You're Wrong About - Renée Richards with Julie Kliegman

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

This week, Sports Illustrated’s Julie Kliegman volleys with Sarah about trans athlete Renée Richards’s fight for her right to play in the U.S. Open. They also dig into how the dialogue surrounding trans athletes has and hasn’t changed in the 40-plus years since. Plus, are tennis balls hollow? An investigation.You can find Julie online here. Support You're Wrong About:Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchWhere else to find us:Sarah's other show, You Are Good[YWA co-founder] Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseLinks:https://juliekliegman.com/http://patreon.com/yourewrongabouthttps://www.teepublic.com/stores/youre-wrong-abouthttps://www.paypal.com/paypalme/yourewrongaboutpodhttps://www.podpage.com/you-are-goodhttp://maintenancephase.comSupport the showSupport the show

I went to the Queens Museum recently and I was like I had no idea the US Open was so near the climax of Men in Black. Welcome to You're Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall and today we are talking about Renee Richards with our pal Julie Cleakman. This is Yerong about first tennis episode. This is an episode about sports and gender and the debate over trans kids and sports, trans people and sports, but of course especially as always in America trans youth. We have a little trigger warning for you for suicide and suicidal thoughts, which comes up briefly in conversation. It's not something that happens in this story, but it is a topic of thought. Speaking of Pride Month, we have a special Pride episode bonus offering for you with our Frank Chelsea Webber Smith in whose closet I am recording

this right now. Carolyn informs me that it's funny that I just came out of the closet and yet here I am trapped in the closet. But Chelsea Webber Smith is the only closet I would ever want to be in. We did a great episode together where they told me all about the gay agenda. I really love doing it with Chelsea. I love Chelsea's work. Please go listen to American Astaria. If you haven't yet, you're in for a treat. Buckle up Cowboys. Here we go. We're headed for the US Open.

Welcome to your wrong about the podcast. We're very occasionally. We talk about sports. And here we go again with Julie Cleakman. Hello. Hi. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me.

I am so happy you wanted to come and talk to us because I do feel like this show secretly is like a little bit of a sports show just very occasionally. A little bit. And I think one of the things I love about talking about sports is that whether we know it or not, I think we're always talking about gender, which is part of today's show. Absolutely.

Yeah, I'd say that's exactly right. And that is already a more perceptive understanding of sports than like 90% of people interested in sports have. So nicely done. I try. Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't understand most of them, but I think they're all neat. And I would love to start off with who are you and who are we talking about today? Because this is my favorite kind of an episode. This is somebody's life. Sure.

So I am Julie Klegman. I am the copy chief at Sports Illustrated. I have a book coming out next year called Mind Game about how elite athletes navigate mental health. So not quite related to gender, but also not related to gender. Oh yeah. And we're going to talk about Renee Richards today. Do you have any sort of previous knowledge of her or of tennis in the 1970s? In terms of Renee specifically,

I have nothing, which is like one reason I was excited to talk about her with you is that you reached out, you said you wanted to talk about Renee and I generally am excited to talk about someone who seems to have been very famous in their moment and then forgotten arguably intentionally by history. And in terms of tennis in the 70s, my friend Patrick will be slightly sad that I don't know anything because I'm sure there's cool stuff to know. But I know that people were really cool outfits and Chris ever was around and had her picture taken by Andy Warhol. That's it. Yeah, there you go. That's that's a great jumping off point.

Yeah, so Renee Richards is a trans tennis player. She would use trans as short for transsexual, whereas most of us know it today as transgender, but her preferred term just so you know is transsexual. By the same notion, instead of saying she like transition genders, she says she have like a sex change operation. So that's amusing her terminology, but in general, we'll still use transgender and all that good stuff. Renee Richards, she was the first, if not the first openly transgender professional athlete, certainly the first one of note that we commonly remember. I mean, there were instances of transgender athletes in the Olympics who kind of went unnoticed

because it wasn't really an issue. And, you know, I'm not trying to say trans people were invented in the 1970s and sports, but she's kind of like the first well-known professionally out athlete. Yeah, so that's, that comes with a lot of, a lot of meaning attached to it. As you said, she was very famous in her moment. A lot of people who were alive then, which does not include me, at least know her name. Yeah, I'll send you a picture of her playing tennis,

if you would like it. Yeah, of course. her playing tennis if you would like it. Yeah, of course. Tennis is also a funny sport in my life because unlike most sports normal people play, I have played it and kind of know how it works. So that's very exciting. Oh, yeah. Do you know, do you know the scoring?

I know that you go in intervals of 15 and I know that you, oh my God, she looks amazing. Sorry. Right. She does though, right? She looks like she's like this is an episode of Charlie's Angels where it's like, all right, angels, you're infiltrating the US open. Have fun. I mean, she looks very powerful, very strong to me. Well, I'm just like, it is, I don't know, it is such a cool shot, because like, I guess she's like preparing a backhand, maybe her eyes are on the prize. It's like section intense sports moment. And it's just like, I think we watch sports partly because we got

the sort of vicarious thrill off of watching somebody pursue something so intently. But yeah, where do you want to start us off? So last year I was asked to write an article for book forum, RIP, they did a sports issue, and you know, I very much like you, I didn't know a ton about her, and I found writing about her and researching her to be very interesting and very thorny. And so what we're going to go over is that she was, as I've said, a transsexual female tennis player. And she notably sued for her right to play in the US Open in 1977. Yeah, so I think her story is about who gets to be a woman in women's sports. And are we any closer to consensus there than we were in 1977?

