0:00

I went to the Queens Museum recently

0:02

and I was like, I had no idea the US Open

0:04

was so near the climax

0:06

of Men in Black.

0:18

Welcome to You're Wrong About, I'm Sarah

0:20

Marshall and today we're talking

0:23

about Renee Richards with our

0:25

pal, Julie Kliekman. This

0:28

is You're Wrong About's first tennis episode.

0:31

This is an episode about sports

0:33

and gender and the debate over

0:36

trans kids and sports, trans

0:38

people in sports, but of course, especially

0:41

as always in America, trans youth.

0:43

We have a little trigger warning for you

0:46

for suicide and suicidal thoughts,

0:48

which comes up

0:50

briefly in conversation. It's

0:52

not something that happens in the story, but it

0:54

is a topic of thought.

0:56

Speaking of Pride Month, we have a special

0:58

Pride episode bonus offering

1:00

for you with our friend Chelsea

1:03

Webber-Smith in whose closet I am

1:05

recording this right now. Carolyn

1:09

informs me that it's funny that I just came out of

1:11

the closet and yet here I

1:12

am trapped in the closet, but Chelsea

1:15

Webber-Smith is the only closet I would ever want

1:17

to be in. We did a

1:19

great episode together where they

1:21

told me all about the gay agenda. I

1:24

really love doing it with Chelsea. I love

1:26

Chelsea's

1:27

work. Please go listen to American Hysteria.

1:29

If you haven't yet, you're in for a treat. Buckle

1:32

up, Cowboys. Here we go. We're

1:35

headed for the

1:35

US Open. Welcome

1:42

to You're Wrong About, the podcast where

1:44

very occasionally we talk about sports.

1:47

And here we go again with Julie Kliekman.

1:50

Hello. Hi. How

1:52

are you? I'm great. Thanks

1:54

for having me. I am so happy you wanted

1:57

to come and talk to us because I do feel like

1:59

this show secretly

1:59

is like a little bit of a sports show,

2:02

just very occasionally. A little bit.

2:04

And I think one of the things I love about

2:07

talking about sports is that whether we know it

2:09

or not, I think we're always talking about gender, which

2:12

is part of today's show. Absolutely,

2:14

yeah. I'd say that's exactly right.

2:17

And that is already a more

2:20

perceptive understanding of sports than

2:22

like 90% of people interested in sports

2:24

have. So, nicely

2:27

done. I try. Yeah, I mean, I

2:29

don't understand most of them, but

2:31

I think they're all

2:32

neat. And I would

2:36

love to start off with, who are you and

2:39

who are we talking about today? Because this is

2:41

my favorite kind of an episode. This is somebody's

2:44

life. Sure. So, I

2:46

am Julie Kliekman. I am the

2:48

copy chief at Sports Illustrated. I

2:51

have a book coming out next year called

2:53

Mind Game

2:54

about how elite athletes navigate mental

2:56

health. So, not quite

2:58

related to gender, but also not

3:00

related to gender. Oh

3:03

yeah. And we're gonna talk about

3:05

Renee Richards today. Do you have any

3:07

sort of previous knowledge of her or

3:10

of tennis

3:10

in the 1970s? In

3:13

terms of Renee specifically, I have nothing,

3:15

which is like one reason I was excited to

3:18

talk about her with you is that

3:19

you reached out, you said

3:21

you wanted to talk about Renee, and

3:23

I generally am excited to talk about

3:26

someone who seems to have been very

3:28

famous in their moment and then forgotten

3:32

arguably intentionally

3:34

by history. And in terms of

3:36

tennis in

3:36

the 70s, my friend Patrick will be slightly

3:39

sad that I don't

3:41

know anything, because I'm sure there's cool stuff to know.

3:43

But I know that people were really

3:46

cool outfits and

3:49

Chris Evert was around and had her picture

3:51

taken by Andy Warhol. That's it. Yeah,

3:54

there you go. That's a great jumping

3:57

off point.

3:57

Yeah, so

3:59

Renee. Renee Richards is a

4:01

trans tennis player. She

4:04

would use trans as short for

4:06

transsexual, whereas most of us

4:08

know it today as transgender. But her

4:10

preferred term, just so you know, is transsexual.

4:13

By the same notion, instead of

4:15

saying she transitioned genders, she

4:17

says she had a sex change operation. So

4:20

I'm using her terminology. But

4:23

in general, we'll still use transgender

4:25

and all that good stuff. Renee

4:28

Richards, she

4:30

was the first, if not

4:32

the first openly transgender

4:35

professional athlete, certainly the first one

4:37

of note

4:38

that

4:40

we commonly remember.

4:43

I mean, there were instances of

4:45

transgender athletes

4:47

in the Olympics who kind of went unnoticed

4:50

because it wasn't really an issue. I'm

4:54

not trying to say trans people were invented in the 1970s

4:56

in sports, but she's kind of

4:59

like the first well-known

5:01

professionally out athlete.

5:04

Yeah, so that comes

5:06

with

5:07

a lot of meaning attached to it.

5:09

As you said, she was very famous

5:12

in her moment. A lot of people who

5:14

were alive then, which does not include me,

5:16

at least know her name. Yeah, I'll

5:18

send you a picture of her playing tennis

5:21

if you would like it. Yeah,

5:22

of course. Tennis

5:25

is also a funny sport in

5:27

my life because unlike most sports

5:30

normal people play, I have played

5:32

it and kind of know how it works.

5:35

So that's very exciting. Oh, yeah. Do

5:37

you know the scoring? I

5:39

know that you go in intervals of 15 and

5:41

I know that you, oh my God, she looks

5:44

amazing. Sorry. Right?

5:48

She does though, right? She looks like

5:50

she's like this is an episode of Charlie's

5:52

angels where it's like, all right, angels, you're

5:54

infiltrating the US open. Have fun.

5:57

I mean, she looks very powerful, very

5:59

strong.

5:59

to me. Well,

6:02

I'm just like it is. I don't know. It is such a cool

6:04

shot because like I guess she's like

6:06

preparing a backhand. Maybe

6:08

her eyes are on the prize. It's like

6:10

section intense sports

6:13

moment. And it's just like, I think

6:15

we watch sports partly because we got this

6:17

sort of vicarious thrill

6:19

off of watching somebody pursue

6:21

something so intently. But yeah,

6:24

where do you want to start us off? So

6:27

last year I was asked to write an

6:29

article for

6:30

book forum, RIP. They

6:32

did a sports issue. And you

6:34

know, I very much like you, I didn't know a

6:36

ton about her. And I found

6:39

writing about her and researching her to

6:41

be very interesting and very thorny.

6:44

And so what we're going to go over

6:47

is that she was, as I've said, a

6:49

transsexual female tennis player. And

6:52

she notably sued for her right to play

6:55

in the US Open in 1977. Yeah.

6:58

So I think her story is about

7:00

who gets to be a woman in women's sports.

7:03

And are we any closer to consensus

7:05

there than we were in 1977? And you

7:07

could definitely make the case that we're

7:10

further away. And then the

7:12

other thing about the story is it's about

7:14

who's allowed to enjoy recreation

7:16

and in general live an enjoyable

7:19

life. Is liberation

7:21

just about sustenance or is it about the

7:23

freedom to

7:23

be yourself and show up in leisure too?

7:25

Yeah, I hadn't

7:28

really seriously looked into her until I was doing

7:30

research for that article. And I

7:33

had come out as non binary about a year before

7:35

I also identify as transgender. And

7:39

it was very interesting for

7:41

me to do this research because I

7:43

think when you're like new

7:45

to an identity or new to like a label,

7:49

you're kind of used to either finding people like,

7:51

Oh my God, I totally identify with this person

7:54

or like,

7:55

Oh my God, who the hell is this? Why do we

7:57

share a label? Like what is that? Like

8:00

everything becomes so like black

8:03

and white when you're still new to things and like

8:05

learning about them in relation to yourself.

