to this in episode 190 – we actually had a conversation about corruption and how that relates to this exact thing. So we just want to, you know, bookmark that, to say, go have a listen as well. And understand how organizational structures and teams actually do enable and protect their abusers, as Brenda so eloquently said, and their brand. And it's quite unfortunate that the lives of survivors are not as valued as that brand and that moneymaking. Back in the day, I wrote a piece on De Gea with Manchester United, and how he was accused of being connected to an assault case, and then Del Bosque, who was the famous old Spanish coach, came out very publicly and said we stand behind him – without even knowing what the facts were! I mean, forget that that's just a failure of epic proportion. That just seems to be the modus operandi of so many of these coaches.
They’ll just stand and, “I think he's a fabulous person and he's a great guy and he never did anything to anyone I know,” but that doesn't preclude someone of being a violent offender. And, you know, there's so many ways in which the conversation is so badly handled. And Brenda, I want you to talk to us a little bit more about, you know, as being someone who writes about it and knows about it and researches it…I just don't want people to think Jessica and I are biased because we're journalists. [laughs] So, if you could talk to us on how media enables all of this as well?
Brenda: So, I do have to say, my thinking about this and these connections is greatly influenced by Jen Doyle, and if you don't follow her, you should. She's a professor at UC Riverside and she's brilliant and she's really framed so many of these issues for me and help me think it through. So media, I mean, I can tell you as someone who's had a fun cease and desist from FIFA for using the wrong email, supposedly, when I wanted their comment on a story, that sports media fails survivors every day. Every day. And it's not always the fault of journalists, but the fact that sports is an incredibly lucrative part of what used to be your standard newspaper, you know, your New York Times, your Guardian, your whatever. Also, there's just a fundamental conflict of interest with needing access. Needing access, having legal, being afraid of letting certain stories go. And again, those teams, those clubs, those systems being able to like sue newspapers has really made them afraid. I can tell you, working with editors, they’re afraid time and time again. They go to legal, they spend four hours on the phone. They're very well-intentioned editors. They want to cover this, and then they also want to keep their job. And that is…That’s hard.
Jessica: I think this is so interesting, talking about the law, and then the media, and talking about corruption. And it just makes me think…And I think we always have to hold this in our head, because we want to believe so much, and this is such a perfect metaphor for this on this show, that this is an even playing field, that we're working these cases out in some neutral way. And what we're talking about here is that there is no neutral, right? That even within something like the law, we all know if you have more money, it's going to work in your favor, right? And that's certainly true when we talk about how the media works. And I just think we have to hold that all the time because that's just not how we tell these stories.
And I think one of the other things with the media that's really important to note, especially on the professional level – this happens on the collegiate level and the lower levels as well – but on the professional level, these are often individual cases. These are one person that we end up talking about and what's happened to them. And I'll just point out, as someone who thinks too much about this, people love the individual cases because they can nitpick them to death, right? And they can find all the little spaces where they can feel that the person is lying, that they're not telling the truth, that the evidence doesn’t add up. All that sort of stuff. And then at the same time, they remove them from the larger structures that Brenda and Shireen are talking about here. And that's so important. Like, you have to remember that there's all the stuff around them all the time that's operating. And if you're not seeing it, it's because you're not looking.
But it's really easy to not look if you don't want to. And again, the thing about these cases, Shireen said it earlier when she was talking about like the idea that there's something about these coaches who don't know anything and they get up there and they just talk about the case. People don't care about the cases themselves in the media, on these staffs and stuff. And so there's this laziness around it, this kind of self-created ignorance around the cases so that they don't actually have to know what's happened and then do something with that information. And I feel like I'm really feeling that watching the US Open around Zverev. Just this ignorance, this built in ignorance to the commentary around him, and it hurts every time to hear them ignore it. It hurts.
Shireen: Just echoing what Jess has to say. And just pointing back to – Brenda and I wrote a piece for Rewire news, which I think is also really important. We wrote about it, and just very quickly, for those that don't know, Brenda and I had been clamoring to write about Ronaldo's allegations for a very long time. And personally, I was rejected many times over and over, and I have those receipts, and after I tweeted that out, I had tons of editors email and be like, listen, that wasn't my decision alone and whatever, whatever. So I do want to recognize that there's also systems within media that don't allow for this type of reporting that we may want. I think about this a lot in the way that I cover violence in sport, you know, being also guided by Jessica, having one of your best friends be a global authority is certainly helpful.