And you could definitely make the case that we're further away. Yeah. And then the other thing about this story is it's about who's allowed to enjoy recreation. And in general, live an enjoyable life is liberation just about sustenance or is it about the freedom to be yourself

and show up in leisure too? Yeah, I hadn't really seriously looked into her until I was doing research for that article and I had come out as non-binary about a year before. I also identify as transgender and it was very interesting for me to do this research because I think when you're like new to an identity or new to like a label, you're kind of used to either finding people like, oh my god, I totally identify this with this person or like, oh my god, who the hell is this? Why do we share a label? Like, what is that? Like, everything becomes so like black and white when you're still new to things of learning about them in relation to yourself. She was maybe one of the first

people I found that like occupied this really interesting middle ground for me where like I appreciate her place in history and I also don't appreciate a lot of things she said and I think talking about her and her complexity is this really important. The kind of girl-bossification of women in history, and so many other things of that nature with different categories of identity. But in this case, where we want everyone to be kind of someone

to look up to, and it's like, what if someone is deserving of our study, study being a form of care for like not necessarily being somebody we want to even emulate, because because they live to life and it's important to us. Right. And Renee herself very much rejects this idea of being a role model, of being a pioneer. I mean, I think she was a pioneer, ultimately. I think that's kind of indisputable, but she doesn't want the worship that comes along with that. She's like Moses. She's like, no, I just wanted to relax. Don't make me do it. Exactly. Exactly. That's a classic Moses quote. I'm busy killing.

Yeah. And M.J.C. Dush, Moses. All right. So I'll kind of take you into her early years here. Yeah. I would love that. She was born in 1934 and was raised in sunny side

queens. And then her family moved to forest hills, which is famously the site of the US open. Oh my God, wow, that's right, because I I went to the Queens Museum recently. And I was like, I had no idea the US open was so near the climax of men in black. The two was important events in history. That's so true. So yeah, her father was an orthopedic surgeon and her mother was a psychiatrist. So you have this very serious, very medically, scientifically oriented family.

She started playing tennis seriously at age 10. She had always loved shying balls for her dad when he played. But and then you know she kind of started competing around 10 and she obviously had an act for it or you know we wouldn't be here talking about her. Now during this time from a very early age she started experiencing what we would call today as gender dysphoria. I don't really wanna go into quite all of the cliches and stereotypes about like a trans girl growing up and trying on clothes and looking in her mirror and all that silly stuff,

but Renee presented as a boy for her entire childhood except for in some private moments and moments where she would kind of sneak off from her family and friends. You know, she chronicles like pretty thoroughly the mindset of she had in her teenage years. She described herself as walking a tight rope between genders. And over the years, that would cause her a great deal of depression. She would have suicidal thoughts, though she's also noted that she never seriously considered suicide.

Around that time, in her teenage years, she found a book of her mothers that described transsexualism as a disorder. So she says that event marked the beginning of a full-scale effort to do away with Renee. The specter of lunacy turned to the struggle into a full-scale effort to do away with Renee. The specter of lunacy turned to the struggle into a real war. And then she describes herself as spending her next 15 years, mostly as trying to kill off Renee and, you know, present as a boy and then a man. I don't know. It is so sad to hear, you know, not because it's surprising, I guess, but because it feels like, I don't know that like maybe the language we use publicly about trans youth, like, doesn't

emphasize the emotional violence of trying to force yourself to be something you're not. I think that's exactly right. And then you run across books like this that like, I mean, call you a lunatic. And it's like, what are you, how are you supposed to feel? How are you supposed to get through that? I think even today, like, we definitely don't talk enough about like the mental health effects of simply existing

as a trans person and then you have all these laws like the transports laws that kind of come down on top of that and Trevor Project research has shown that that really does have an effect on kids' mental health. Which shouldn't be news, but of course it does need to be news. We do need to corroborate with studies the fact that like if you're constantly receiving messages, challenging your right to exist, it can be bad for you. It's like, gee. Yeah, who would have thought? The sounds like an awful way to grow up at any time,

but also like, this is the 1940s, which also famously, a time so repressive that we like conspired to leave no trace of sex in our movies, less the aliens someday learning that we had it, I guess. Because the aliens totally aren't having sex themselves now. They would never. No, they just anally probe people in remote corners

of the galaxy. That's their thing. It's fine. So she goes to high school at the prestigious Horace Man School, where she played football. She played baseball, and she says she once had scouting interests from the New York Yankees in baseball. Yeah, and of course she played tennis as well. She went to Yale for college where she was the

captain of the men's tennis team. She went to University of Rochester for med school. She graduated in 1959. In college is when she started seeing a psychologist about her transexualism. And she would go on to see the same psychologist for years and years. But yeah, like she eventually goes into the Navy to continue training as like an ophthalmologist, following in that, you know, kind of scientific background that her family has. I have no idea if her memoir covers this, but like, how early did she want to do that? Was she like a little, was as a child? Was she like, I want to be an eye doctor? Yeah. I mean, maybe she was, but that's not really the impression I got from the book. The impression I got from the book is like, I love playing sports and I'm expected to go into this like serious like stand up field. Right. Which is like, I feel like such a

a feature of growing up with that kind of family and expectations. We're like, what's what's something impressive I can do that isn't like heart surgery? Yes, exactly. She does grow to love the profession though. So that's, that's nice. I mean, not everyone can say that of their careers. So so she does really well in the Navy playing tennis there. She won singles and doubles in the all Navy championship. At one point She was ranked as high as fourth in her region. I had no idea there was Navy tennis. This is like a whole world opening up. Yeah, military sports there, there a thing. I feel like there should be more Polly Shore movies about this. So she is done with the Navy.