8:08

She was maybe one of the first people

8:11

I found that like

8:12

occupied this really interesting middle ground

8:15

for me where like

8:17

I appreciate her place

8:19

in history and I also don't appreciate

8:21

a lot of things she said.

8:23

And I think talking

8:26

about her and her complexity is just really important.

8:29

Mm. The kind of girl bossification

8:32

of women in history and

8:34

you know and so many other things of that

8:36

nature with different categories of identity.

8:38

But in this case where we want everyone to be kind

8:41

of someone to look up to and it's like what if

8:44

someone is deserving of our study,

8:47

study being a form of care for

8:49

like not necessarily being somebody

8:51

we want to even emulate because because they

8:54

lived a life and it's

8:56

important to us. Right.

8:58

And Renee herself very much rejects

9:01

this idea of being a role model,

9:04

of being a pioneer. I mean, I think she

9:06

was a pioneer ultimately. I think that's kind of

9:09

indisputable, but she doesn't want the

9:12

worship that comes along with that.

9:14

She's like Moses. She's like, no,

9:16

I just want to relax.

9:18

Don't make me do it. Exactly.

9:22

That's a classic Moses quote. I'm

9:25

busy chilling. Yeah.

9:27

And I'm

9:29

J.C. Josh Moses. All

9:35

right. So I'll kind of take you into her

9:37

early years here. Yeah,

9:39

I would love that. She was born in 1934

9:43

and was raised in Sunnyside, Queens,

9:46

and then her family moved to Forest

9:48

Hills, which is famously the site

9:50

of the U.S. Open. Oh, my God. Wow.

9:53

That's right. Because I went

9:55

to the Queens Museum recently and I was like,

9:57

I had no idea the U.S. Open was.

10:00

So near the climax of Men in Black.

10:04

The two most important events in history.

10:07

That's so true. So

10:09

yeah, her father was an orthopedic surgeon

10:12

and her mother was a psychiatrist. So you have this

10:14

very serious, very

10:15

medically, scientifically

10:18

oriented family. She started playing

10:20

tennis seriously at age 10. She

10:22

had always

10:22

loved shagging balls for her dad

10:24

when he played. And then,

10:26

you know, she's kind of started competing around 10

10:29

and she obviously had a

10:32

knack for it or, you know, we want to be here talking

10:34

about her. Now,

10:36

during this time, from a very early

10:38

age, she started experiencing what we

10:40

would call

10:41

today as gender dysphoria. I

10:43

don't really want to go into quite

10:46

all of the cliches and stereotypes about

10:48

like a trans girl growing

10:50

up and trying on clothes

10:53

and looking in her mirror and all that.

10:56

Silly stuff. But

10:57

Renee presented as a boy for

10:59

her entire childhood, except for

11:02

in some private moments and moments

11:04

where she would kind of sneak off from her family and

11:06

friends.

11:08

You know, she chronicles like

11:10

pretty thoroughly the mindset of she

11:12

had in her teenage years. She

11:14

described herself as walking

11:17

a tightrope between genders. And

11:20

over the years, that would cause her

11:21

a great deal of depression. She

11:24

would have suicidal thoughts, though she's

11:26

also noted that she never seriously considered

11:29

suicide. Around that

11:31

time in her teenage years, she found

11:33

a book of her mother's that described

11:36

transsexualism as a disorder.

11:37

So she says that event

11:39

marked the beginning of a full scale

11:41

effort to do away with Renee. The

11:44

specter of lunacy turned the struggle

11:46

into a real war. And

11:49

then she describes herself as spending her next 15

11:51

years mostly as trying to kill off

11:53

Renee and present

11:56

as a boy and then a man. But

12:01

it's so sad to

12:03

hear, you know, not because it's surprising,

12:06

I guess, but because it feels like I

12:08

don't know that like maybe the language we use publicly

12:10

about trans youth like doesn't emphasize

12:13

the emotional violence of trying

12:16

to force yourself to be something you're not. I

12:18

think that's exactly right. And then you run across

12:20

books like this that like, I

12:23

mean, call you a lunatic. And it's like, what

12:25

do you how are you supposed to feel? How are you supposed

12:27

to get through that? I think

12:29

even today, like we definitely don't

12:31

talk enough about like the mental health effects

12:34

of simply existing as

12:36

a trans person. And then you have all these

12:38

laws like the transports

12:40

laws that kind of come down on top

12:42

of that. And Trevor Project

12:45

research has shown that, you

12:47

know, that really does have an effect on kids'

12:49

mental health. It shouldn't be

12:51

news. But of course, it does need to be news.

12:53

We do need to corroborate with studies the fact

12:56

that like if you're constantly receiving

12:58

messages challenging your right to exist,

13:00

it can be bad for you. It's like,

13:02

gee. Yeah.

13:03

Who would have thought?

13:07

This sounds like an awful, you know, an

13:09

awful way to grow up at any time, but also

13:11

like this is the

13:14

1940s, which also famously

13:17

a time so repressive

13:19

that we like conspired to leave no trace

13:21

of sex in our movies, lest the aliens

13:23

someday learn that we had it, I guess. Because

13:27

the aliens totally aren't having sex themselves.

13:30

No, they would they would never

13:31

know they just annually probe people

13:33

in remote corners of the galaxy. That's

13:35

their thing. It's fine. So

13:39

she goes to high school at the prestigious

13:41

Horace Mann School where she played football,

13:44

she played baseball, and she says

13:46

she once had scouting interests from the New York Yankees

13:49

and baseball. Wow. Yeah. And

13:52

of course, she played tennis as well. She went to Yale for

13:54

college where she was the captain of the men's

13:56

tennis team. She went to University

13:59

of Rochester for men's tennis.

13:59

school. She graduated in 1959

14:03

in college is when she

14:05

started seeing a psychologist about

14:07

her transsexualism. And

14:10

she would go on to see the same psychologist for years

14:12

and years. But yeah,

14:15

like she eventually goes

14:17

into the Navy to continue training as

14:19

like an ophthalmologist, following

14:22

in that, you know, kind of scientific background

14:24

that her family has.

14:26

I have no idea if her memoir covers this, but

14:28

like how early did she want to do that? Was

14:30

she like a little was as

14:33

a child, was she like, I want to be an eye

14:35

doctor? Yeah, I mean,

14:37

maybe she was, but that's not really

14:39

the impression I got from the book. The impression I

14:41

got from the book is like,

14:43

I love playing sports and I'm expected to go

14:45

into this like serious, like stand up field.

14:48

Right. Which is like, I feel like such

14:50

a

14:51

a feature of growing up with that

14:53

kind of family and expectations really like what's

14:56

what's something impressive I can do that

14:58

isn't like heart surgery? Yes,

15:02

exactly. She does grow to

15:04

love the profession, though. So that's that's nice.

15:06

I mean, not everyone can say that of their

15:08

careers. So so

15:10

she does really well in the Navy playing

15:13

tennis there. She

15:14

won singles and doubles in

15:16

the all Navy championship. At one

15:19

point, she was ranked as high as fourth

15:21

in her region. I had no idea there

15:23

was Navy tennis. This is like a whole world

15:25

opening up. Yeah, military

15:27

sports there. They're a thing. I feel like

15:30

there should be more Polly Shore movies about

15:32

this. So

15:35

she is done with the Navy. She becomes

15:38

a world renowned ophthalmologist.

15:39

She specializes in eye muscle

15:42

surgery, in correcting double vision.