But also, you know, just shoutouts to people like Katie Strang and Rick Westhead who do a lot of this work as well. Lindsay wrote a piece in 2016 that prompted me to think very differently about the media and the ways that I actually act as somebody within the system, and it was about the legacy of Kobe Bryant and how media was complicit and part of that entire story. And I would just want to thank her for that, because it's one of those things that I read that really transformed and informed how I operate as a journalist.
Brenda: Yeah. If this sounds like namedrop after namedrop, it's because we want to recognize the people who have been harassed and trolled and hurt and are exhausted by reporting on this the right way. So, sometimes I feel like we're like, “and there's this person, and there's this person!” and it's not because there's so many, it's because we can name the very handful of people that are doing this work all the time, and nobody knows better than my co-hosts on the show right now how taxing it is and how difficult it is to get through. And since I intro’d, I’ll end, and I just want to say, when we talk about sexual assault, when we talk about intimate partner violence, it is on a continuum of sexism and misogyny. So when people are like, hey, it's way different than just telling a sexist joke at work, it's part and parcel of the very same culture.
These violent acts are the enforcement arm of patriarchy. It is the way in which when, you know, men who have been told their whole lives, that access to women is a sign of their success, and when they don't get it, they have a right to enforce at will. And so I just want to say, what we do every week is try to connect these dots and, you know, and to at least connect these very what seems like small slights with very large slights, I think is really important. Because when you're sitting around and you're trying to fight sexism on one level, and then you take it to this next level, it can feel like, oh, these are different things. And I just think we need to stay mindful that these are part and parcel of the very same thing.
Shireen: Thursday's interview will feature Kelly Lindsey, the former coach of the Afghanistan women's national team, was part of a group of women who successfully evacuated Afghan athletes from Afghanistan.
Kelly Lindsey: I mean, the basic keys, we had no idea how to start. We just started literally monitoring social media and monitoring government announcements around the world and we would literally say, oh, Canada just made an announcement! They said they're going to host 20,000 Afghan refugees. Somebody get on the horn! Who knows anyone in Canada? Who knows anyone in the ministry? Who can make that call? And then we saw Germany. We saw Belgium. Here's the announcement, who do we know, who has a contact, who can get to the top of the tower? Because what we realized real quick was everyone was trying to get on a list. Like, how do we get on the evacuation list? How do we get into that evacuation and resettlement scheme of Canada, of 20,000 people? It sounds great, but how do we get our girls on that list?
Shireen: Now, what seems like an extension of our previous segment, this is actually a different one. This is the burn pile! In which we traditionally just burn shit. But anyways, we're going to give this a go. Brenda, what are you torching this week?
Brenda: It's one of my favorite candidates for the burn pile, the Argentine football association. They're already crispy, [Shireen laughs] and I'm just gonna see if I can even start another fire from the ash that already exists around these losers. The Argentine federation – god, what pieces of shit! Okay. So, there's been three or four high profile cases in the sense that there are journalists out there doing this work and finding these cases. So, they have made media. This past week, there's one more of them – a little girl named Emma, who has played soccer for Club Deportivo Empleados de Comercio, in Guaminí. She has played for the last five years on her team, and in the league in which she plays, they have decided she can no longer play because AFA, the Argentine federation, does not technically approve of mixed gender teams.
So, this is like the third case of this happening. Her family has reported AFA to the national Institute against discrimination, xenophobia and racism, which I'd like to say, the Argentines actually have that department underneath the ministry of justice. So the country's awesome, even if their federations sucks. So, that's great that there's a place that they can go outside of football to make these people do something. But I just want to remind people that there are many, many, many complaints out there to AFA of sexual harassment and discrimination by the Argentine women's team that have gone unanswered in the last three years, but they still have time. They still find time to look around these small provincial teams and persecute little girls. And even the little boys who want the little girls to play with them. So, maybe, AFA, I want you to stop doing that and address these very serious charges against you. So, I want to burn AFA. Burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: So, I heard about the story that I'm going to tell you. We know that by the time this episode actually drops, the Paralympics will be over. We've seen some amazing stories and amazing feats, but out of this was a story that I was very unhappy about. And I will share that with you. Malaysian shot putter Muhammad Ziyad Zolkefli appeared to have won Paralympic gold in shot put. Yay, right? But after his victory, it was announced that he was disqualified because he had shown up late for the competition. He was three and a half minutes late, to be exact. And what ended up happening was after he implored the officials to let him compete, they said, “Let him just participate now, and we'll get the facts later.”
That's literally quoting the story in ABC News, from Stephen Wade. This is what is reported, that the officials said we will check the facts later. And that's a quote.