She becomes a world renowned ophthalmologist. She specializes in eye muscle surgery, in correcting double vision. By all accounts, she really does seem to like this career quite a bit. She seems like it gives her a lot of self-esteem, a lot of confidence, a lot of sense of purpose, I guess. Per and F. David made later, she would say that she made $100,000 a year as an ophthalmologist, which obviously, even today, is a significant amount of money. And back then, certainly, was a very significant amount of money. Yeah. This is like when people are going around buying a house for $50,000. And maybe it has a pool.

What is her relationship to Tennis in this period, I wonder? because it's like, I mean, I guess this is also a question about how professional tennis works, because I kind of assume, I guess, based on other sports, that like, if you're really good at something, you probably won't make that much money at it unless you're like one of the best in the world, so you have to like also be an ophthalmologist or something. Like, is this something that she wants to pursue full-time in ophthalmology? Does that feel like a concession to practicality?

Or is, I don't know, what's that all like? It does feel like a bit of a concession to practicality. I search in career. It does feel like a bit of a case of like, tennis isn't serious, but she loves it and she keeps coming back to it at every stage of her life. Yeah, so she played against men in the US open five times between 1953 and 1960. Wow. And a lot of the argument that people make about trans athletes is like, oh, they were a nobody as a man. And then they became a woman and they're destroying the competition. But the reality is she was a good tennis player when she was presenting his mail. It's, yeah, it's also, I don't know.

It's like that argument is so clearly based like so many of the other ones are in like the idea of transitioning so as to like achieve some kind of ulterior motive aside from just Being able to live your life as the person you are. It's like no, it's all about tennis Right and she she kind of makes this point to another's will and defense of her and It's like what what are you what are you thinking? You think there's gonna be like a parade of men dressing as women just so they can like beat the shit out of a tennis ball? Like, I don't think that's how it works.

I mean, that could be a fun party, but it's more of a limited event kind of a thing. It's, it's saying. That's right. That's the drag invitational, yeah. I feel like this is something that we're inside of right now. This idea that like someone's gender is about you. Like that someone's gender is about the feelings of like me, the senator from Iowa or whatever.

Yeah, this idea that like you were personally offending me by doing something to your body. Yeah. Like we don't act like that when people get tattoos. My mom does, but not to nearly that extent. We did a bonus episode this month with Chelsea Weber-Smith on the gay agenda and the like spoiler-slash teaser. I'll give you for it is that there's only a straight agenda. That's the only agenda because straightness is the only thing that people have to be forced into. The only thing that has to be rigidly taught and that you have to punish people for not doing and that you have to groom people into is heteronormativity and it feels like there's a lot of projection about people secretly understanding that that's what they're doing and then that's why they have to accuse everyone else of it, I think. Yeah, no, I think that's a great way of putting it.

Much like with her childhood, I'm not going to talk too much about the exes and oes, I guess, of her transition because it's not really not our business, yeah. Yes, correct. And that was, you know, in 1975 and like I said, her book does go into a lot of detail about that whole process, both physically and emotionally. And she's very adamant throughout both of her autobiographies. The second one is called No Way Renee. Did she have a book called Walk Away Renee or is she saving that? I was really hoping so, but yeah, maybe that's the next part. She's also like on and off hormones a little bit over the years,

as I think is pretty normal. She talks about the muscle definition disappearing in her arms, which I think is notable for a tennis player. At the same time, her muscle is disappearing. She's also like, hey, it's where sleeveless dresses without feeling embarrassed of my arms. Like, that's pretty awesome.

So it's like a pro and a con for her as a female athlete, I think. Yeah. God, that is emotional. At first, she tries to leave tennis behind entirely. She moves from New York to California. She, of course, naturally, she just happens to live across the street from a tennis club. And she really just can't fucking resist tennis,

which is, you know, that's been a constant in a very tumultuous life. So it makes a lot of sense to me. She describes herself as being Eve in the garden of Eden except instead of an apple, instead of an apple, she says she has a tennis ball. What's even in the middle of tennis balls? I bet it gets really gross in there.

Or no, it's golf balls that are like really gross inside. Are tennis balls hollow? They do seem hollow, right? Like just the sound they make? They gotta be hollow. Listeners, right in. Tell us what's inside a tennis ball. Go cut one open right now.

I'm wondering if there's stuff in her book about how she decided to transition finally, because it is, I don't know, especially in this time and like what options did she have? And probably the, again, corollary of was it easier in 1975 than it is now. It was definitely a little bit harder in 1975, not that it's by any means easy now, but she had a lot of trouble finding a surgeon who would sign off on this and do the operation. It was, she ultimately decided to go to Morocco and do the surgery. But then she kind of got cold feet and backed out and ended up getting the surgery done in New York finally. But there were years, it was a battle for her

to get this operation done. It was a battle for her to get hormones. You know, she had her psychologist this whole time, you know, telling her that she was a man. She had exactly one conversation about her transition with her mother and she was like, but you were such a normal child. And, hey, I don't think that's really true from anyone's vantage point and be like, come on, lady.

Yeah, and that's a kind of remark that I feel like so much of the time means like that the parent ordered a chicken salad sandwich and then you grow up and you realize pretty quickly that you're an on-deep salad, you know, and then you're like, I'm an on-deep salad. And they're like, no, no, you're the thing I ordered. I've looked into it and I really don't want you to be something I didn't order and you're what I ordered. Yeah, I think every parent in my understanding feels that to some degree, but yeah, it's all to say she had this pressure on her from her psychologist, from her mother, from medical institutions, and she was a part of these medical institutions too.