15:44

By all accounts, she really does seem to

15:46

like this career quite a bit. She seems

15:48

like it gives her a lot of self

15:51

esteem, a lot of confidence, a lot

15:53

of sense of purpose, I guess.

15:56

Per an affidavit made

15:59

later. she would say that she made $100,000 a year as an ophthalmologist,

16:01

which obviously even today is

16:03

a

16:06

significant amount of money. And back then,

16:08

certainly was a very significant

16:10

amount of money. Yeah, this is

16:12

like when people are going around buying a house

16:14

for $50,000 and maybe it has a pool.

16:19

What is her relationship to tennis

16:21

in this period? I wonder because it's like, I mean,

16:24

I guess this is also a question

16:25

about how professional tennis

16:27

works because I kind of assume, I

16:29

guess, based on other sports that like,

16:32

if you're really good at something, you

16:34

probably won't make that much

16:36

money at it unless you're like one

16:39

of the best in the world. So you have to like, also

16:42

be an ophthalmologist or something like that.

16:44

Is this something that she wants to pursue

16:47

full-time and ophthalmology is like,

16:49

does that feel like a concession to practicality

16:52

or is, I don't know, what's that all like?

16:55

It does feel like a bit of a concession to

16:57

practicality. The eye

16:59

surgeon career, it does

17:02

feel like a bit of a case of like tennis

17:04

isn't serious, but she loves it

17:06

and she keeps coming back to it at every

17:08

stage of her life. Yeah. So

17:10

she played against men in the US Open

17:12

five times between 1953 and 1960. And

17:17

a lot of the argument that people make

17:19

about trans athletes is

17:21

like, oh, they were nobody

17:23

as a man. And then they became a woman

17:25

and they're destroying the competition.

17:28

But the reality is she was a good tennis player

17:30

when she was presenting as male. Yeah.

17:33

And it's also, I don't know. It's like that argument is

17:35

so clearly based like so many of the other

17:37

ones are and like the idea of transitioning

17:41

so as to

17:42

like achieve some kind of ulterior

17:44

motive aside from just

17:47

being able to live your life as the person

17:49

you are. It's like, no, it's all about tennis.

17:54

Right. And she kind of

17:56

makes this point too, and others will in defense of

17:58

her. And it's

17:59

like, what do you what are you thinking? You

18:02

think there's going to be like a parade of men dressing

18:04

as women just so they can like beat the

18:06

shit out of a tennis ball? Like I don't think that's how

18:08

it works. I mean, that could be

18:10

a fun party, but it's more of a limited event

18:12

kind of a thing. It's it's a that's

18:14

right. That's the drag invitational.

18:17

Yeah. I

18:20

feel like this is something that we're inside

18:22

of right now. This idea that

18:24

like someone's about

18:27

you, like that someone's gender is about

18:29

the feelings of like me, the senator from

18:31

Iowa

18:32

or whatever. Yeah. This idea that

18:34

like you were personally offending me by

18:36

doing something to your body. Yeah.

18:39

Like we don't act like that when people get tattoos.

18:42

My mom does, but not to nearly that extent.

18:49

We did a bonus episode this month with

18:51

Chelsea Weber Smith on the gay agenda and

18:54

the like spoiler slash teaser I'll

18:56

give you for it is that there's

18:59

only a straight agenda. That's the

19:01

only agenda because straightness is the only

19:03

thing that people have to be forced

19:05

into. The only

19:07

thing that has to be rigidly

19:09

taught and you know, that you have to punish

19:12

people for not doing and that

19:14

you have to groom people into is heteronormativity.

19:17

And it feels like there's a lot of projection about

19:20

people secretly understanding that that's what they're

19:22

doing. And then that's why they have to accuse everyone

19:24

else of it, I think. Yeah. No,

19:26

I think that's a great way of putting it much

19:28

like with her childhood. I'm not going to talk too much

19:31

about the X's

19:32

and O's, I guess, of her transition

19:34

because it's not really better business.

19:37

Yeah. Yes. Correct.

19:39

And that was, you know, in 1975. And like I said, her

19:43

book does go into a lot of detail about that whole

19:45

process, both physically and emotionally. And

19:48

she's very adamant throughout both

19:50

of her autobiographies. The

19:52

second one is called No Way, Renee. Does she

19:55

have a book called Walk away, Renee?

19:56

Or is she saving that? I

19:58

was really hoping But yeah, maybe

20:01

that's the next part. Yeah, she's also

20:03

like on and off hormones a little bit over the years,

20:05

as I think is pretty normal. She

20:09

talks about the muscle definition disappearing

20:12

in her arms, which I think is notable for a

20:14

tennis player. At the

20:16

same time, her muscle is disappearing. She's also like,

20:18

hey, I get to wear sleeveless dresses

20:20

without feeling embarrassed of my

20:22

arms. Like that's pretty awesome. So it's

20:24

like a pro an icon for her as a

20:27

female athlete, I think. Yeah, God,

20:29

that is emotional. At first,

20:31

she tries to leave tennis behind

20:33

entirely. She moves from New York to

20:35

California. She, of

20:38

course, naturally, she just happens

20:40

to live across the street from a tennis club. And

20:44

she really just can't fucking

20:46

resist tennis, which is, you know,

20:49

that's been a constant in a very

20:51

tumultuous life. So it makes

20:53

a lot of sense to me. She describes

20:55

herself as being Eve

20:58

in the in the garden of you didn't accept instead

21:00

of an apple. Instead of an apple, she

21:02

says she has a tennis ball. What's even

21:04

in the middle of tennis balls? I bet it gets

21:07

really

21:08

gross in there or no, it's golf

21:10

balls that are like really gross inside or tennis

21:12

balls. Hollow. They do seem

21:14

hollow, right? Like just the sound they make.

21:16

They got to be hollow. Listeners,

21:19

write in. Tell us what's inside a tennis ball.

21:21

Go cut one open right now. I'm

21:23

wondering if there's stuff in her book about how she decided

21:25

to transition

21:26

finally, because it

21:28

is, I

21:29

don't know, especially in this time and like

21:32

what options did she have? And

21:35

probably the again,

21:38

corollary of was it easier

21:40

in 1975 than it is now? It

21:44

was definitely a little bit harder in 1975.

21:47

Not that it's by any means easy now, but

21:51

she had a lot of trouble finding a surgeon who would

21:53

sign off on this and do the operation.

21:55

It was she

21:57

ultimately decided

21:59

to go

23:59

entire infrastructure that I was raised

24:02

in

24:02

that my, you know, I grew up knowing

24:04

about

24:05

having my world shaped by was

24:07

schooled and came of age and is

24:10

telling me that I have to

24:12

keep living a lie in order to be considered

24:14

sane.

24:15

And I have to all by myself

24:18

somehow find a way to believe that

24:21

I like, I think for so many people, it can't even be

24:23

a conscious decision to decide to try

24:25

and step out of that and trust your

24:28

own understanding of who you are because that,

24:30

you know, we're raised to believe in institutions

24:32

and that's so hard to

24:34

walk out of.

24:36

Reading the book is fascinating because it's

24:38

like

24:39

you really do see these like moments

24:41

of self-harm and

24:44

just total

24:46

lack of clarity and

24:48

not by her own doing. It's by all

24:50

the people and institutions surrounding

24:52

her. Yeah. So 1975, so she's 31 at the time.

24:58

Oh, 41. Wait. Oh yeah. She was

25:00

born in 1934. Oh my God. Okay. Yeah.

25:05

So it's 1975 when she

25:07

transitions. Obviously at

25:09

this point, she's well past like the prime of

25:11

like an average professional athlete who

25:13

typically like peak in their late twenties,

25:15

maybe very early thirties.