Now, anyways, the International Paralympic Committee spokesman, Craig Spence said it wasn't just Zolkefli, it was two others that didn't make the podium, were allowed to compete after they protested, you know, to the officials. “They had a logical reason for being late and therefore we allowed them to compete and then looked at the facts afterwards.” So, World Para Athletics governs this, and they said there was no justifiable reason for the athlete's failure to report on time. And appeal was also turned down. I just would like to remind everybody that the F20 class, this particular class for shot put, is for athletes with intellectual disabilities.
Now, Zolkefli also said that he didn't understand the language in which the announcement was made, you know, but that unfortunately didn't make matters any better for him. And he wasn't allowed to get it. What ended up happening, there was two Ukrainian athletes who ended up winning gold and silver, and then a Greek athlete who won third. And, you know, we love that for them, but under these circumstances, it's really sad. What ended up happening was the Ukrainian athletes were met with tons of abuse on social media, predominantly by Malaysian fans. So this just gets from bad to worse, because under no circumstances should that be met…Because it wasn't the Ukrainians’ fault that this had happened!
So, this whole situation sucks, and the AP actually – I'm quoting from this article – attempted to reach the Malaysian delegation, but there was no immediate response. And I think the level of abuse directed to people, as much as we hate this, that's not the answer, particularly to target it at Ukrainian para athletes. It's just not okay. So, I hate this. I hate all of it. I feel like you would think there could be some, I don't know, understanding or flexibility. It's a terrible story. I wish all the best for all the athletes, but as far as this story goes, I want to take these rules and I want to take this misunderstanding and all of this, and I want to throw it into the burn pile. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: This week I'm burning men failing upwards in sports leadership. FIFA has announced that former president of US Soccer, Carlos Cordeiro, is their new senior advisor for global strategy and governance. According to the press release from FIFA he is, quote, “one of football's preeminent business and organizational leaders.” He will advise is FIFA on new strategic initiatives to grow the game at all levels. But you got to ask yourself, why is Cordeiro in need of a new job? Well, let me tell you. In March 2020, Cordeiro resigned after US Soccer, in a legal filing in the case against the US women's soccer team, said that men's soccer “requires a higher level of skill,” a claim backed up by quote, “indisputable science.” This was all so blatantly sexist that even corporations like Coca-Cola and Budweiser said it was offensive. It was that sexist. Cordeiro, seeing the writing on the wall, took responsibility for the filing and quit.
Here's what Caitlin Murray wrote at The Guardian about Cordeiro's tenure after his resignation. “But since Cordeiro took over in 2018, reforms have been slow and tepid. Cordeiro, as well-intentioned as he may have been, appeared too eager to defer to the expertise of people around him. Many of the same people who had been at the Federation far too long and were resistant to change.” [Shireen laughs] Ah, yes, the exact kind of person who will now be at FIFA, an organization not known for being open to change.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino said of Cordeiro after his hiring, “Carlos is the right person to advise us as we modernize our regulatory framework–” [laughter] “–and grow the sport in ways that advance football for men, women, and youth across the globe.”
I mean, what could go wrong? What possibly will go right? It's this shuffling of chairs on the ship deck at this point, it's the failing upwards that we continually see. It's the refusal to acknowledge how unimportant the women's game is to FIFA while their actions reveal it over and over again. I want to burn all of that today. So, burn.
All: Burn. [laughter]
Brenda: So well said.
Shireen: Now after that burning, we're so happy to highlight some torchbearers, our honorable mentions, but I would like to remind everybody to check out Jessica's hot take with Kelly Crowley for a rundown of some of the Paralympic torchbearers and to scroll back through her Twitter feed and just to sort of see some of the amazing accomplishments and stories of the torchbearers through the events in Tokyo. And again, by the time this episode drops, the Paralympics will be over. So we should definitely reflect it and look to see some of the incredible wins in the stories that have emerged from there. Brenda, can we talk about…
Brenda: …The fireworks squad of the week! Plains women's softball team won the 2021 Native American World Series championship.
Shireen: I would like to shout out our illuminator, Jason Payne, who is the new head coach for the Cincinnati Cyclones, and is the only current Black head coach in pro hockey in North America. I don't love that this is a thing, but I would like to shout it out. Jessica?
Jessica: Our ray of light is Carla Suárez Navarro, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma a year ago, and announced in April that she was cancer-free. She played her last tennis singles match on the WTA tour at the US Open last week. The crowd in New York gave her a standing ovation. She said afterward, “I lost, but this year for me was a gift.”
Shireen: I got goosebumps. Bren?