So I can't imagine how that must have felt for her like being a well-respected ophthalmologist, a world renowned ophthalmologist, and at the same time being told like, no, you don't know what's best for your body. Right. Well, which ironically is like the fastest way to like get the medical establishment to treat you like a woman is to ask to be able to present his one finally because it's like the beginning of your life as a woman is being denied your first ever medical procedure as one. That is very fitting.

I feel like we look at history and sometimes we expect people to be able to be like, well, this entire infrastructure that I was raised in that I grew up knowing about having my world shaped by was schooled in, came of age and is telling me that I have to keep living a lie in order to be considered sane. And I have to all by myself somehow find a way to believe that I like, I think for so many people, it can't even be a conscious decision to decide to try and step out of that and trust

You're in understanding of who you are because that you know We're raised to believe in institutions and that's so hard to walk out of Reading the book is fascinating because it's like you really do see these like moments of self-harm and just total lack of clarity and not by her own doing. It's by all the people and institutions surrounding her. Yeah, so 1975, so she's 31 at the time? 41. Oh 41.

Wait, oh yeah, she was born in 1934. Oh my god. Okay. Yeah, so it's 1975 when she transitions. Obviously at this point, she's well-passed like the prime of like an average professional athlete who typically like peak in their late 20s, maybe very early 30s. She's called her transition in the years since,

quote, a very selfish thing. I think she's probably being a little bit too hard on herself. I think there's a difference between being selfish and taking care of yourself. Trans people just aren't often afforded the space or the means to take care of themselves. And it probably felt like a luxury at the time to be doing something like that. Yeah. felt like a luxury at the time to be doing something like that. Yeah, I wonder if she get into why she themes itselfish or is she just like, well, it's obviously selfish. She has a wife and a family before she fully transitions, I'm using fully, kind of, in quotes. I think she's using the word selfish in the context of, like, how could I, like, give up my family

because she does get divorced. I think she has a lot of feelings, especially later in her life, about her relationship to her son. The year after she has the sex change operation, she's been told by a gynecologist friend that she shouldn't get back into tennis, that her serve would be recognized anywhere, that she's going to get outed by playing tennis. But but she really can't resist like she lives near this tennis club and she

loves the sport. And she says private play is fun but it isn't as spicy as a tournament. Yeah, the spice factor. I mean, who can resist? Yeah, well, I love that and I love that she, I don't know, I don't know, she would describe it as fun because spicy things aren't always fun exactly but that she like misses it. I'm just going to send you like one line from her book. Mm hmm. So she wrote, I felt so comfortable

as Renee that I thought once again, why shouldn't I have everything I want? Oh, I love it. I mean, it's definitely a stance she backtracks on closer to the present day, but I think it's really notable that she felt so bold and so entitled to the things that everyone else has that we don't have to always fight for. She finally feels comfortable, right? That when you have that feeling of like, why shouldn't I have everything I want? It feels like that has something to do

with shedding that feeling of like having to stifle yourself which admits to questioning your own right to exist in any real way. And so then it, I don't know, it feels very powerful for her to then come back to tennis. She's finally like maybe doing the thing that has been most consistent in her life as herself truly for the first time.

Exactly, I think that's ultimately why she couldn't resist. Playing tennis is in some ways the most natural form of who Renee Richards is. And you know, we'll get more into this later, but we're so fixated on the concept of winning in sports that I feel like we have forgotten in some ways about what else they offered to the people who do them and to kids especially and one of them just being like When you find the right thing for you you can feel like you have to you don't have to feel weird about your body for at least One hour of the day and everybody should have access to that Everybody should yeah, and I think it does get intentionally overlooked by a lot of lawmakers that kids are doing this stuff fun. They're doing to make friends. They're, they're doing it to feel at home in their bodies ultimately. And you know, for lawmakers know it's all about scholarships. It's all about making sis girls cry. I don't know what have you.

You know who makes sis girls cry? cis boys work on that government. Preach. Oh my God. Another interesting thing that I think she says around this time is that she writes, the whole world seemed to be looking for me to be their Joan of Arc. So that's a really fascinating comparison to me. Yeah. Joan of Arc was definitely gender non-conforming, very likely to be trans.

She was literally burned at the stake for not complying with gender norms. When you put it that way. So she starts playing these tournaments because she can't resist. At a tournament in La Jolla in 1976, she is playing really well. Meanwhile, a reporter in the background is doing some digging. She had her name legally changed, but he's on earth her dead name. This person, by the way,

happens to be Tucker Carlson's father. What? Richard. No. No. She is literally outed by Tucker Carlson's father. And that was the day Tucker went to bring your demonic little boy to work day and you can really see the impression of me. So he basically outed her but in version of things, she's like we see today, she's apparently a man masquerading as a woman. He does not like use the term transexual or transgender. He just thinks she's trying to like hustle people at tennis, basically. She worked so hard on tennis hustling that she just found out she was a woman.