25:19

She's called her transition in the

25:21

years since quote, a

25:23

very selfish thing. I think she's

25:26

probably being a little bit too hard on herself. I think

25:28

there's

25:29

a difference between being selfish and taking

25:31

care of yourself. Trans

25:33

people just aren't often afforded

25:36

the space or the means to take care of themselves.

25:38

And it probably felt like

25:40

a luxury at the time to be

25:42

doing something like that. Yeah. Well, and does

25:44

she get into why she deems

25:47

it selfish or is she

25:49

just like, well, it's obviously selfish. She

25:52

has a wife and a family before she

25:55

fully trans

25:59

I'm using

26:01

fully kind of in quotes. I

26:04

think she's using the word selfish

26:06

in the context of like, how

26:08

could I like give up my family

26:11

because she does get divorced.

26:13

I think she has a lot of feelings,

26:15

especially later in her life about her relationship

26:18

to her son. The year

26:20

after she has the

26:22

sex change operation,

26:25

she's been told by a gynecologist

26:27

friend that she shouldn't get back into

26:30

tennis, that her serve would be recognized

26:32

anywhere, that

26:33

she's going to get outed by

26:36

playing tennis. But she

26:38

really can't resist. She lives near this tennis

26:40

club and she loves the sport

26:43

and she says private play is fun,

26:46

but it isn't as spicy as a tournament. Yeah,

26:48

the spice factor. I mean, who can resist? Yeah,

26:51

I love that. I love that. And I love that she,

26:53

I don't know. I don't know if she would describe it as fun

26:56

because spicy things

26:57

aren't always fun exactly, but she

26:59

misses it. I'm just going to send you one

27:02

line from her book. So

27:05

she wrote, I felt so comfortable

27:07

as Renee that I thought once again, why

27:10

shouldn't I have everything I want? Oh,

27:12

I love it. I mean, it's definitely

27:15

a stance she backtracks on closer

27:18

to the present day, but I think it's

27:20

really notable that she felt so bold and

27:22

so entitled to the things that

27:25

everyone else has that we

27:27

don't have to always fight for. She

27:29

finally feels comfortable,

27:32

right? That when you finally,

27:34

when you have that feeling of like, why shouldn't I

27:36

have everything I want? It's like, it feels

27:38

like that has something to do with shedding that feeling of

27:40

like

27:41

having to stifle

27:43

yourself, which admits to questioning

27:45

your own right to exist in any real way.

27:48

And so then I don't know, it feels very powerful for

27:50

her to then come back to tennis.

27:52

She's finally like

27:54

maybe doing the thing that

27:56

has been most consistent in her life

27:58

as herself

27:59

truly for the past. the first time. Exactly.

28:01

It's I think that's ultimately why

28:04

she couldn't resist. Yeah.

28:06

Playing tennis is in some ways the most

28:08

natural form of who Renee

28:10

Richards is. And that's you know,

28:12

we'll get more into this later, but we're so fixated

28:14

on the concept of winning

28:16

in sports that I feel like we have forgotten

28:18

in some ways about what

28:20

else they offer to the people who do them and to

28:22

kids, especially. And one of them just being

28:24

like,

28:25

when you find the right thing for you, you

28:27

can feel like you

28:30

have to you don't have to feel weird about

28:32

your body for at least one hour

28:35

of the day. And everybody

28:37

should have access to that. Everybody

28:40

should. Yeah. And I think it does get

28:43

intentionally overlooked by a lot of lawmakers

28:45

that kids are doing this stuff. Fun. They're doing

28:47

it to make friends. They're they're

28:50

doing it to feel at home in their bodies ultimately.

28:52

And, you know,

28:55

for lawmakers, no, it's all about scholarships.

28:57

It's all about making cis girls cry.

28:59

I don't know. What have you.

29:01

You know, who makes this girl's cry? Cis

29:04

boys work on that government.

29:09

Preach. Oh, my

29:11

God. Another interesting thing

29:13

that I think she says around this time is that

29:16

she writes, the whole world

29:18

seemed to be looking for me to be their Joan of

29:20

Arc.

29:21

So that's a really fascinating

29:23

comparison to me. Yeah. Joan

29:25

of Arc was definitely gender

29:28

nonconforming, very likely to be

29:30

trans.

29:31

She was literally burned at the stake for not

29:34

complying with gender norms. When you put

29:36

it that

29:38

way. So she starts playing these

29:40

tournaments because she can't resist at

29:43

a tournament in La Jolla in 1976. She is playing really

29:45

well.

29:50

Meanwhile, a reporter in the background

29:52

is doing some digging. She had her name

29:54

legally changed, but he's unearthed

29:57

her dead name. This person,

29:59

by the way, happens to be Tucker Carlson's

30:01

father. What? Richard. No.

30:07

She is literally outed by Tucker Carlson's

30:10

father. And

30:12

that was the day Tucker went to

30:14

bring your

30:16

demonic little boy to work day and

30:18

you can really see the impression of me.

30:21

So he

30:24

basically out her but in his version

30:26

of things she's a like we

30:28

see today she is apparently a man masquerading

30:31

as a woman. He does not like use

30:33

the term transsexual or transgender.

30:35

He just thinks she's trying to like

30:37

hustle people at tennis basically. She

30:40

worked so hard on tennis hustling that

30:42

she just found out she

30:44

was a woman. So

30:47

she holds a news conference at her tennis club.

30:50

She says about 100 reporters came. So

30:52

this is like a giant story. This is

30:55

like people are like, oh my god. Yes,

30:58

this is a very big story. So

31:00

she is forthcoming

31:01

at this news conference. Really

31:03

like owning her identity. I mean, she's not

31:06

the only tennis star who has come out

31:08

as queer, not really by their own choosing.

31:10

I mean, Billie Jean King, Martina, never to

31:12

Lova.

31:13

They weren't exactly like Jonesing

31:15

to come out.

31:17

She then goes to a tournament in South

31:19

Orange, New Jersey. It's run by a friend

31:22

of hers. He's like, no, come play. Come play. It'll be fine.

31:25

She had played there before her transition as well.

31:28

So she's

31:29

now second guessing herself at every

31:31

possible moment. She's like, can I

31:33

pat a ball boy on the head? Oops, better

31:35

not. Like better not

31:37

make the trans is look bad, better not

31:40

be seen as essentially like grooming

31:41

or being creepy or you

31:44

know, doing anything even remotely

31:46

like out of line that can

31:48

be considered like weird or unusual

31:51

in any form. Twenty five of the thirty

31:53

two women entered in that tournament ultimately

31:56

drop out in protest of

31:58

her presence. Yeah.

31:59

This continues to be like a big national story

32:02

at this point. When Tucker

32:04

Carlson's dad outed

32:06

her at this other this previous

32:09

tournament she was in. Yeah. Like

32:12

how

32:13

sort of high in the rankings of

32:15

women's tennis is she at

32:17

this point? She's doing pretty well

32:19

because she I believe

32:22

wins that tournament. It's not like she's like

32:24

a fringe player. She

32:26

is known to be competitive. She is

32:29

succeeding. I mean, I don't think she's like Chris

32:31

Ever level who again is like

32:33

many years her junior. Right. But

32:36

she's like good enough to make people nervous.

32:39

Good enough to get the Carlson's concerned.

32:41

1976, that

32:43

same year is the first year

32:45

she tries to compete in the U.S. Open against

32:48

other women.

32:49

Incidentally, by the way, this is the

32:51

same summer that Caitlyn Jenner captivates

32:53

the world and wins the Olympic decathlon. Oh,

32:56

my God. Yeah. Yeah. And the decathlon

32:58

is like a singularly terrifying Olympic

33:00

event,

33:01

too. It's like they just rolled all

33:03

of the other events into one and we're like, all

33:05

right, Caitlyn, get out there. Yes.

