Sports Biblio Digest, 3.17.19: Martina Navratilova and the Boundaries of Women’s Sports
News, Views and Reviews About Sports Books, History and Culture
Also in This Issue: Eight Myths About the Black Sox; Germany's Soccer Blues; Jim Thorpe; The First Olympic Basketball Tournament; Hurricane Carter; Dick Groat; Math and Football; Remembering Julia Ruth Stevens, Harry Howell and Birch Bayh
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Perhaps the most confounding question about the bizarre controversy swirling around Martina Navratilova and transgender athletes is the stunning silence of establishment women’s sports advocates.
In the United States, the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) sports advocacy organization Athlete Ally summarily dumped her from its advisory board after she said that “trans women” athletes (those who were born male but identify as female) were “cheats” and had an unfair advantage over competitors who were born females.
She was roundly browbeaten on Twitter, in particular by a transgender cyclist, Rachel McKinnon, who last year won a world women’s masters title despite still being biological male. Navratilova issued an apology, then said she would pull back and do some more research into the matter.
When she did, she came back as strong as one of her patented serve-and-volley demolitions at Centre Court: There have to be clear biological lines drawn to preserve sports for women. Another backlash ensued, but there were no apologies this time, and certainly no regrets. Classic Martina.
While American reaction, in the women’s sports world and the media, continued to be strangely muted, in Britain the tennis icon developed some key allies of her own.
Former Olympic medalists Paula Radcliffe (distance running), Sharron Davies (swimming) and Kelly Holmes (middle-distance running) have publicly stood with her, and they took the same heat from McKinnon, who has tried to pressure one of Holmes’ sponsors to drop her.
A UK feminist organization, Fair Play for Women, was set to discuss its opposition to trans women in women’s sports on the BBC with McKinnon, who balked. The broadcaster disinvited a Fair Play rep, then talked to McKinnon solo.
So much for fairness in the name of advocating for fairness.
All this has unfolded as quickly and dramatically as the larger transgender movement has gained visibility in recent years, most notably in Western popular culture and media. The arrival of Caitlyn Jenner (née Bruce) had a lot to do with that.
I was under the impression that transgender people were those who had undergone some hormone treatment and surgery, or were in the process of doing so.
Silly me: This is all about “self-identification,” even in defiance of biological reality. In most parts of society, this isn’t an issue, and I generally support the rights of trans people to be treated the same under the law.
Some people do have serious psychological issues with gender identity, and I couldn’t imagine having to deal with that. They deserve empathy and respect, but some of their noisiest advocates tend to undermine the cause when it comes to the few exceptions when biology really does matter.
Sports is one of them, and the common sense that that ought to be understood here should be obvious. Ought to be. Should be. Even for those whose best subject was never biology (including me).
However, while researching an e-book about I wrote about Title IX a few years ago, I was struck how some ardent defenders of the law were trying to wish away gender lines in sports, arguing that females could compete with males if only that darn sexism could be eradicated.
More recently, a law professor is the latest to argue that segregating sports by sex should be abolished, because it’s all a social construct.
The Women’s Sports Foundation issued a muddled position in 2011 on transgender athletes that seemingly blurs the lines of participation. The organization founded by Billie Jean King has had nothing to say more recently about Navratilova, one of the most identifiable advocates for women’s sports and gay rights there’s ever been.
King has been reserved about the Martina controversy, saying it’s important to learn about the “science” of transgender sports competition. Chris Evert, the other half of a great rivalry with Navratilova that in my youth was a rousing symbol of the possibilities of women’s sports, says it’s good to have a dialogue.
I wish I could be as optimistic that will come about.
Two trans female athletes have won state high school track girls championships in Connecticut, but American media is so overarchingly euphoric it can’t be bothered with clearly telling readers that physically, they’re still males.
That would be “misgendering,” which also gets you shouted, if not hunted, down in the inferno of social media. If anyone dares to write a trans individual’s birth name, such a crime of inscription is “dead-naming.”
Those of us who are “cisgender,” meaning we identify with the gender of our birth, may be unaware how vital the use—or twisting and even sheer concoction—of language has been by transgender advocates in tackling laws and policies they want changed.
In Canada, legislation that would legally require citizens to address a transgender person by his or her preferred gender pronoun has caused a firestorm. In Britain, a law called the Gender Recognition Act is all the rage, both for and against.
In the larger American society, those developments have been limited to state spats over public restrooms and in a couple of states, sports. So there hasn’t been the media fuss on the same scale.
The ACLU and the progressive press have chimed in in favor of trans women participation in sports, while conservative outlets have strongly opposed it. Many of the gay publications that have heaped praise on Martina—whose own social media feed includes a healthy dose of Trump-bashing—for decades are now denouncing her, essentially for unforgivable thought crimes.
The heavy-hitter opiners for mainstream media haven’t had much to say, either, but they won’t be able to stay on the sidelines for long.
Starting with the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, transgender athletes will no longer have to undergo complete surgery to qualify. That rule, imposed in 2004, has been replaced by one which allows trans athletes to compete with the gender with which they identify following 12 months of hormone treatment.
That’s really lowering the bar, and Martina’s hardly the only one concerned about the implications.
If any person or group wanted to disrespect and trash women’s sports, it would would be hard to top what McKinnon, et al, have done to Martina, Radcliffe, Davies, Holmes, et al.
When Renee Richards came on the women’s tennis scene in the 1970s as an admitted transsexual (what a quaint term that seems now), Navratilova was one of the few to befriend her, competing with her as a doubles partner and later employing her as a coach.