So she holds a news conference at her tennis club. She says about 100 reporters came. So this is like a giant story. This is like people are like, oh my God. Yes, this is a very big story. God. So she is forthcoming at this news conference, really like owning her identity

I mean, she's not the only tennis star who has come out as queer not really by their own choosing I mean Billie Jean King and Martina never to Lovah. They weren't exactly like Jones a to come out She then goes to a tournament in South Orange New Jersey. It's run by a friend of hers. He's like no a complain Compliant will be fine had played there before her transition as well. So she's now second guessing herself at every possible moment. She's like, can I pat a ballboy on the head? Oops, better not like better not make the trans is look bad, better not, you know, be seen as essentially like grooming or being creepy or,

you know, doing anything even remotely like out of line that can be considered like weird or unusual in any form. 25 of the 32 women entered in that tournament ultimately drop out in protest of her presence. Yeah. This continues to be like a big national story at this point. When Tucker Carlson's dad outed her at this other, this previous tournament she was in. Yeah. Like how sort of high in the rankings of women's tennis is she at this point? She's doing pretty well because she, I believe wins that tournament.

It's not like she's like a fringe player. She is known to be competitive, she's succeeding. I mean, I don't think she's like Chris Everl level who again is like many years her junior. Right, but she's like good enough to make people nervous. Good enough to get the Carlson's concerned. 1976 that same year is the first year she tries to compete in the US open against other women.

Incidentally, by the way, this is the same summer that Caitlyn Jenner captivates the world and wins the Olympic to Cafflon. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah, and that a Cafflon is like a singularly terrifying Olympic event too. It's like they just rolled all of the other events into one and we're like, all right, Caitlin, get out there. Yes. And she did. And she was great. And then I think everything in her public image went downhill

from there, probably. It was a good moment though. So as Caitlin Jenner is doing her thing, we have Renee applying to play in the US Open and the USDA tells her that she can if she passes the bar body test, which hadn't been required before for playing the US Open. Is that where they see how many bars your body can go to? Oh my God, I'm so close. No, no, no. So the bar body test is looking at your chromosomal makeup. All right.

You know, many women have XX chromosomes. Many men have like XY chromosomes. As I remember every time I have to look at bathroom doors that are pulling that shit. And I'm like, I don't fucking remember. It's yeah, I mean, we need to have a whole conversation about like bathroom doors at like cutesy breweries and stuff. Oh my God.

They're out of control. Yeah. You know, she refuses to take this test, arguing that correctly, in fact, that not all men have male chromosomes and vice versa. She didn't feel like her chromosome makeup that she was born with in 1934 had anything to do with her sexuality in 1976. She writes that in her book. Now, I'm going to send you another quote from

her book that I think you're going to enjoy that it would be great if you could read. Yeah. Okay. How hungry for tennis success must you be to have your penis capped off and pursuit of it? degree for tennis success must you be to have your penis chopped off and pursuit of it. How many men would do it for a million dollars? If you could find one, would section erotic be likely to have the concentration to play top flight tennis? Even if he didn't go completely crazy once he realized what he'd done. That's so great. Yeah, no, I love it. And it goes back to what we were talking about earlier, which is like, of course, these are not men

masquerading as women. Like, Renee is just a woman trying to be a woman and trying to play a sport. And those two things are only kind of sort of related. And yeah, so that's kind of like the defense in her book for what she's doing as she faces backlash from people on the tour, from people on the tour, from coaches on the tour, from the USDA itself.

Women's sports do have a ton of problems, but the problem is that nobody cares about them and there's no money and you can make minimum wages. Someone in the top 10 athletes in your sport and your country, and you can still not really be able to get by. And that's the problem. Like I feel like the problems in women's sports, like they are being clobbered by men, but like at the institutional level. Yeah.

I mean, something we've seen a lot of in the last few years, I'm sure was equally rampant during, you know, Renee's heyday was abusive coaches. That's, you know, that's one problem. You also have inequity and facilities. We love to hide the dangerous elements of sports by talking about how important it is for like community and leadership and like being part of something. And it feels like one of the unacknowledged fears is what then if you are on a team with if you're a cis girl and you're on a team with and you love a trans girl on a team with you, or if you're in a relationship with all of your teammates and you're doing something together and then you are Whoops building community with trans people and then you can't be

pushed around as easily by your parents, you know Yeah, like what if the cis kids find out that trans people are people like Now that's the tennis ball that God told you not to take a bite Now, that's the tennis ball that God told you not to take a bite at. I'm just thinking about like all the funs. Like, it sounds like it would really like, the texture is not ideal. Yeah, like the sensory idea of it is like truly squirm and doosing. And that's why I can't stop thinking about it. So Renee is not allowed to play in the 1976 open because she does not take the bar body test.

Wow. But she keeps playing tennis even though it kind of like jeopardizes her credibility. It jeopardizes the credibility of people she's playing for. we're hosting tournaments, she plays when she can. And in 1977, she once played Women's Doubles with Billie Jean King at Billie Jean King's invitation. So that's pretty cool. Billie Jean King is not out at this point as lesbian, by the way. It's also crazy that like Billie Jean King is from what I remember from that American masters, like one of the people who made title nine possible, but we remember her mostly for that time she beat that old gross sexist. You know who else beat the old gross sexist? For name reasons.

This guy was just out here like challenging anyone with like a pulse to like play him in tennis and was like bro Just no and it worked because they made a holly hunter movie about it She does decide to take the bar body test in 1977 at some point and The results are apparently ambiguous. Hmm. She says she passed. I don't think that's the common consensus. She says she wouldn't take the test the second time under USDA's conditions. At this point, they're kind of at an impasse and Renee, uh, shoes for the right to play in the US open.

So talking about how like every character in the story is like, you know, kind of like their own main character in a different story., you know, kind of like their own main character in a different story. The person who agrees to take on her case is Roy Cone. Oh my god. Yeah. That's like a name that jumpscares you. Oh yeah, absolutely.