33:07

And she did.

33:09

And she was great. And then I

33:11

think everything in her public image went

33:14

downhill from there. Probably. It was

33:16

a good moment, though. So as Caitlyn

33:18

Jenner is doing her thing, we

33:20

have Renee

33:22

applying to play in the U.S. Open and

33:25

the USDA tells her that

33:27

she can if she

33:29

passes the bar body test, which

33:32

hadn't been required before for planning

33:34

the U.S. Open. So when they see how many bars

33:36

your body can go to.

33:38

Oh, my God, I'm so close. No,

33:42

no, no. So the bar body test

33:45

is looking at your chromosome

33:47

makeup. All right. You know, many

33:49

women have XX chromosomes. Many

33:52

men have like XY chromosomes.

33:54

As I remember, every time I have to look

33:57

at

33:57

bathroom doors that are pulling that shit

33:59

and I'm like, I don't. I don't fucking remember.

34:02

It's yeah, I mean, we need to have a whole conversation

34:04

about like

34:05

bathroom doors at like cutesy breweries

34:08

and stuff. They're

34:10

out of control. You know, she

34:12

refuses to take this test arguing

34:14

that correctly, in fact, that not

34:17

all men have male

34:18

chromosomes and vice versa. She

34:21

didn't feel like her chromosome makeup

34:23

that she was born with

34:25

in 1934 had anything

34:26

to do with her sexuality in 1976. She

34:29

writes that in her book. Now

34:31

I'm going to send you another quote from

34:33

her

34:33

book that I think you're going to enjoy that

34:35

it would be great if you could read. Yeah.

34:38

Okay.

34:39

How hungry for tennis success must

34:41

you be to have your penis chopped off

34:43

in pursuit of it?

34:45

How many men would do it for a million

34:47

dollars? If you could find one,

34:49

would such a neurotic be likely to have the concentration

34:52

to play top flight tennis, even

34:55

if he didn't go completely crazy once he

34:57

realized what he'd

34:58

done? That's

35:00

so great. Yeah, no, I love

35:02

it. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier,

35:04

which is like, of course, these are not

35:07

men masquerading as women.

35:09

Like Renee is just a woman

35:12

trying to be a woman and trying to play a sport.

35:14

And those two things are only kind of sort of

35:16

related. And yeah,

35:18

so that's kind of like the defense

35:19

in her book for what

35:22

she's doing as she faces backlash

35:24

from people on the tour, from coaches

35:26

on the tour, from the USDA itself.

35:29

Women's sports like do

35:31

have a ton of problems, but the problem is

35:33

that nobody cares about them and there's no money

35:36

and you can like make minimum wages.

35:39

You know, someone in

35:42

like the top 10 athletes

35:44

in your sport in your country and you

35:46

can still not really be able

35:48

to get by. And that's

35:50

the problem. Like I feel like the problems

35:53

in women's sports, like they

35:55

are

35:55

being clobbered by men,

35:58

but like at the institutional

35:59

level.

36:00

Yeah, I mean, something we've seen

36:03

a lot of in the last few years, I'm

36:05

sure was equally rampant during, you know,

36:07

Renee's heyday was abusive

36:09

coaches. That's

36:12

you know, that's one problem. You also have inequity

36:14

in facilities. We love

36:16

to hide the

36:17

dangerous elements of sports

36:19

by talking about how important it is for like

36:21

community and leadership and like being

36:24

part of something. And it feels like one of the

36:27

unacknowledged fears is like what

36:30

then if you were on a team with

36:32

if you're a cis girl and you're on a team with and you

36:35

love a trans girl on a team with you

36:37

or if you you

36:38

know you're in a relationship with

36:40

all of your teammates and you're doing something

36:42

together and then you are whoops

36:45

building community with trans people

36:47

and then you can't be pushed

36:50

around as easily by your parents.

36:53

You know, yeah, like

36:56

what if the kids find out that trans people

36:58

are people like now

37:00

that's the tennis ball that God told you

37:02

not to take a bite out of.

37:08

I'm just thinking about like all the fuzz

37:10

like that's just it sounds like it would really

37:13

like the texture is not ideal.

37:15

Yeah, like the sensory idea

37:17

of it is like truly squirm

37:20

inducing. And that's why I can't stop

37:22

thinking about it.

37:26

So Renee is not allowed to play in

37:28

the 1976 open because she does

37:30

not take the bar body test. Wow.

37:34

But she keeps playing tennis even though it kind

37:36

of like jeopardizes her credibility.

37:38

It jeopardizes the credibility of people she's playing

37:41

for. We're hosting tournaments. She plays

37:43

when she can. And

37:46

in 1977, she once played women's

37:49

doubles with Billie Jean King at Billie Jean

37:51

King's invitation. So that's pretty cool.

37:53

Billie Jean King is not out at this point as

37:55

lesbian, by the way. It's also crazy

37:58

that like Billie Jean King is. From

38:00

what I remember from that American Masters,

38:02

like one of the people who made Title Nine

38:04

possible, but we remember her mostly for

38:07

that time she beat that old gross sexist.

38:12

You know who else beat the old gross sexist?

38:15

Renee? This

38:20

guy was just out here like challenging anyone

38:22

with like a pulse to like play him in tennis

38:24

and was like,

38:25

bro, just no. And

38:27

it worked because they made a Holly Hunter movie

38:29

about it. She does decide to take the bar body test in 1977 at

38:32

some point, and the

38:39

results are apparently ambiguous.

38:42

She says she passed. I don't think

38:44

that's the common consensus. She says

38:46

she wouldn't take the test the second time under

38:48

USTA's conditions. At

38:51

this point, they're kind of at an impasse

38:53

and Renee uh,

38:55

sues for the right to play in the US

38:57

Open. So talking

39:00

about how like every character in the story

39:02

is like,

39:03

you know, kind of like their own main character

39:05

in a different story. The person

39:08

who agrees to take on her case is Roy Cohn.

39:10

Oh my

39:12

God. Yeah. That's

39:15

like a name that scares you. Oh

39:17

yeah, absolutely. It's just to be

39:19

totally clear. It's like that Roy Cohn,

39:21

the Roy Cohn you're thinking of

39:24

who aren't thinking of a Roy Cohn. Please

39:27

tell us who is Roy

39:27

Cohn. There are so many ways to know him.

39:30

I know him as the guy who wrote Donald Trump's

39:33

prenup when he married Ivana, which

39:35

is surely a good sign. Oh, definitely.

39:38

Yeah. That was one of the first places I was going to go was

39:40

his support of Donald Trump. The other obvious

39:42

association is McCarthyism.

39:44

Uh, he was that guy involved

39:47

with the Rosenbergs and all

39:49

that truly the long 20th century

39:52

and died of AIDS while being a virulent homophobe.

39:55

And yeah, I just apparently had

39:57

his

39:57

fingers and every legal pie in the 20th century.

40:00

sanctuary. And I

40:02

also know him first as a character in Angels

40:04

in America, which is kind of

40:07

a strange

40:08

way to meet someone because that's

40:11

a redemption arc for him because it's him dying

40:13

and entertaining the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg.

40:16

But

40:16

that's a whole other episode. Renee

40:19

was told by a friend that

40:21

he was controversial, but the best there

40:24

was. And I'm like,

40:26

this is like the

40:26

biggest understatement I've ever heard in my life.

40:29

He was controversial. Renee is

40:33

all nervous and she goes to his apartment.

