Power Plays Podcast

Author Katie Barnes on 'Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates'

• Lindsay Gibbs

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Listen to the first part of my conversation with ESPN writer Katie Barnes  about their new book, “Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates.” The book comes out next week, so go ahead and get your pre-order in!!!

This is a phenomenal conversation about transgender athletes in sports, and how to re-center the political fights around their humanity. I know you will love it.

To get access to the full conversation, become a paying subscriber to Power Plays. Right now, annual subscriptions are 27% off!

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Speaker 1:

Hello everyone. I am so excited to be joined today by the phenomenal Katie Barnes, who has a book, fair play how sports shape the gender debate, gender debates plural, which is out next Tuesday, and I'm so excited. Katie's one of my favorite people in the world, so I'm so excited to be able to talk to them about their book. Hi, katie.

Speaker 2:

Hi, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:

Of course, I'm just thrilled and so proud of you. I'm so proud of you. Thank you, I'm proud of me too. All right, this is a special midweek edition of the Power Plays podcast, as you've probably noticed by now. Now, if you're not a paid subscriber to Power Plays and you're listening to this on the main podcast feed, you're gonna get to hear about half of my conversation with Katie, which I promise you will be really wonderful and full of great stuff and give you great sense of the book. Not trying to shortchange you, but if you are a paid subscriber to Power Plays, you'll have access to the extended version of this interview on the subscribers only feed, which I think will nerd out a little bit more in although the whole thing is gonna be pretty nerdy, I'm not gonna lie but make sure, if you're a paid subscriber to Power Plays, that you're listening to the version that says subscriber pod in capital letters on it. And if you're not subscribed to that RSS feed, check your email and it'll be in there If you're interested in becoming a paid member of Power Plays and listening to this extended conversation as well as getting other exclusive perks. We have just launched one of our biggest sales ever 27% off annual subscriptions forever, meaning you'll be locked into the discounted price.

Speaker 1:

I rely on paid subscriptions to keep this work going. I've been running fully independently for almost four years now and in order to keep that going, I really need your support. So please check out powerplaysnews slash. Subscribe today and there'll be a link in the show notes. Okay, enough of that. I had to write all that down. Make sure I remembered it, but we're done with that. On to the show Katie Gonna. Start with a hard one here. Why did you write this book?

Speaker 2:

Oh God, it probably is hard to think.

Speaker 1:

I know, I know.

Speaker 2:

I originally wanted to write this book because I felt like and I guess the context is important I signed the contract to write the book in August of 2020. So Idaho had happened, but the rest of it had not.

Speaker 1:

And so when you say Idaho, what can you remind people? Yes, remind people how this goes, yeah, yes so Not everyone has read the book yet, and so it's refreshed. That is fair. Yeah, that is fair. That's the whole point of it to get people to read the book.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, read the book, friends, you know what I'm talking about. Hp 500, which is the first restrictive law for transgender athletes, was passed into law in Idaho, and it was signed into law in March of 2020. Other states had been kicking around legislation. They had filed similar legislation after Idaho in this legislative year of 2020, but nothing else had passed at that time. So when I say like Idaho had happened, that's what I mean. Like in the fall of 2020, we had one state that had passed restrictive legislation on transgender athletes, and now we're up to 23.

Speaker 2:

So at the time, I really felt like this was an undercover issue that I thought was gonna be something that people talked about, and I had connections with transgender athletes.

Speaker 2:

I'd been writing about transgender athletes, both at the amateur level, in terms of high schoolers and youth sports, but I also had written about professional athletes and I really thought that I was going to be writing a book that looked at the issues in various states at the high school level and then, like we kind of expanded out to women's sports, but I thought like in general, it was gonna be anchored in some kind of feel good stories I'm not gonna lie. And then it became a news event and I felt like the why kind of changed. I really felt like the book was needed, that there isn't anything out there like this, that everybody is. Whenever I go out and people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them, they then ask me about this. They desperately want information and I was like, okay, I should probably try to answer some of those questions and that is why I wrote this book.

Speaker 1:

You do something that you don't always do, which is you put a little bit of yourself in this book, quite literally starting from the intro. Knowing you, that had to be a difficult decision, or maybe I'm wrong. I might be wrong, but I know you try, and you're a reporter. You're very good at reporting on other people and other people's stories and do a good job of keeping yourself out of it a lot. So why did you start this book with your story?

Speaker 2:

I felt like, from my perspective as the writer of the book the author, if you will.

Speaker 1:

That is the word for it. Yes, yes, I am an author still feels weird.

Speaker 2:

I felt like, from that perspective, the reader was entitled to know a little bit about me, especially on this topic.

Speaker 2:

I have found that there's so much rhetoric.

Speaker 2:

Everybody has an opinion and is coming from their particular perspective, and oftentimes those things can be obfuscated by rhetoric in many respects and I felt like the best way to this is so funny.

Speaker 2:

As a journalist, you don't really don't do this right.