Brenda: The eternal flame: after 15 years, 140 caps and 59 goals, Scotland's Kim Little hangs up her boots. I saw her in the last World Cup. She was still brilliant. Congratulations on a wonderful, wonderful career.
Shireen: Jessica, who is our mighty spark?
Jessica: Shoutout to Dice Yoshimoto, coach of the Knicks’ summer league team. Yoshimoto is one of the first Asian Americans to be a head coach in the league.
Shireen: Can I get an excessively exuberant drum roll, please!
Jessica: Is there like a Canadian version of a drum roll?
Brenda: Dripping with maple syrup! Eh? [Shireen laughs]
[drumroll]
Jessica: Man, we should’ve made a pitter-patter joke on that drum roll.
Brenda: Pitter-patter, get at‘er.
Shireen: [laughs] This will not shock anybody that the torchbearers of the week are the Canadian women's hockey team, who beat the USA in overtime to clinch the gold medal at the IIHF women's world cup championships. A spectacular yet belated call in OT by the phenom and co-prime minister of Canada, Marie-Phillip Poulin just sent everybody. Incredible, incredible goal. She's done it before, she should be on our currency. I don't know why she is not. I am so excited by this. And there wasn't as much…You know, getting to the point of hosting, even the world championships was a problem. They were canceled last year in Halifax. So I'm really happy that these women got this opportunity to showcase it. I'm so happy for Canadian women's hockey. So, what's good, Brenda? Tell me what is good.
Brenda: [laughs] I don't want to steal Jessica’s, but I got to see her last weekend. She can tell you more about that.
Jessica: Yay!
Brenda: But that was amazing. I got a big hug and it was so fun and it felt so good.
Jessica: I think there were multiple hugs.
Brenda: Yeah. Hugsssss. And also I've been watching Ted Lasso because me watching Ted Lasso makes Amira and Jessica to a certain extent very happy. And so I feel like I'm doing a public good by watching it. I will say, if you like Ted Lasso and it's piqued your interest in soccer, you should watch the CONMEBOL South American world cup qualifiers. It is amazing. I hate…This is going to sound so mean. Do not waste your time on CONCACAF. [Shireen laughs] You will go and watch it, and then you will switch – that’s the North American people. So like, the Salvadorian-US game. And then I switched back to Brazil-Chile, and it was just like, ahhh, whew! Real soccer. [Jessica laughs] You would be jailed in the US for one of the tackles that you're going to see in CONMEBOL. It is so fun, and they are so mad at each other all the time. And then they kiss and hug, and it's very dramatic. Anyway, so that's, what's good for me too. As of recording today, Brazil plays Argentina. That's always really…It’s so much fun.
Shireen: And the Canada-Honduras game was terribly officiated, by the way, I heard that.
Brenda: CONCACAF, I mean, you've been CONCACAF’d.
Shireen: It’s terrible. Terrible.
Brenda: There's no referee that is…That’s actually the funnest part, probably, is just the wild ride of like, what on earth would they call or not call? There's just, I mean, that is actually maybe the only reason to watch. I know that's mean, I'm sorry. I don't mean it.
Shireen: Yes you do. [laughs]
Brenda: They’re getting better, but just saying, if you have a choice in life of how much you're going to watch…
Shireen: That's absolutely brilliant and perfectly Brenda. I would like to say, obviously I'm not getting these hugs that everyone else on the team seems to be getting because they get to see each other, but that's okay. I'll cry into my gold medal for soccer and women's hockey. [laughs] I would also like to say that I passed my masters, which was very exciting for me.
Brenda: Yay! [clapping]
Shireen: And I passed without revisions and I got outstanding as a remark, and I'm very excited about that. I will have it up on my website just to make it accessible to people to read. [laughter] I went to PEI and actually wrote my thesis in a small room in my family cottage. So, I was like fucking Lucy Maud Montgomery up in there. But if she could do it, I can do it. My daughter went off to university on Friday, and I spent a vast majority of the day trying to not cry. And then I did, and it was great. And I'm so proud of her and she's excited, and is already training with her soccer team, which is wonderful. I did actually want to say this, and I know that I started off with like, you know, I wanted to pass my masters, but that actually wouldn't have been possible without actually the love of this team, this Burn It All Down team. And I did want to read you a little bit of my acknowledgements, because they were like two fucking pages long.
But just the little part that I had was, “The Burn It All Down podcast team of Dr. Brenda Elsey, Jessica Luther, Dr. Amira Rose Davis, Lindsay Gibbs, Tressa Versteeg and Shelby Weldon facilitated my work-life balance in ways that I cannot begin to express. They took on more loads that provided me room to function in the academy and their insights and love helped me up very often.” So I just wanted to say that, and I appreciate you guys pretty much, because this journey for me was really important. I would literally not have been able to do it and keep doing what I love on this side if it wasn't for you.
