Women's Sports and Gender Panic

Almost all of the public conversations about sex testing and sports — or, more to the point, who should be allowed to participate in women’s sports — are pretty bad. In many if not most cases, they’re outright transphobic; even in the “best” cases, they’re still pretty ham-fisted. But Rose Eveleth is having a very different sort of public conversation about sex testing in their new podcast, Tested — one that looks to the way these tests affect the athletes subject to them, and how the concept of fairness in women’s sports has become so fraught. For today’s episode, Rose answers your questions about the history of women’s sports gender panic, why men aren’t subject to the same sex testing, and how the Paralympics imagines “fairness” in profoundly different ways. I absolutely loved this conversation. I think you will too.

Show Notes:

• Go listen to Rose’s podcast, Tested — it’s phenomenal

• The website for Tested has so much good stuff, including a glossary (and explanation) for all the terms used in the series and a bunch of the supplemental pieces Rose and I reference in our conversation, like this piece on the Paralympics

• Become part of FlashForward and directly support Rose’s ongoing work

• Rose strongly recommends Michael Waters’ The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports

• Christine Mboma, one of the featured athletes in Tested

• Rose also recommends: Katrina Karkazis’ Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography

We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• WTF is going on with kids toys right now (you can take this in any direction)

• The future of (downhill) skiing and livability of ski towns just generally

• The new Gladiator + Paul Mescal JUST GENERALLY

• Why does it feel like thrifting sucks now

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment

• You can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here (this is the subscriber-only form!)

For today’s discussion: I don’t think this will be a problem here, but absolutely no transphobic bullshit will be tolerated in these comments, full stop. But if this episode helped reframe some things for you, we’d love to hear about it — or your own thoughts re: the Ask Anne Anything question!

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