Despite being a time when people from all over the world come together Equality And peace, the Olympics are still uncertain territory for transgender athletes. there There are no transgender female athletes participation in this year’s Games. Transgender women Those who transfer after puberty are not allowed to compete in major sports at the college level.
athlete Nikki HultzA runner, and Harji BakyadanA boxer, both identify as transgender (Hultz also identifies as non-binary), but both have always competed and continue to compete in the women’s division, which is their gender assigned at birth.
Outside of games, trans people often face a lot of backlash just for existing. Conversations all around sport especially filled, from Children’s Athletics Right up through professional. Although the International Olympic Committee is going to be Includes moreThe future of trans athletes is unclear.
It all raises the question: How did we get to this point, and does it always have to be this way?
The answer comes from historian and journalist Michael Waters Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports may be surprising. Waters’ book traces the rise of Zdenek Koubek, a track and field star representing the country formerly known as Czechoslovakia who won two medals at the age of 21 — a gold in the 800 meters and a bronze in the long jump — at the 1934 Women’s World Games. (The Women’s World Games were the precursor to women’s competition at the Olympics). In 1935, Kaubek announced that he would live as a man and quickly became an international celebrity.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Kaubek’s story was the public response. Kaubek was welcomed and celebrated more than we could have imagined. In the 1930s there was an open-mindedness and empathy towards Kaubek’s reception and his gender identity and expression.
Waters also points out specifically where and when the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany changed. Armed with eugenics tendencies, gender anxiety, and a shocking lack of scientific evidence, a small set of Nazi officials influenced the International Olympic Committee toward gender surveillance and trans panic—things that mirrored transphobic attacks on athletes. cis And Trans Likewise, face today.
Reading Waters’ account of the lives of Kaubek and other trans and intersex athletes, it seems that these Olympics were a breaking point. The Nazi era has significantly shaped the conversation surrounding trans athletes today.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. As Waters notes Other Olympians, we use different and more specific language to refer to transgender and intersex identities today, making it difficult to fully translate the stories of the past into contemporary language. We refer to Kaubek with male pronouns because this is how he openly expressed his gender identity after his transition.
I would like to ask you, how do you know about Kaubek? I haven’t heard of him. I was very surprised – in a good way! All the details of his life — how he loved to run, how he became famous — how did you find his story?
I had that reaction when I first saw him. History, especially before World War II, is full of stories of queer people in communities existing and becoming prominent sooner than you might expect.
What I’ve found is that the way we describe queer people, in terms of sexuality or gender transition – those phrases have changed a lot over time, but when you know what [terms or phrases] May be used in a certain era, you can actually find some really interesting stories.
In the 1930s, many transitions would be described as “sexual transitions,” which is this strange technical term. Because this is a time before we have a concept of gender, it comes from the idea that something spontaneously changes in these people’s bodies and then they are a man or a woman.
Obviously, the language has changed now and I think there’s a general effort to be more aware of the terms we’re using. Back then, people didn’t have words or language when it came to gender identity and expression.
I had preconceived notions of a generally grim to dark history. Like something out mad max And reading your book I was surprised that this is not the case.
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s really easy to think of pre-World War II and especially pre-Stonewall as this dark period in general, where there couldn’t be a public embrace of segregation.
It’s much more complicated than that.
You mentioned in Kaubek’s case that he became a celebrity and was even welcomed. It’s all relative, but there seems to be a lot of open-mindedness and positivity in much of the coverage following Kaubek.
There is some sensationalism in the coverage. There is some fascination because he is one of the few notables making the transition. Journalists get his pronouns wrong all the time. In some articles, you see every conceivable pronoun used to describe him.
But I think through it all, you see this real empathy and curiosity about transition and what’s medically possible in terms of logistics. People are interested in this idea of these categories of male and female, and what you are assigned at birth is not as set in stone as they had hoped.
right I don’t want to give them too much credit, but the media coverage of Kaubek wasn’t as painful or horrible as I expected, especially when you consider how trans people are covered and written about today.
In that vein of looking at today, I think the key thing in your book is that you see when and where the narrative surrounding Kaubek and other athletes changes. It’s the Olympics in Nazi Germany.
What was so interesting to me was this [current] Olympic gender testing or qualification policies have historical roots in 1936. And those historical roots are really, I think, in this concern about female athletes. In the 1930s, there was a general fear among masculine women of the idea that sports and sports, especially a sport like track and field, were both somehow dangerous to health, but also hindered this really rigid idea of femininity.
I think that Kaubek, in some way, vindicated the fears of mostly male sports officials who were worried that the act of sports was changing something in female athletes and masculinizing them in a way that they found intolerable.
Of course yes. They used fear and suspicion as a bully and anyone – you notice Jewish athletes faced the same kind of discrimination – who didn’t conform to their idea of the “ideal” was punished.
Just the fact that in the 1930s, the idea was the idea of a medical test, which was this type of strip test. Strip tests will be given if a competitor has questions about one of their competitors. You can only compel your competitor to undergo a physical examination by a doctor.
I think you see some of that mischief in sports today. It’s not like some neighborhood conversation Serena Williams And Simone Biles throughout their careers. They are often accused of being too masculine or muscular, and there are insinuations that they dope or ridicule that their bodies are not feminine enough. This is a damning allegation.
Well, it all starts with the origins of the Olympics. Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the Olympics, did not want women to play sports, full stop. There are many quotes about how he didn’t like seeing female athletes. Female athletes were viewed with suspicion.
current Paris Olympics website There is a whole – not entirely convincing – page on de Coubertin’s views and how his sexist ideologies may have been a product of their time.
It really helped cement the idea that there was something or something unexpected about successful athletes. That too is bound by caste and class. The first Olympic sports for women were sports like tennis and golf that were really associated with the white upper class at the time.
I think tennis, in particular, is still considered a more feminine sport today.
yes So that important starting point, you have these fears about female athletes. Maybe some women are okay if they play a certain type of sport and they fit into this idea of femininity, but there are real concerns about what sport will do to the idea of gender in some way.
I think what you’re getting at is that female athletes, in order to make people more comfortable, had to perform and present themselves in a non-threatening, traditionally feminine way. I think that still happens in sports today when you look at who gets rewarded with sponsorships and deals and who gets to be the face of women’s sports.
While reading your book, I found myself wondering a bit about what would have happened to the conversation and policies surrounding trans athletes if things had taken a different turn in the 1930s.
It’s easy to assume that this is how sports should be. It’s really this particular coalition of officials who didn’t have the best morals in other aspects of their lives and political beliefs —
A coalition of officials who were really … Nazi Olympics!
It’s a bit counterintuitive, but I think, at the very least, it’s also important to see that these kinds of restrictive policies weren’t inevitable, and it’s also important to see how they were created and who created them.
To the IOC’s credit, they published this policy statement in 2021 in which they at least hinted at the idea of greater inclusion for trans and intersex athletes as well as female athletes with high hormone levels — groups that are often banned from competition.
I believe we are capable of having that conversation. And I think the IOC statement suggests that there is some interest in talking about making sport more inclusive. But obviously, I think the field policies at this year’s Paris Olympics don’t really reflect that.
