After Atalanta

 Most semesters I start off my ethics course with an article about the connection between sports and character building. It inspires debate, requires an assessment of data, and sets the tone for the course in which I am asking my students to check their preconceptions in order to effectively engage in a process of moral reasoning.  We discuss definitions of character and how those definitions are often shifted or ignored when considering actions and decisions that happen in the context of sports. While many students will start to see that sports are not automatic character builders, that mere participation does not make someone a better person, they will take exception to the idea that unethical things done "in the heat of battle" does not make one unethical or speak badly of sport itself. In other words, the drive to win sometimes makes people do unethical things, but that's kind of just the nature of sports.  But doesn't an ethical person, by virtue of being ethical...

 Last weekend, BYU fans directed racial slurs against several Black women on the Duke volleyball team. It seems that Rachel Richardson experienced the brunt of it including a threat from a white man in which she was told to "watch her back" on her way to the bus. She is the athlete who has spoken up about the violence.  BYU responded late and poorly, but this was an all-around failure by all coaches and officials.  It has been pointed out t hat BYU's response reflects their ignorance. Others have thrown up their hands in a "it's BYU--what do you expect?" kind of way.  ALL institutions should already be doing this work. That Heather Olmstead, BYU coach, said that after talking to Richardson (and others) that she now "understand(s) areas where we can do better" is offensive. Stop asking Black people to educate you about racism. AND ALSO how do you not understand that yelling racial slurs is a problem? This is not an area to be worked on--this is an ...

 Mariah Burton Nelson and Donna Lopiano, long-time women's sports advocates, have found "a fair and inclusive solution" to the "problem" of trans athletes--specifically trans women (because trans men are apparently inherently disadvantaged despite all that testosterone, the very substance that a mere blink of an eye ago everyone said meant everything in terms of advantage).  They (presumably with their more visible/vocal and polarizing colleagues Nancy Hogshead-Makar and Martina Navratilova) have created the Women's Sports Umbrella. The umbrella, they claim, allows for anyone identifying as female to have a "team" experience. But if an athlete was assigned male at birth and transitioned after the age of 12, that person cannot compete alongside women. Well unless it is an individual sport in which case fine but the scores/times do not get included with the "real women's" scores, they get put into the trans category. (But rugby and othe...

There are so many anti-trans bills passed by and pending in state legislatures here in the United States that I cannot even begin to address them all except to say this has been a concerted movement targeting trans youth for several years now and it is horrifying. The bill in Utah is my focus today. All the bills are horrible and saddening and enraging, but this one...is all that and more. This one demonstrates the consequences of the anti-trans "save women's sports" movement. The bill, which originated in 2021, bans children from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity. It was passed in March 2022, the governor vetoed it, t he legislature overrode the governor's veto.   Governor Cox, a Republican, expressed some compassion when explaining his veto of the bill. He cited that fact that Utah had four transgender children playing school-sponsored sports at the time. (I would argue that the number does not matter, but will save that post for another ...

 [this is cross-posted. Original post is at Title IX Blog. ]  I virtually attended last week's  NCAA annual Inclusion Forum  which was celebrating Title IX but also included issues of BIPOC inclusion and athlete mental health (among others). There was a panel on Thursday afternoon headlined by former Harvard swimmer Schuyler Bailar about trans athletes.  When the conference was announced, I was curious about how the organization would approach--or even if they would--trans athletes given the recent seemingly abrupt change in their policy (January 2022-- curiously  amidst the growing visibility of Penn swimmer Lia Thomas). They moved from a not ideal but not totally horrible policy in which hormone levels (specifically testosterone) governed participation, to a  we-are-cowards-kowtowing-to-the-misnamed-fear-mongering-save-women's-sports folks policy  in which trans athletes are treated as cheaters constantly having to submit to surveillance. Additi...

  This perhaps make me an outsider in the LGBTQ+ community. Even before the concept of rainbow-washing was a thing, I was not especially drawn to companies/entities that displayed a rainbow flag. How did I know if it was genuine? What did the display of the flag even mean in terms of actions taken (or not); what did support/allyship look like?  And so, I am not particularly disturbed that some players for the Tampa Bay Rays chose not to wear rainbow patches and rainbow logo hats during their recent Pride Night. Five players said it conflicted with their religious beliefs . While, yes, their discourse of conflict with beliefs and not judging/being welcoming is contradictory, that is not new when it comes to this issue.  The patch/hat was an opt-in for players. Now we know more about the five players who chose not to participate. They don't support LGBT rights because they feel it conflicts with their religion. Ok.  I am more interested in what the players who chose to...

After a 6-year hiatus which I spent being on the academic job market, getting a TT job and getting tenure, I have returned to After Atalanta. I am excited about phase 2(?) of AA and getting back to more public scholarship. I have kept up a sporadic presence at the Title IX Blog , which I am solely in charge of now (yikes!), but am trying to be more consistent. Since so many of my current interests (trans policies, labor, ethics) fall outside Title IX or are only tangentially related, I wanted to come back here.  I am not sure what form posts will take. Likely, some of them will resemble what I had been doing. I am planning one on the new Ohio law t hat allows anyone to question the sex of any female child playing sports. "Verification" would be done via genital, penetrative exams.  But I imagine briefer "quick take" posts as well. Things too long for Twitter (I will be using @titleixblog for After Atalanta content as well) but definitely worth mentioning. (I have so...