It's just to be totally clear. It's like that Roy Cone, the Roy Cone you're thinking of. And for people who aren't thinking of a Roy Cone, please tell us who is Roy Cone. There are so many ways to know him. I know him as the guy who wrote Donald Trump's prenup when he married Ivana, which is surely a good sign. Oh, definitely. Yeah.

That was one of the first places I was going to go was his support of Donald Trump. The other obvious association is McCarthyism. He was that guy involved with the Rosenbergs and all that. Truly the long 20th century. And Dite of AIDS while being a very late homophobic. And yeah, I just apparently had his fingers and every legal pie in the 20th century. It's and I also know him first as a character in Angels in America, which is kind of a strange way to meet someone because that's a redemption arc for him because it's him dying and entertaining the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. That's a whole other episode. René was told by a friend that he was controversial, but the best there was. And I'm like, this is like the biggest understatement

I've ever heard of my life. He was controversial. Renee is all nervous and she goes to his apartment. He greets her at the door in a bathroom because of course he does. He immediately takes the case. He ends up handing it to his partner, Mike Rosen, but the association with the case is very much with him.

Like, you know, it's Roy Cohn's partner. So it's a whole thing. Interestingly though, Renee barely spends any time on this in the book. You know, I've never been part of a lawsuit, but it does seem like, you know, even in the best of circumstances, it takes

over your life in a section of profound way that by the time it's over, it feels like it would make a lot of sense to just not want to talk about it anymore. Right. And this book came out in 1983. So she's like, not all that far removed from it. The case was heard in the New York Supreme Court in August of 1977. The US opened typically starts off, you know, around Labor Day, so like, in the end of September. So this, we're like down to the wire here. Renee had doctors testify her for her that she was

indeed a woman. This is of course not based on like social norms or like respect for people's base, purely on the fact that she had this one surgery, right? But nevertheless, the doctor's testify for her. Billie Jean King files in an affidavit supporting her. The US he is argument on the contrary was the bar body test was needed to keep male imposter's from entering the woman's tour. So it goes back to this idea about protecting women in sports, like protecting in heavy air quotes.

And again, it's like, why would you want to be in women's sports? If you identify as a man and you could be in men's sports, where you get paid more money and people notice what you're doing. Right. People watch you on TV. You have TV broadcasts. Like, the song remains the same and the song is stupid. Yes. The judge also thinks the song is stupid, I guess,

because he rules in favor of Renee. He misgenders her in the ruling, but nevertheless, he rules in favor of her. Yeah, I mean, he does have some concern for Renee's sanity here, which I think there are a lot of people in this country who would rather see trans people dead than living as their true selves.

So at least he's acknowledging that, you know, she needed to do this for her, for her livelihood. Yeah, right, and that this was fundamentally necessary. And then to believe that you're kind of, you're allowing maybe someone else to sort of take the ingredients they find in what you say and construct the understanding that if this was essential to somebody as well being, then they were always a woman.

So the good news is Renee can play. She can play anywhere in the US or South America. She would have had to undertake a second lawsuit to be able to play in Europe. So she does not do that, but she can play. And after all the hype about being able to like supposedly beat Chris Ever, she loses in the first round of singles to Virginia Wade, who is a British player who had won Wimbledon just that year. She does come

pretty close to winning in doubles though. She's playing with Betty Ann Stewart. They lose to Martina Neva Talova and her partner. This is interesting for several reasons. The most immediate reason is that Renee would go on to coach Martina for a couple of years. So Renee plays on several more US opens. She plays professional tennis for four more years. She's coaching Martina for a couple of years. So Renee plays in several more US opens. She plays professional tennis for four more years. She's coaching Martina. Then she returns to being an eye doctor in 1981, which is the same year that King and Never-to-Lova both come out.

So yeah, I mean, that's kind of her tennis career. Like she never wins the US open. A lot of them are happy to play with her. Some of them are not. They'll make snide comments about being in the locker room with her. They'll complain about her being it for the money, which I think is kind of funny. But she does have a lot of supporters.

So it's just kind of a mixed bag. And then she kind of like, it's like, okay, maybe I'm finally actually too old for this. Let me go back to my other love, I surgery. I love that she has ophthalmology as a fallback. It's just like very L-woods. maybe I'm finally actually too old for this. Let me go back to my other love, I surgery. I love that she has ophthalmologist as a fallback. It's just like very L-woods. So, okay, so she's back to the ophthalmologist's life.

She is a practicing ophthalmologist for several more decades of life. And she's 88 today, so she's still among us. She has given a handful of interviews to major publications over the years as I was alluding to before. They all misjunt her and dead name her. And yeah, so there's an ESPN documentary made about her in 2011. It's kind of weirdly obsessed with her relationship with her son, which is fractured. It's like very interested in this question of,

can trans people parent kids? Focusing on that aspect is maybe missing the story in my opinion. I don't know how she was as a parent to her son, but probably it's not all wrapped up in her being trans. Right, and like you were saying before, it's like you can't in a post-mortem very easily or at all pick apart the effects of transitioning when you have a child and then like the social stigma and the beliefs of people around you and the effect that has on everybody and

you're in your child's life. We did an episode last fall about people's abortion stories and we had people, you know, send in their stories of experiences with abortion and there were like several themes that were very prominent and one of them that showed up over and over and over and over again was that my abortion wasn't bad but the stigma around it was or the experience around it was or the pursuit of it was. But the abortion itself didn't feel bad or wrong, but everything around it made it harder. Right. And this feels like that kind of thing too, where we have something that we stigmatize socially and then people have to deal with the fallout of the way people treat them and the way people react to something that maybe was painful because it was a medical procedure or a surgery, but that was very clearly to them the