So, whew. I just want to add one last thing, that I am starting my first position as an instructor, as formerly known at Ryerson University – they've decided to change their name, which is excellent, because Egerton Ryerson was the architect for residential genocidal assimilation schools in Canada of Indigenous communities. So I will refer to it as X University, and if you see that online, that is exactly why, in solidarity with Indigenous communities. Can’t wait to meet my students. Can't wait to give them and assign them Burn It All Down. Jessica?
Jessica: Shireen, we're so proud of you.
Brenda: Totally.
Jessica: Oh, that's so exciting. So of course what's good is I saw Bren. [Shireen laughs] I mean, it's a real treat for me just in general. I get to see Amira multiple times a week at this point because I see her when I drop off and pick up my kid from school. But it was a real bonus to get to see Bren. And I was in New York for an exciting reason! I was on Bob Costas’ HBO show. You can go watch episode two and see my beautiful face. Like, I don't even mean that in an egotistical way. I just mean the makeup artist and the hair people–
Shireen: And your eyelashes!
Jessica: My eyelash, my fake eyelashes and my…Shoutout to my local hairdresser here, Jessica Tate. It was a last minute thing. Thank you, Howard Bryant, for bringing me on to the show, but I needed to get my roots dyed immediately, [laughs] and she brought me in and my hair just looked so good. My makeup was amazing. And I kept it all on that day. Had it all on my face. I didn't want to take it off. Beautiful eyelashes, the whole thing. And I went to dinner with Howard and Toni Smith-Thompson, who is a flamethrower. You've heard her on this show before. Love Toni. And Howard and I went back to the hotel, and you guys…You had to ride two elevators. So in New York, it's a weird place. We had to ride an elevator up to the lobby on the 35th floor, get off that elevator, go to a second elevator to go to our rooms. And Howard and I were standing at the bottom in the lobby, and Andy Fucking Murray walked up! He got in our elevator! [laughter]
I am still so excited just thinking about it. And bless Howard. He made me talk to Andy, and I told him that he was my favorite tennis player, and that I loved his defense. And then we went off talking about other things, and he was very gracious. I just really kept it in as much as I could. And when we got off the second elevator, Howard snapped a picture of me totally freaking out. So, that just, like, oh my god, I can't believe that happened. That was just unbelievable. I also met Billie Jean King that day on the show, on Bob Costas’ show. It was just a run of events. I'm just really happy I had my fake eyelashes on when I met Andy Murray. [Brenda laughs]
I do also want to say something that's been great is the start of school. We're getting these tweets from people telling us that Burn It All Down is on their syllabi! We’re on their syllabus! And I just…Thank you, professors, who assign us as part of your curriculum, including the professors on this very show who I know do that as well. That's thrilling every time. And then the last thing is I realized the other day, this is the one-year anniversary of Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back, the book I co-authored with Kavitha, and the five-year anniversary of Unsportsmanlike Conduct, my book on college football and sexual assault. And so just thinking like, wow, it’s wild that people listen to this podcast, that people read my books. And also that I was in an elevator with Andy Murray.
Shireen: Did you have a decal to give him, of Burn It All Down? Imagine if you did.
Jessica: No, I did not, but also I just…I have so many things I wish I had said to Andy Murray. [laughs] But I just could not get my brain to work at all! I just couldn't believe it was happening the whole time it was happening.
Shireen: That's amazing. God, that's so fun.
Jessica: I always say that the most romantic thing Aaron ever did for me was learned to love tennis. And as soon as I got in the hotel room, I FaceTime’d him and just started screaming into the phone and he knew exactly why I was freaking out. [Shireen laughs] And so thank you, Aaron, for coming through for me in that moment.
Shireen: Well, we're watching this week. The US Open, WNBA, the world cup qualifiers and in particular the ones that Brenda has pointed out that we should be watching. [laughs] The FA women's super league has started again, and that's exciting. Arsenal beat Chelsea this morning, but that's okay. We love it all. That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down.
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our web and social media wizard. Burn It All Down is a part of the Blue Wire podcast network. Follow Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Listen, subscribe and rate the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play. For show links and transcripts, check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. You'll also find a link to our merch at our Bonfire store. And thank you to our patrons. Your support means the world. If you want to become a sustaining donor to our show, visit patreon.com/burnitalldown. Burn on, and not out. [meowing audible off-mic] Please… [Brenda laughs] Good god, cat.