40:36

He greets her at the door in a bathrobe

40:38

because of course he does. He

40:41

immediately takes the case. He

40:43

ends up handing it to his partner, Mike Rosen, but

40:46

the association with the case is very

40:48

much with him.

40:48

Like, you know, it's Roy Cohn's partner.

40:51

So it's it's a whole thing. Interestingly,

40:54

though, Renee barely spends any time on this

40:56

in the book.

40:58

You know, I've never been part of a lawsuit,

41:01

but it does seem like, you know, even

41:03

in the best of circumstances, it takes over

41:05

your life in such

41:07

a profound way that by the time it's over,

41:10

it feels like it would make a lot of sense to

41:12

just

41:13

not want to talk about it anymore. Right.

41:16

And this book came out in 1983. So

41:18

she's like not all that far

41:20

removed from it. The

41:24

case was heard in the New York Supreme Court

41:26

in August of 1977. The U.S. Open

41:29

typically starts off, you know, around Labor Day.

41:31

So like September. So this

41:34

we're like down to the wire here. Renee had

41:36

doctors testify for her that she

41:39

was indeed a woman. This is, of course,

41:41

not based on like social norms or

41:43

like respect for people. It's based purely on the fact

41:45

that she had this one surgery. Right. But nevertheless,

41:48

the doctors testify for her. Billie Jean King

41:50

files an affidavit supporting

41:52

her.

41:52

The U.S. argument

41:55

on the contrary was the bar

41:57

body test was needed to keep male and

41:59

imposters from entering the women's horror.

42:02

So it's it goes back to this idea about

42:04

protecting women in sports, like protecting

42:07

in heavy air quotes. And again, it's

42:09

like, why would you want to be in women's

42:10

sports if you identify

42:13

as a man and you could be in men's sports

42:15

where you get paid more money and people notice

42:18

what you're doing? Right. People

42:20

watch you on TV. You have TV broadcasts.

42:23

The song remains the same and the song is stupid.

42:26

Yes. The judge

42:29

also thinks the song is stupid, I guess, because

42:32

he rules

42:32

in favor of Renee.

42:34

He misgenders her in the ruling, but

42:37

nevertheless, he rules in favor of her. Yeah,

42:39

I mean, he does have some concern for Renee's

42:42

sanity here, which I think

42:44

there are a lot of people in this country

42:46

who would rather see trans people

42:48

dead than living as their true selves.

42:51

So at least he's acknowledging that,

42:53

you know, she needed to do this for her for her

42:56

livelihood. Yeah,

42:57

right. And that this was

42:59

fundamentally necessary.

43:02

And then to believe that you're kind of

43:04

you're allowing maybe someone else to

43:06

sort of take the ingredients they find in what you

43:08

say and construct

43:10

the understanding that

43:13

if this was essential to somebody's

43:15

well-being, then they were always a

43:17

woman. So the good news is Renee

43:19

can play. She can play

43:21

anywhere in the U.S. or South America.

43:24

She would have had to undertake a second lawsuit

43:27

to be able to play in Europe. So she does

43:29

not do that, but she can play.

43:32

And after all the hype about

43:35

being able to like supposedly beat Chris Evert,

43:38

she loses in the first round of singles to

43:40

Virginia

43:40

Wade, who is a British player

43:42

who had won Wimbledon just that year. She

43:45

does come pretty close to winning in

43:47

doubles, though she's playing

43:49

with Betty Ann Stewart. They lose to

43:52

Martina Navratilova and her partner.

43:55

This is interesting for several reasons. The most

43:57

immediate reason is that Renee would go

43:59

on to

43:59

coach Martina for a couple of years. So

44:02

Renee plays in several more US Opens. She

44:05

plays professional tennis for four more years.

44:07

She's coaching Martina. Then

44:10

she returns to be an eye doctor in 1981, which

44:13

is the same year that King and Navratilova

44:16

both come out. So yeah,

44:19

I mean, that's kind of her tennis career.

44:21

Like she never wins the US Open. A

44:23

lot of them are happy to play with her. Some

44:25

of them are not. They'll make snide comments about

44:27

being in the locker room with her. They'll complain

44:30

about her being it for the money, which

44:33

I think is kind of funny. But she does have a lot

44:35

of supporters. So it's just kind of a mixed bag.

44:37

And then she kind of like, it's like, OK,

44:40

maybe I'm finally actually

44:40

too old for this. Let me go back to my

44:43

other love, eye surgery.

44:45

I love that she has ophthalmology as a fallback.

44:47

It's just like very Elle Woods. So

44:49

OK, so she's back to the ophthalmologist's

44:52

life. She is a practicing

44:54

ophthalmologist for several more decades,

44:57

I believe. And she's 88

44:59

today. So

45:01

she is still among us. She has given a handful

45:04

of interviews to major publications

45:06

over the years, as I was alluding to before. They

45:10

all misgender her and dead name her. And

45:13

yeah, so there's an ESPN

45:15

documentary made about her in 2011. It's

45:18

kind of weirdly obsessed

45:20

with her relationship with her son, which

45:22

is fractured. It's

45:24

like very interested in this question of, can

45:26

trans people,

45:28

parent kids? Focusing

45:30

on that aspect is maybe missing the

45:32

story, in my opinion. I

45:35

don't know how she was as a parent to

45:37

her son, but

45:39

probably it's not all

45:41

wrapped up in her being trans. Right.

45:44

And like you were saying before, it's like

45:46

you can't, in a post-mortem

45:48

very easily or at all,

45:51

pick apart the effects of transitioning

45:54

when you have a child and then

45:56

the social stigma and

45:59

the beliefs of people.

45:59

around you and the effect that has

46:02

on everybody and your and your child's

46:04

life. We did an episode

46:06

last fall about people's abortion

46:09

stories. We had people,

46:10

you know, send in their stories of experiences

46:12

with abortion. And there were like several

46:15

themes that were very prominent. And one

46:17

of them that showed up over and over and over

46:19

and over again

46:20

was that my abortion wasn't bad,

46:22

but the stigma around it was or the experience

46:24

around it was, or the pursuit of it was.

46:27

But the abortion itself didn't feel

46:30

bad or wrong, but everything around

46:32

it

46:34

made it harder. Right.

46:36

And this feels like that kind of thing too, where we

46:38

have something that we stigmatize socially

46:41

and then people have to

46:44

deal with the fallout of the

46:46

way people treat them and the way people react

46:48

to something that maybe

46:50

was painful because it was a medical procedure

46:54

or a surgery. But that was very

46:57

clearly to them, the thing that they needed and

46:59

allowed them to be happier

47:02

to even survive. But then

47:04

if we're against that, then

47:06

we get to cook up these bad faith arguments

47:08

about how

47:10

abortion or transitioning or whatever

47:13

else is must be harmful because

47:15

like at the effects of the way our culture treats

47:17

you when you've done that.

47:19

Right. You can't win. Yeah. It's

47:21

really interesting just to compare

47:23

the reaction that trans

47:25

athletes get today to

47:28

the reaction she got then.

47:31

So I just want to go into a little bit

47:33

about

47:34

the reaction then there was some interesting

47:36

letters to the editor from the New York Times

47:39

from around the time of the lawsuit. And

47:42

there are there's some garden

47:44

variety transphobia in the letters to

47:46

the editor, but for the most part, the letters are really

47:49

supportive of Renee. Kelsey

47:52

from Greenwich, Connecticut. She's

47:55

like, you know, this sounds an awful lot like

47:57

how white people would suffer from

47:59

like, like losing to black people in sports,

48:02

not to mention like the damage

48:05

that was inflicted on little league boys

48:07

when girls signed on to play. So I

48:09

mean, these are imperfect comparisons, but I think

48:11

they're also astute, at least for the time.