thing that they needed and allowed them to be happy or to even survive. But then if we're against that, then we get to cook up these bad faith arguments about how abortion or transitioning or whatever else is must be harmful because like at the effects of the way our culture treats you when you've done that. Right, you can't win. Yeah. It's really interesting just to compare the reaction that trans athletes get today to the reaction she out then. So I just want to go into a little bit about the reaction then. There were some interesting letters to the editor from the New York Times from around the time of the lawsuit. And there are there's some garden variety transphobia in the letters

the editor, but for the most part the letters are really supportive of Renee. Kelsey from Greenwich Connecticut, she's like, you know, this sounds an awful lot like how white people would suffer from like losing to black people in sports, not to mention like the damage that was inflicted on Little League Boys when girls signed on to play. So, I mean, these are imperfect comparisons, but I think they're also astute, at least for the time.

She says, as a lifelong woman, I would like to welcome Dr. Richards to her ranks and assure her that most of us, excluding your dollar happy sisters on the court, feel no fear and hold no prejudice as far as she is concerned. Yeah, and I feel like that's the kind of viewpoint that doesn't get represented by the historical record if we kind of zoom out too far.

Then that misses the people who are always there kind of in a more quiet way, being like, well, that makes sense. Renee seems great. I'm going to not shout because I'm not violently opposed to her, but we'll say at a normal volume that this all seems great for her and good for Renee. And then people who spoke a little bit more quietly don't get remembered. It's my cause people who shouted.

It's a little bit like how you only leave like a Yelp review if there's like a bug in your food or something. It is like that. It's like history. History is like composed of Yelp reviews. Yeah. So I think we can go into a little bit of her kind of present day views, which we've talked a little bit about already with the documentary and everything like that. So she does not like the word transgender, as I mentioned at the top of the show. She calls it inclusive as a word and that's what she doesn't like about it. So she's like, I change for man to woman, not something in between. She correctly points out that transgender suggests, and in many instances

refers to and in between, part way from one sex to the other. And she says, the idea of Androgyny is not appealing to her. I like the binary system that God designed for us, two sexes, two genders, male and female. It's what makes the world go round and is the spice of life. I love that she loves the word spice. I feel like this is obviously a much bigger conversation of kind of, you know, now in a great way, I think. There are trans elders old enough and talkative enough to say things that the trans community today is like absolutely not. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, I guess it didn't totally surprise me that someone her age and who came up in that time facing that pressure and those stigmas would have

those views. It's obviously a little disappointing, especially knowing her story. It's not like she instantly went from being a man to a woman, though maybe that's how she sees it based on her writing, but she did have this whole like tweener phase kind of thing, like is normal, where she's taking hormones, she stops taking hormones, she kind of feels like her chest

changing, she has surgery on her Adam's apple at one point. And so I think it's maybe like not the most introspective thing she's ever said, but I don't know. What I'm going to say next even disappoints me a little more because now she's talking specifically about tennis and whether trans people should compete in sports. She's basically saying like, if I had played women's tennis in my 20s, I would have won Wimbledon, she says.

But at 40, she knew she wasn't going to be the best. She thinks for scientific reasons, trans women shouldn't compete against this woman. And I'll be very clear here, like the science on this is not settled. There's very little of it. And when there's very little science on something, it's an active choice to err on the side of exclusion rather than inclusion. These studies on transgender athletes right now just frankly don't exist. There's some studies on transgender bodies as they compare to cis bodies and physical activity, but that's obviously not

the same when you're dealing with like elite level athletes. There are researchers working on like longitudinal studies about athletic advantage or lack thereof, but for now we're kind of in this moment where you can kind of like read the tea leaves however you want to. And I think that's really dangerous. But yeah, Renee chooses to read the most like, no, the science on this is settled. Trans women have way more testosterone than cis women, which on average isn't wrong, it just doesn't necessarily have to be scary. Right. I don't know, and then I feel like another approach to this topic is just like, why are we dividing

sports up by gender at all? My editor is going to think I paid you to say that. That really is the ultimate question, right? And I think, you know, obviously a lot of this and a lot of the pearl clutching around this comes back to Title IX. It was passed in 1973 and it made opportunities for women by making sure there were women's athletic programs

at colleges. Subsequently, it slowly created professional opportunities for them as well in sports. Even though it's galactic in nature, it really affects women's sports at all levels. And so you have women clinging tight to these spots that they think they otherwise wouldn't have gotten. And they're probably right about that. But yeah, what would the world end if we organized basketball by height or other sports by weight class, like probably not. Yeah, or figure skating by musical genre. Yes.

I just want all gender, all sexuality skating organized, however we want to, but you could have, for example, like a night of bond themes. I think we would all be happy with that. I think we would be too. I think we would all be happy with that. I think we would be too. People care a lot about sports, whether they are, you know, fans of sports, whether they have kids who play sports,

whether they play sports growing up, whether they're singularly obsessed with tiny hardings, like everyone has some connection, right? Yeah. So I don't know. This is all to say that like sports mean different things to different people and everyone takes them really personally in certain ways. And I think it's hard then when you see like people like Renee saying like, Oh, there's no room for in between or maybe trans people can have everything except for sports. So we have had like

prominent trans athletes since Renee, but maybe no one who is like so singularly captivated the public in the same way she has. I think you have to look at what's going on now and think about what are we doing? As recently as a few weeks ago, Nikki Haley was running for president as a Republican. Wow. Yeah, was asked on a town hall, what one of the biggest issues facing the country was, and she said trans people in women's locker rooms.