If we thought the international sports community had learned something about gender and sex, biology, identity and athleticism after the debacle caused by the International Association of Athletics Federations in its process of “gender verification” in the case of South African runner Caster Semenya, an April New York Times op-ed about these issues has shocked the naiveté right out of us. I would have liked to believe that the humiliation Semenya underwent when members of the international track and field community questioned her sex thus triggering physical, medical, and psychological examinations would become an anomaly. Based on the information presented by co-authors Katrina Karkazis and Rebecca Jordan-Young, it was not. The difference: the process of accusing and testing Semenya was very public; the process of testing and “fixing” the bodies of athletes who do not conform to the IAAF’s new hormone level policies (also adopted by the IOC and FIFA) have been quite hidden. Whil...

Last weekish I wrote about my astonishment that there isn't a 4-women bobsled event and how this speaks to the inequality that still remains in the Olympics in spite of visible and highly touted progress (i.e., the much-belated inclusion of women's ski jumping) because of the lack of equality in the events themselves. Even women's ski jumping has only one event while the men have two (two different sized hills). Want to see the inequality? Not in a pie graph or nifty infographic (though those are fun); but here in the medal ceremony for the team luge eve nt. This was a new event this year (I think--I had never seen it before) in which a team comprised of a female sledder, a male sledder, and a doubles team relay down the course. When one entity crosses the line, he/she hits a paddle which releases the gate at the top for the next entity. Each team has 1 woman and three men. Why? Because female lugers only have one event--the singles. Just like the female bobsledders only...

I ended yesterday's post with a line about female Olympians, who are the minority gender at the Winter Olympics, receiving a greater piece of spotlight. The caveat (in addition to the fact that it actually might not be true if one does a thorough content analysis of media coverage) is that the spotlight they are under highlights their sexuality, or rather their performance of their (hetero)sexuality/femininity. Obviously in most other arenas (pun intended) the spotlight on female athletes and women's sports is pretty dim. So much so that the media sometimes forgets altogether that women's sports exist. Because when "women" gets placed in front of "sports" it has some kind of cloaking effect, rendering women's sports invisible to the world. This phenomenon was on display last year when Andy Murray won Wimbledon, the first Brit to do so since Fred Perry in the 1930s. Except for Dorothy Round Little, Angela Mortimer Barrett, Ann Haydon-Jones, and Virg...

Many women's sports advocates have cheered the greater gender parity that we will see in Sochi next week. Mostly this is over the long-fought and quite visible battle female ski jumpers around the world engaged in over their inclusion in the winter games. (There's even a movie about it--which I haven't seen but would like to get a hold of.) But of course all is not equal, it's not even equitable. I was pretty sure, and then this article confirmed, that there would be no Nordic combined (jumping and cross-country skiing) event for women. But, as with the summer games, it's more than just sports, it's events within sports that provide more opportunities for male Olympic athletes than female ones. The most surprising to me was bobsled. In college, I remember the announcement that women's bobsled would be included in the 2002 games. My three female housemates and I were quite excited that we theoretically (and in theory only) had the possibility of being the...

Yesterday's NYT had an article about whether gay people were planning on "boycotting" the Sochi Olympics by not watching the games when they begin next week. Some of those interviewed, who noted that they were indeed fans of the Olympics, said they didn't feel right watching feeling that doing so would be a sign of support for Russia's anti-gay policies and sentiments. But, as Hilary Rosen of CNN and others have noted, not watching the Olympics will not have a direct effect on Russia. Russia will feel the effects, however, if fewer people attend the events and spend money in the country, as has been predicted . Russia has the games. Despite calls from different sectors to take the games away from Russia (rather unrealistic but at least someone said it), they will occur in the country. The goal, going forward, should be to make sure that such a problematic choice does not happen again. How to go about this? Well if we boycott Olympic sponsors like McDonalds an...

I just thought I would put that out there. Many of the articles I have read and radio reports I have heard about this "protest delegation" state that President Obama is choosing to send openly out athletes including Billie Jean King and Brian Boitano. Cahow's name is frequently left off the list despite the fact that she has been an activist for gay rights and inclusionary practices and attitudes in sport. Boitano came out publicly a few weeks ago. Cahow, a hockey player, has been out and part of this conversation for years. I imagine the rationale some might offer to the erasure of Cahow in the media is because she is not nearly as well-known among the American public as King and Boitano. And this would be true. But this "truth" speaks to the ongoing issues with the visibility of women's sports, especially sports that are viewed as more masculine, like ice hockey. But Cahow's resume is impressive. When media reports of the delegation mention King and ...