48:14

She says as a lifelong woman,

48:17

I would like to welcome Dr. Richards to our

48:19

ranks and assure her that most of us, excluding

48:22

your dollar happy sisters on the court,

48:24

feel no fear and hold no prejudice

48:26

as far as she is concerned. Yeah.

48:28

And I feel like that's the kind of viewpoint that

48:31

doesn't

48:31

get represented by the historical record

48:34

if we kind of zoom out too far.

48:36

Then that misses the

48:38

people who were always there kind of

48:40

in a more quiet way, being like, well, that

48:42

makes sense. Renee seems great.

48:45

I'm going to not shout because I'm

48:47

not violently opposed to her, but

48:49

we'll say at a normal volume that

48:51

this all seems great for her

48:54

and good for Renee. And then people

48:57

who spoke a little bit more quietly

48:59

don't get remembered. It's

49:00

my kids, people who shouted. It's

49:03

a little bit like how you only leave

49:05

like a Yelp review if there was like a bug in your

49:07

food or something. It

49:11

is like that. It's like history. History

49:15

is like composed of Yelp reviews.

49:21

So I think we can go into a little

49:24

bit of her kind of present day views,

49:26

which we've talked a little bit about already with the

49:28

documentary and everything

49:31

like that. So she

49:33

does not like the word transgender,

49:35

as I mentioned at the top of the show.

49:37

She calls it inclusive

49:39

as a word, and that's what she doesn't

49:41

like about it. So she's

49:44

like, I changed from man to

49:46

woman, not something in between. She

49:48

correctly points out that transgender suggests,

49:51

and in many instances refers to an in

49:53

between partway from one

49:55

sex to the other. And she says

49:57

the idea of androgyny is not appealing.

49:59

to her. I like the binary

50:02

system that God designed for us, two

50:04

sexes, two genders, male and female.

50:07

It's what makes the world go round and is the spice

50:09

of life. I

50:11

love that she loves the word spice.

50:14

I feel like this is obviously a much bigger

50:16

conversation of kind of

50:19

now in a great way, I think

50:21

there are trans elders

50:23

old enough and talkative

50:26

enough to say things that the trans

50:28

community today is like, absolutely not.

50:31

What are your thoughts on that? Yeah,

50:33

I mean, I guess it didn't totally surprise me

50:36

that someone her age and

50:39

who came up in that time facing

50:41

that

50:42

pressure and those stigmas would have

50:44

those views. It's obviously

50:46

a little disappointing, especially knowing her story.

50:48

It's not like she instantly went from being

50:51

a man to a woman, though maybe that's

50:53

how she sees it based on her writing. But

50:55

she did have this whole tweener phase

50:58

kind of thing like is

51:00

normal where she's

51:03

taking hormones. She stops taking hormones.

51:05

She kind of feels like her chest changing. She has

51:09

surgery on her Adam's

51:10

apple at one point. And

51:12

so I think it's maybe like not

51:15

the most introspective thing she's ever

51:17

said, but I don't

51:19

know. What I'm

51:21

going to say next even disappoints me a little

51:24

more because now she's

51:26

talking specifically about tennis and

51:28

whether trans people should compete

51:30

in sports. She's basically

51:32

saying like if I had played women's tennis in my

51:34

20s, I would have won Wimbledon, she says. But

51:38

at 40, she knew she wasn't going to be the best.

51:40

She thinks for scientific reasons, trans

51:43

women shouldn't compete against this woman.

51:45

And I'll be very clear here, like the

51:48

science on this is not settled. There's

51:51

very little of it. And

51:53

when there's very little science on something,

51:55

it's an active choice to err on the side

51:57

of exclusion rather than inclusion.

52:00

These studies

52:03

on transgender athletes right now just frankly

52:05

don't exist. There's some studies on transgender

52:07

bodies as they compare to cis

52:10

bodies and physical activity, but that's obviously

52:12

not the same when you're dealing with elite level athletes.

52:15

There are researchers working on longitudinal

52:17

studies about

52:19

athletic advantage or lack

52:21

thereof. But for now, we're

52:23

kind of in this moment

52:26

where

52:26

you can kind of read the tea leaves however

52:28

you want to.

52:29

And I think that's really dangerous. But

52:33

yeah, Renee chooses to read them as like, no,

52:35

the science on this is settled. Trans

52:38

women have way more testosterone

52:40

than cis women, which on average

52:42

isn't wrong. It just doesn't necessarily have

52:44

to be scary. Right.

52:46

I don't know. And then I feel like another approach to

52:49

this topic is just like, why are

52:51

we dividing sports up by gender

52:53

at all?

52:54

My editor is going to think I paid you

52:56

to say that. But that

53:01

really is the ultimate question. Right. And

53:03

I think, you know, obviously a lot of

53:05

this and a lot of the

53:07

pearl clutching around this comes back to title

53:09

nine. It was passed in 1973

53:12

and it made opportunities for women

53:14

by making sure there were women's athletic

53:17

programs at colleges. Subsequently,

53:20

it slowly created professional opportunities

53:22

for them as well in sports, even though

53:25

it's scholastic in nature. It really affects women's

53:27

sports at all levels. And so you have women

53:29

clinging tight to these spots

53:32

that they think they otherwise wouldn't

53:34

have gotten. And they're probably right about that. But

53:36

yeah, what would the world end if we

53:39

organized basketball by height

53:41

or other sports by weight class? Like,

53:43

probably not.

53:44

Yeah. Or figure skating by musical

53:47

genre. Yes. I

53:49

just want all gender, all sexuality

53:52

skating

53:53

organized however we want to. But you could

53:55

have, for example, like

53:57

a night of bond themes. I

54:00

think we would all be happy with that. I think

54:03

we would be too. People

54:05

care a lot about sports, whether

54:09

they are fans

54:11

of sports, whether they have kids who play sports, whether

54:13

they played sports growing up,

54:15

whether they're singularly obsessed with Tonya

54:17

Harding, everyone has

54:19

some connection, right? Yeah.

54:23

So I don't know. This is all to say

54:25

that sports mean different things to different people

54:27

and

54:28

everyone takes them really personally

54:31

in certain ways. And I think

54:33

it's hard then when you see like

54:36

people like Renee saying

54:38

like, Oh, there's no room for in between,

54:40

or maybe trans people can have

54:43

everything except for sports.

54:46

So we have

54:47

had like

54:49

prominent trans athletes since Renee,

54:51

but maybe no one who is like so singularly

54:54

captivated the public in the same way she

54:56

has. I think

54:58

you have to look at what's going on now and

55:01

think about what are we doing?

55:04

As recently as a few weeks ago, Nikki Haley,

55:07

who's running for president as a Republican.

55:09

Wow. Yeah. Was asked on

55:11

a town hall what one of the biggest

55:14

issues facing the country was. And she

55:16

said trans people in women's locker rooms. Honest

55:18

to God, that's what she said. I

55:20

mean, she didn't say the word cisgender, but implying

55:23

cisgender, she said teen girls are killing themselves

55:25

because of it. Oh, are they? Apparently.

55:28

Yeah. And

55:31

we're at a time in which 22 states,

55:33

that's nearly half of all states, banned

55:36

transgender athletes from sports

55:38

at the high school or college levels.

55:41

That's only been since 2020 that this

55:43

has been true. It started with Idaho.

55:46

Some states ban only trans

55:48

girls and women. Some also banned

55:50

trans boys and men. Some

55:52

states have injunctions in place preventing

55:55

enforcement for now as the cases kind of like

55:57

wind their way through the legal system. If you're not a white, you're

55:59

not a white.

55:59

binary, like, well, good luck.

