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 60: Sport and Politics on the Field and in the Academy with Lucía Trimbur, Part II
Episode 59: Ethnography of a Gridiron Concussion Crisis with Lucía Trimbur, Part I
Episode 58: “A Horrific Canadian Soccer Story” with Ciara McCormack, Part II
Episode 57: “Our Passion Was Used Against Us” with Ciara McCormack, Part I
Episode 56: Raging Against the (College Sports) Machine with David West and Ricky Volante
Episode 55: Constructing New Rooms with Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
Episode 54: Anthropology of an American Pandemic with Adia Benton
Episode 53: Georgia On My Mind with Amanda Mull
Episode 52: Fascism, Spectacle, and Politics with Maximillian Alvarez and Sina Rahmani
Episode 51: Racialized Organizations, Politics, (and Sports) with Victor Ray
Episode 50: Harm and Hockey with Rick Westhead
Episode 49: Sport and COVID-19 Special with Gavin Yamey and Zachary Binney
Episode 48: #WeAreUnited with Otito Ogbonnia
Episode 47: Talking Gymnastics with Jessica O’Beirne of GymCastic
Episode 46: Swimming While Black with Jamal Hill
Episode 45: Racialized Nationalism and Hegemonic Masculinity in Swimming with Matt Hodler
Episode 44: The Culture of Abuse in Swimming with Katherine Starr
Episode 43: The Golden Age of Black Swimming with Kevin Dawson
Episode 42: Cheer, College Football, and Suffering as Virtue with Amanda Mull
Episode 41: “Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back” with Kavitha Davidson and Jessica Luther
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