'Tis the season for year in review lists. Outsports compiled its own "gay sports year in review."  Year-end reviews can sometimes be cursory. But I was initially impressed by the lesser known and/or remembered stories writer Jim Buzinski mentioned in the piece including a gay male high school basketball coach who came out to his team and received tremendous support. But when I reached the end I asked (out loud to the empty room), did they not include Brittney Griner? So I did a page search for "griner" to compensate for any poor reading skills on my part. Nothing. It was not just that Griner came out, or rather stated publicly that she was gay; one of the biggest parts of the story was the way in which she was, as a player at Baylor, compelled to not discuss her sexuality even after telling her recruiters that she was gay when she was just in high school. To leave this story off the list is unacceptable whether on purpose or oversight. ( Another list , also ...

This week Colorado State University announced it was suspending assistant football coach Greg Lupfer for a gay slur he used during the team's bowl game against Washington State. Lupfer used the term, which he paired with a curse word for emphasis, against Washington State's quarterback after the latter made a touchdown pass. Unclear why Lupfer was so upset so early in the game. It was only the first of six the quarterback, Connor Halliday, would make and CSU ended up winning the game anyway. Not that any circumstance would warrant such behavior. But it might explain why, as part of Lupfer's punishment, he is being required to undergo anger management. He also has to do the requisite "diversity training." He must pay for both interventions himself. (Are there random diversity classes out there? Ones not part of company or university training? I would invite him east to take my diversity course, but I'm not teaching it next semester.) And he has be...

Russia don't care. Russia just keeps on planning its Olympics. It don't care that more and more heads of state are opting not to come to the opening ceremonies in Sochi in February.  Taking a cue from the infamous honey badger, Russian officials are claiming indifference regarding the news the leaders from the US, France, and England, among others, will not be coming to the Olympics as a form of protest against Russia's human rights record, namely (but not entirely) its anti-gay "propaganda" laws. (The US has some other issues with the country as well. I think the controversy over gay people in and coming to Russia has provided an easy out for US leaders and diplomats.) So instead the US is sending a delegation that includes three out gay people! Cunning? Passive aggressive? Brilliant? Don't matter. Honey badger...I mean Russia don't care. Unless they are a little less honey badger-esque than they are letting on.

Sometimes one feels randomly inspired to blog even when one has not done so in quite a while and one has a conference paper to finish writing by Wednesday. C'est la vie. But I was a little bit surprised to come across this article "Officials set to reduce women's hoops physicality" which said that "Physical play in the post, on shooters and on ball handlers will no longer be tolerated." The goal, they say, is to increase scoring by creating greater freedom of movement. There is talk, from time to time, of changing the rules in the women's game for this purpose. But the way in which this rule change and the intense focus on enforcement is being presented seems a little odd. For example, an additional rule change is the ten-second back court rule requiring the offense to bring the ball past midcourt in ten seconds. Makes sense. But why make the game less physical? And why do coaches think it is getting too physical? Auriemma called it a necessary st...

Sh*t's getting real in Russia. Every day I see a new set of news articles, blog posts, and various other forms of commentary and updates about how Russia's anti-gay propaganda laws will affect the upcoming Olympic Games. As I wrote about already, the IOC isn't exerting a whole lot of pressure. And, at the time of my last post about this issue, I was leaning toward boycott--or at least bringing it up as a possibility to encourage some more meaningful discussion. But I read a very thoughtful article about how a boycott would serve, in part, to closet some openly gay athletes who would not be given a chance to compete in Sochi. I was compelled by New Zealand speed skater Blake Skjellerup's comments in particular. Skjellerup asserted last week that he would go to Sochi and "speak out rather than sit out."  The IOC had said that no one visiting Sochi for the games in February (athlete, coach, fan, media, etc.) would be subject to the laws. But the Russian sport...

The writing has been on the wall for a long time now in terms of the geopolitical direction Russia is headed in. I mean, they were not exactly a model of cooperation at the most recent G8 when it came to Syria. But what is on everyone's radar screen right now, of course, is whether Vladimir Putin will let American leaker Edward Snowden stay in his country. (Apparently residence in an aiport is fine.) I am sure the behind-the-scenes wrangling must be quite charged by now. Is Russia just going to do what Russia wants to do? Or will the United States and its (reluctant?) allies exert enough pressure on Russia to get Snowden back where they would like him? As much as I probably should, I don't really care about the Snowden thing. I do care, however, about all the political capital the US and other nations might be using in negotiating Snowden's extradition. Why? Because I think more attention--and more capital--needs to be put toward dealing with the legal institutionalizati...

...a male commentator makes a sexist remark. Someone needs to start a blog or Tumblr or something entitled "Commentators Say the Darnedest Things"--and by darnedest I meant racist, homophobic, sexist. Last winter the BCS Championship was marred by a one-sided game and the comments of broadcaster Brent Musburger who spent some of the game's downtime talking about the quarterback's pageant girlfriend. At this year's Wimbledon, the comments focused on an actual participant in the event. BBC commentator John Inverdale noted, before the women's final on Saturday, that soon-to-be champion Marion Bartoli was not pretty. He surmised that Bartoli's father, who--like his daughter--has been considered somewhat of an oddity in the tennis world because of his style, told his daughter that she would have to work harder because she was never going to be a looker like Maria Sharapova. The comments caused discord immediately and Inverdale apologized before the broadca...