She stuck her neck out a decade later, after her relationships with the novelist Rita Mae Brown and other women were revealed in the media, and at a time when the AIDS scourge was taking down young gay men by the tens of thousands and fomenting a new wave of homophobia.
I’d like to think some of those harassing Martina today suffer from generational myopia, because many of them are too young to remember those times, or weren't even born. But I’m not so sure that’s all there is to it. The cultural hothouses of academia and media are espousing a troubling new wave of delusional thinking that is influencing the young, but also silencing others who know better.
We’re letting novelty and zealotry drown out common sense and biological science, and what is flowing freely into the cultural bloodstream is sheer madness. Nobody wants to come across as being bigoted, so they say nothing.
While I don’t think there will ever be many trans women athletes who will qualify at the very elite levels of sports, the enjoyment of such activities as high school sports for girls and master's events for women could be in some jeopardy.
What we have now are militant transgender advocates pitted against firebrand, 70s-style left-liberal feminists, both groups possessing a high level of totalitarian impulses. This is how these feuds go and they are seemingly never-ending.
The greater damage, I fear, could be in allowing women’s sports to slink into becoming another freak show. Those women (and men) who have fought for so long for the right of females to compete, and fairly, have an obligation to speak up for what they know is right.
A Few Good Reads
The centenary of the Black Sox scandal is this year, and the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) next week is unveiling an “Eight Myths Out” project to debunk common historical errors and fallacies. Here’s a preview post about salary histories that have been cited as the primary reason why the players agreed to throw the World Series. SABR has long had a Black Sox Scandal Research Committee and in September will hold a Black Sox Symposium in Chicago;
After Germany won the World Cup in 2014, the national federation’s model was cited for the revival. Now Der Mannschaft is in decline, and the Bundesliga was shut out of the European Champions League round of 16. Is there something deeper going on than natural life-cycle issues?
A new documentary captures soccer cultures in Latin and South America with an eye towards the future of the U.S. game;
The recent settlement between Colin Kaepernick and the NFL wasn’t as much about his protests as it was the legal risks the league was taking if the ex-49ers quarterback’s collusion claims made it to trial;
Former two-sport standout Dick Groat (Duke basketball, Pittsburgh Pirates), has called his last game after 40 years as a color commentator for University of Pittsburgh men’s basketball games; his departure wasn’t voluntary and his sign-off comments were heartbreaking.
Sports Book News
The next sports book project for author and journalist Dave Maraniss is a biography of Jim Thorpe, to be published by Simon & Schuster. The parallels between Vince Lombardi (“When Pride Still Mattered”) and Jim Thorpe figure heavily in the yet-untitled work. “There is a direct line from Vince Lombardi to Jim Thorpe,” Maraniss said. “Lombardi was a larger-than-life figure who made pro football the American obsession. Thorpe was central in the foundation myth of the sport itself;”
David Maraniss’ son Andrew will be publishing his second book in the fall, about the very first Olympic basketball tournament at Berlin in 1936. “Games of Deception” is being published by Philomel Books;
Coming in April, from Harvey Araton, longtime basketball writer and sports columnist for The New York Times: “Elevated: The Global Rise of the NBA,” published by Triumph Books;
Coming in May: “Mind and Matter: A Life in Math and Football,” by John Urschel, a former Penn State and NFL lineman who later got a Ph.D in mathematics from MIT, written with Louisa Thomas, contributor to The New Yorker and published by Penguin Press. He writes: “So often, people want to divide the world into two,” he observes. “Matter and energy. Wave and particle. Athlete and mathematician. Why can’t something (or someone) be both?”
Coming in June: “The Times 50 Greatest Football Matches,” edited by Richard Whitehead and published by The History Press, and with contributions by leading British sports journalists.
Coming Soon: The 2019 Spring Baseball Books Preview
Now Hear This
A BBC podcast series examines the saga of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, whose murder case inspired artistic treatment by Bob Dylan and whose ultimate wrongful conviction has generated continued efforts at finally solving a whodunit that’s more than 50 years old. Listen to “The Hurricane Tapes” here;
Joe Posnanski will be publishing his first non-sports books in October: “The Life and Afterlife of Harry Houdini,” by Simon & Schuster. In a Jan. 2018 “Just Not Sports” podcast, he makes the case that illusionist ought to be considered something of an athlete. Earlier this week, Posnanski weighed in on the nostalgic comforts of baseball cards following the release of new Topps Heritage cards.
Passings
Julia Ruth Stevens, 92, was the last living child of Babe Ruth; Jane Leavy’s 2012 interview with Stevens provided the spark for “The Big Fella,” the author’s Ruth biography published last fall;
Harry Howell, 86, was a Hockey Hall of Fame defenseman with the New York Rangers whose banner hangs from the rafters at Madison Square Garden. Known for his gentlemanly manner on and off the ice, he passed three weeks after his wife, who suffered from Alzheimer’s;
Birch Bayh, 91, a longtime U.S. Senator from Indiana, was a leading sponsor of Title IX legislation aimed at sex equity in education. Long after the law’s passage, he remained a staunch champion of women’s sports as it expanded beyond the scholastic scope of the law. These days, as transgender sports issues work their way into the Title IX framework, "The Father of Title IX" left behind a hallmark accomplishment with a legacy that's far from being settled.
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This is Digest issue No. 159, published March 17, 2019.
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