In this episode, Johanna talks with repeat guest and one of our favorite sports journalists, Frankie de la Cretaz, about their incisive piece for The Nation, "How Women's Swimming got so Transphobic." Per Frankie's research, "Almost no other sport is as hostile to trans athletes - and that's because its culture created the perfect conditions for transphobia to take root." Frankie first discusses the confluence of 3 main factors upon which the sport's dangerous transphobia has emerged: the sport's whiteness and related anti-Blackness, its history of rampant mainly cisgender heterosexual white men's sexual abuse of mainly cishet white girls and women, and the East German state doping program against its female swimmers during the Cold War. The sport's whiteness is not just a dangerous condition that impacts many people today (check out our 2020 episodes with Kevin Dawson and Matt Hodler if you haven't already); people also use it as a shield to claim that swimming "doesn't have a race problem" in a way that gives foundation to denying cishet Black female swimmers as well as trans women their gender. The invocation of the GDR's doping scandal for transphobia is a misappropriation of East German women's suffering that inaccurately denigrates their experiences and silences trans girls' and women's experiences today too. We also talk about USA Swimming's use of white women on its staff as a possible cover for its sexual abuse history, and how cishet white women are always the main beneficiaries of "diversity" schemes due to their proximity to the white patriarchy. Frankie moreover details the challenges they encountered in finding an outlet that would accept their pitch, and contextualizes the sport's transphobia compared to how other sports are responding to anti-trans activity. Johanna ends with a call to action to fellow cishet white women to directly challenge transphobic rhetoric and policies as they support the resurgence of violent fascism and its attempted genocide of transgender people today.
Read the Sports Illustrated piece that Frankie mentioned about Lia Thomas here.
Episode 99: Towards a Public Sociology of Sport
Episode 98: Dehumanization and the NFL Draft with Ben Natan
Episode 97: Universities Are *Choosing* Not To Pay Academic Bonuses to Athletes
Episode 96: On UCLA Gymnastics, Iowa Football, and Ted Lasso
Episode 95: On Transphobia in Capitalist Sport with Karleigh Chardonnay Webb
Episode 94: Pandemic Sport, Convoys, and the Anti-Trans Movement in Sports
Episode 93: Hard Truths about Football with Chris Borland
Episode 92: Institutional Failure and Harm in Canadian Gymnastics with Kim Shore, Part II
Episode 92: Institutional Failure and Harm in Canadian Gymnastics with Kim Shore, Part I
Episode 91: The Wide World of Surveillance in Sport with Courtney M. Cox
Episode 90: Football and Fairness with Johnny Stanton
Episode 89: The NLRB Memo with Jennifer Abruzzo
Episode 88: Athletic Labor and #Striketober
Episode 87: Fighting for #FairBall in the Minors with Harry Marino
Episode 86: On Coercion and Resistance in College Sport
Episode 85: #Striketober with Max Alvarez
Episode 84: The Sports Media Problem with Adam H. Johnson
Episode 83: Progress for Whom? With Britni de la Cretaz
Episode 82: Higher Ed is Imploding! with Asheesh Kapur Siddique
Episode 81: ‘Family,‘ Race, and College Football with Tracie Canada
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