56:02

Like, I don't know what to tell you, but

56:04

you probably can't play somewhere. If you're non-binary,

56:07

you get nothing. You're welcome. One

56:09

of the people kind of leading this charge against

56:11

transgender athletes is Martina

56:14

Navratilova. Twist. God,

56:17

I didn't know that. Knife in

56:19

the heart. I know. I know.

56:22

So she co-runs this group called the Women's

56:24

Sports Policy Working Group.

56:26

It's a really prominent organization that

56:28

purports to advocate for, like, a middle ground

56:31

solution in women's sports. It's a terrible

56:33

acronym. There is not a single vowel in that

56:35

acronym. Do better. I know. I know.

56:38

It's a little unclear. I'm constantly, like, looking

56:40

up the name to remember it. But

56:42

yeah, so it purports to advocate

56:44

for this middle ground, but in reality, it's

56:47

pretty clear when you dig into the rhetoric that

56:49

this group is opposed to trans competitors

56:51

altogether.

56:53

And it just feels like Martina, who

56:56

obviously herself is gay, can point toward

56:59

her relationship with Renee

57:01

to sort of vouch for her track record on queer

57:03

inclusion in sports. But at the

57:05

same time, it's like, well, what do you want her to do?

57:07

Because Renee has stuck by her friend as

57:10

well and said, like,

57:12

yeah, I mean, she's right about biology.

57:14

Yeah. Well,

57:16

and to get back to this idea of, like, the girl

57:18

bossification of history, it's like, yeah,

57:21

sometimes you go through the machine and you

57:23

are very grateful for

57:25

all the joy you were allowed to have. And

57:28

you respond to that by

57:31

trying to rigidly police everyone

57:33

following behind you. And it

57:35

sucks and it hurts. We

57:37

do not respond to being told we're less

57:39

than

57:39

human by rising above it. Typically,

57:42

we respond by being wounded. I

57:44

know. It's so shitty

57:46

and so hard to process. And yeah,

57:51

Renee herself has said she got into

57:53

tennis because she wanted individual

57:55

glory. She wanted to stand out at first

57:58

in her family, but then presumably

57:59

you're meant to understand later on is like,

58:02

she just wanted to stand out in general.

58:05

And like, I would posit basically,

58:08

what's wrong with that? What's wrong with wanting that for

58:10

yourself? And she now

58:12

feels, okay, I was allowed

58:14

to do it. Yes, but I was old. Now other

58:16

people cannot want this for themselves. Which

58:19

like implies, I don't know the guilt

58:22

underneath everything still of just like, well,

58:24

I could do this, but it wasn't, it wasn't

58:26

great that I did it. And we can't have too many

58:29

people doing it. Right. Trans

58:31

kids and sports, it

58:33

really is kind of gives me whiplash

58:35

to realize that like, this wasn't even a conversation

58:37

a few years ago, you know,

58:39

like this proves that this is a

58:42

manufactured controversy that

58:44

like people did not know to even think about

58:46

before they started being told

58:49

to do so. Right. And

58:51

I do think luckily

58:53

that for most people who

58:55

aren't in Congress or

58:58

aspiring to be there, they're

59:00

still really not thinking about it. Or if

59:03

they are, they're not necessarily

59:05

like thinking about it in the way that conservatives want

59:07

them to be. Yeah. All

59:09

of these laws that are about,

59:12

you know, harming and destroying the

59:14

right of, of

59:17

any marginalized group to continue to exist

59:19

are like done in the name of, of white

59:21

cis women and how it's, it's never

59:24

about them because a lot doesn't really like them either.

59:26

But it's, because, you know,

59:29

it's classic, you know, it's

59:31

worth mentioning that Renee does have this

59:33

privilege in the sense that she's white. Like I can't

59:36

imagine what it would have been like

59:38

for a black trans

59:38

woman on the tour.

59:40

Or, you know, you see the way that

59:43

black trans girls are treated in

59:45

sports and also in life, compounding

59:48

that stress and that stigma

59:50

onto somebody is like, it's

59:53

rough. Yeah. And

59:55

I don't know, I feel like I'm, I'm happy

59:58

that I know about her. I feel like the,

59:59

This is a story that

1:00:01

like the ending is uncomfortable and the ending

1:00:03

should be uncomfortable, I think, because you

1:00:06

this is not a time to sit back and be like,

1:00:08

and then Renee won her battle and everything

1:00:11

was great. It's like, no, it

1:00:13

was not great. I hope people feel

1:00:15

a little bit more insight into her

1:00:17

story and that that helps them sort of

1:00:20

contextualize what's going

1:00:22

on today. And I hope someone

1:00:24

picks up her books from this because honestly,

1:00:26

they're kind of delightful. I certainly

1:00:29

will. Thank you so much for

1:00:32

bringing her story to us. I mean, in

1:00:34

terms of what's happening now, like,

1:00:36

I don't know, what do you wish that people were able to

1:00:38

see in all this that they maybe haven't

1:00:40

yet? That

1:00:43

trans people are complex,

1:00:45

just like everyone else. We're

1:00:47

messy as hell, just like everyone else.

1:00:51

People like Renee can be

1:00:53

pioneers or trailblazers, but

1:00:56

kind of like uncomfortable ones, both,

1:00:58

you know, them personally with that

1:01:01

status and the rest of us being

1:01:03

uncomfortable looking

1:01:05

up to them. And I hope people

1:01:07

do realize that as frivolous as sports

1:01:09

may sound, they do mean a lot

1:01:11

of things to many people and

1:01:14

they do kind of shape the debates around marginalized

1:01:17

groups in this country beyond sports

1:01:20

in so many ways. There are so many

1:01:22

memorable moments, I think,

1:01:25

of athletes making an impression

1:01:28

on us not just because of what

1:01:29

they do, but because of the way they do it,

1:01:32

you know, like Flo Joe or

1:01:34

or Billie Jean King or

1:01:37

today, Amber Glenn, the skater, just

1:01:39

that you're at the top of your game showing

1:01:41

people what you can do physically, but also showing

1:01:43

up as physically the person you

1:01:45

are and the person you feel like and the gender

1:01:47

you feel and the sexuality you

1:01:49

feel and how that I get like

1:01:51

I understand why people pushing

1:01:54

the straight agenda are scared by that because

1:01:57

that can be very that can be so

1:01:59

freeing and that

1:01:59

can allow people to

1:02:02

feel more strength and conviction and being

1:02:04

who they are. So yes, we're

1:02:07

a pro sports show, twist. Ha

1:02:09

ha ha ha. Glad

1:02:11

to be a small part of that. Thank you

1:02:14

for being our sports correspondent. Any

1:02:16

time. Where can we experience more of

1:02:19

your brain? You can experience

1:02:21

my brain, Sports Illustrated,

1:02:24

and on social media at

1:02:26

J.M. Kliegman. Amazing. Julie,

1:02:29

thank

1:02:29

you for everything. Thank you

1:02:32

so much for illustrating all

1:02:34

of those sports. It would be really hard

1:02:36

to tell what's going on otherwise. Ha ha

1:02:38

ha ha.

1:02:40

Ha ha ha.

1:02:52

And that is our episode. Thank

1:02:54

you so much for listening. Thank

1:02:57

you for being here. Thank you for being

1:02:59

queer. Thank you so much to

1:03:01

Julie Kliegman, our wonderful guest

1:03:03

for all of their research

1:03:06

and storytelling and everything,

1:03:09

Julie, that you do. And

1:03:11

Carolyn Kendrick, thank you for editing and

1:03:14

producing and for

1:03:16

everything that you do. Thank you so much

1:03:18

for listening.

1:03:19

Thank you for being here. We'll see you next

1:03:21

time. Bye.