Honest to God, that's what she said. Oh my God. I mean, she didn't say the word cisgender, but implying cisgender, she said, teen girls are killing themselves because of it. Oh, are they? Apparently. Yeah. Yeah.

And we're out of time in which 22 states that's nearly half of all states. And transgender athletes from sports at the high school or college levels. That's only been since 2020 that this has been true. It started with Idaho. Some states ban only trains girls and women. Some also ban trans boys and men. Some states have injunctions in place preventing enforcement for now as the cases kind of like wind their way through the legal system. If you're not binary, like, well, good luck. Like, I don't know what to tell you, but you probably can't play somewhere. If you're not in binary you get nothing. You're welcome. One of the people kind of leading this

charge against transgender athletes is Martina Navratilova. Twist! God I didn't know that. Knife in the heart. I know I know. So she co-runs this group called the Women's Sports Policy Working Group. It's a really prominent organization that purports to advocate for like a middle-ground solution in women's sports. It's a terrible acronym. There is not a single vowel in that acronym. Do better. I know, I know. It's a little unclear. I'm constantly like looking up the name to remember it. But yeah, so it purports to advocate for this middle ground, but in reality, it's pretty clear when you dig into the rhetoric that

this group is opposed to trans competitors altogether. And it just feels like Martina, who obviously herself is gay, can point toward her relationship with Renee to sort of vouch for her track record on queer inclusion in sports. But at the same time, it's like, well, what do you want her to do? Because Renee has relationship with Renee to sort of vouch for her track record on queer inclusion in sports. But at the same time, it's like, well, what do you want her to do? Because Renee has stuck by her friend as well and said like, yeah, I mean, she's right about biology. Yeah.

Well, and Angus, and to get back to this idea of like the girl classification of history, it's like, yeah, sometimes you go through the machine and you are very grateful for all the joy you were allowed to have and you respond to that by trying to rigidly police everyone following behind you and it sucks and it hurts. We do not respond to being told we're less than human by rising above it typically. We respond by being wounded. I know it's so shitty and so hard to process. And yeah, Renee herself has said she got into tennis because she wanted individual glory. She wanted to stand out at first in her family, but then presumably, you're meant to understand later on is like, she just wanted to stand

out in general. And like, I would posit basically, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with wanting that for yourself? And she now feels, okay, I was allowed to do it, yes, but I was old. Now other people cannot want this for themselves. Which like implies, I don't know, the guilt underneath everything still, of just like, well, I could do this, but it wasn't, it wasn't great that I did it. And we can't have too many people doing it. Right. Transkids and sports. It, it, it really is kind of gives me whiplash to realize that like this wasn't even a conversation a few years ago, you know, like this proves that this is a manufactured controversy that like people did not know to even think

about before they started being told to do so. Right, and I do think luckily that for most people who aren't in Congress or aspiring to be, they're still really not thinking about it or if they are, they're not necessarily thinking about it in the way that conservatives want them to be. Yeah. All of these laws that are about harming and destroying the right of any marginalized group to continue to exist are like done in the name of white cis women and how it's never about them because a lot doesn't really like them either, but it's just a cis women and how it's never about them because a lot

doesn't really like them either but it's because you know it's classic. You know it's worth mentioning that Renee does have this privilege and the sense that she's white like I can't imagine what it would have been like for a black trans woman on the tour or you know you see the way that black trans girls are treated in sports and also in life, compounding that stress and that stigma onto somebody is like, it's rough.

Yeah, and I don't know, I feel like I'm happy that I know about her. I feel like this is a story that like the ending is uncomfortable and the ending should be uncomfortable, I think, because this is not a time to sit back and be like, and then Renee won her battle and everything was great. It's like, no, it was not great. I hope people feel a little bit more insight into her story

and that that helps them sort of contextualize what's going on today. And I hope someone picks up her books from this because honestly they're kind of delightful. I certainly will. Thank you so much for bringing her story to us. I mean, in terms of what's happening now, like, I don't know, what do you wish that people were able to see in all this that they maybe haven't yet. That trans people are complex, just like everyone else. We're messy as hell, just like everyone else.

People like Renee can be pioneers or trailblazers, but kind of like uncomfortable ones, both then personally with that status and the rest of us being comfortable looking up to them. And I hope people do realize that as frivolous as sports may sound, they do mean a lot of things to many people and they do kind of shape the debates around marginalized groups in this country beyond sports in so many ways. There are so many memorable moments, I think, of athletes making an impression on us,

not just because of what they do, but because of the way they do it, you know, like flow-jo. Or Billie Jean King, or today, Amber Glenn, the skater, I guess that you are at the top of your game, showing people what you can do physically, but also showing up as physically the person you are and the person you feel like and the gender you feel and the sexuality you feel and how that, I get like I understand why people pushing the straight agenda are scared by that because that can be very,

that can be so freeing and that can allow people to feel more strength and conviction and being who they are. So yes, we're a pro sports show, twist. Ha ha ha. Glad to be a small part of that. Thank you for being our sports correspondent. Anytime.

Where can we experience more of your brain? You can experience my brain sports illustrated and on social media at J.M. Clegman. Amazing. Julie, thank you for everything. Thank you so much for illustrating all of those sports. It would be really hard to tell it was going on otherwise. And that is our episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you for much to Julie Cleakman, our wonderful guest for all of their research and storytelling and everything Julie that you do. And Carolyn Kendrick, thank you for editing and producing and for everything that you

do. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. We'll see you next time. you