Speaker 2:

The best way to maintain credibility is to be objective in general, but I felt like on this particular topic, in this particular moment, the best way to maintain credibility and to have an impact in the way that I wanted to have would be to be as transparent as possible, and that meant also talking about my own background and sharing stories about myself, I think also from a writer perspective.

Speaker 2:

I used that as a little bit of a device and that, like for me, I really set out to kind of use my stories as a bit of an avatar for the reader, so that, as I was reflecting on my own experiences, that would be an invitation for them to reflect on their experiences, and doing so in a way that wasn't necessarily disruptive and it wasn't preachy. It was just kind of like a sharing, and so I really tried to inject that at points where I felt like it would be natural for people who are reading the book to go huh, how do I feel about that, what are my experiences with that, what do I think about this? And kind of invite them along that journey internally with themselves as well.

Speaker 1:

Well, I can say you were very successful at that. You can also say that I love you even more seeing how tangled your headphones are, because that's exactly what mine are, oh incredible. I know that you I am the same when I am traveling.

Speaker 2:

That is what mine look like, so yeah, I thought about untangling them and then I was like no, it's too early for that One is too early and I'm just like whatever, lindsay, like we're good enough friends that you could see my tangled headphones.

Speaker 1:

I know, it just makes me feel better about myself. So that's good, that's good. No, but your story is that you are a non-binary and you grew up playing women's sports, particularly women's basketball, right, is that?

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's true. Yes, very true. How did you? One of the things and this has always impressed me about you and the way you approach your work, because, while you bring yourself to it, you also I don't wanna say you don't have a problem with it, because that might not be true, but you are willing to enable, to talk to people and interview people who have very different opinions from you and perhaps might not even validate your identity. Period. You talk with people in this book and interview people in this book who are on the anti-trans side of things, and I know you've done that and you're reporting for ESPN as well.

Speaker 1:

I should have said in the beginning that Katie is, in addition to an author, a writer for ESPN. That's probably important context. Once again, I'm great at the introductions. I'm killing it. Look, we started this interview at 8 am, so that's early for me, so we're doing really great, I think. How do you approach these interviews with people when you know that they might not even acknowledge that they? Them pronouns exist, Like they might, you know, just be, which is so if I'm saying they but you, which is exactly the irony there as well. But how do you approach interviews with people who are fighting against the things that you are.

Speaker 2:

So that's a good question. I think part of it is that I really truly fundamentally believe that those interviews are really important when it comes to journalism and how I approach journalism. On this topic. For me, I really believe that if an issue or a topic or an idea is controversial which this is then by definition, there are gonna be multiple perspectives and I do think that voice selection is really important. You know I don't talk to just anybody, but, like Barbara E Hart wrote the first bill in Idaho, so I'm gonna talk to her. I wanna know why she made the choice to do that, what was the story behind that, how did that happen? Who is she? Why does she care about this?

Speaker 2:

I think, seeking to answer those questions and presenting her perspective in a way that is fair and is, I think, reflective of the conversation that we had. That's important from honestly and it goes back to what I was saying earlier from a credibility perspective Like, the reality is that for many people who I hope find this book, if there are voices, if we know that this is controversial and there are only voices from one particular side that are being presented, then the text loses credibility from a journalistic perspective and it also loses credibility with an audience and for me, I want to answer the questions as holistically as I possibly can, and that means including perspectives from a wide range of people. And on a personal level as a journalist well, I guess I would say on a personal level, just separate from my journalistic identity Is it hard sometimes to listen to certain perspectives because I am non-binary and I am trans? Yes, of course that is hard, but my job in that moment is it's not an adversarial interview, like I'm not trying to change anybody's mind, and I should also say that when people with whom I have more alignment and the perspective that I do share in the book like when it comes to sharing having conversations with those people sometimes they say things that I don't necessarily agree with or I think are not entirely the correct framing on a particular thing, and I don't go at them. That's not adversarial either. For me it's about holistically representing perspective and then an additional reporting, like examining all those perspectives with similar levels of veracity. Like you don't get to say false things in my book, or if you do say something that is false, I will correct you in the text, but there isn't necessarily this back and forth.

Speaker 2:

And overall as a reporter, I tend to not make it about me generally, like, yes, my pronouns are public, my identity is public, but I get misgendered all the time. It doesn't matter who I'm interviewing, it doesn't matter the topic that I'm interviewing somebody for, or if it's a profile of an athlete, et cetera, et cetera. I get misgendered all the time and I often choose not to correct them because I don't know how they're going to respond to that and at the end of the day, it's not about me and that could inject tension in a place where I don't want there to be tension. And so that is a choice that I have made for myself that I am okay with in terms of how I conduct my business journalistically. And of course, there's always the nice moment where, because my pronouns are public and my identity is public, that is affirmed in an interview space. But honestly, that's kind of rare. So I just know that that's just part of the job and I have figured out how to make that work for me.

Speaker 1:

Well, you do a very good job of, in this book, straddling the line between the personal and the professional, as well as fact versus fiction, because so much of this, so much of this debate around trans athletes and sports exists in the hypothetical and in the fear mongering in the, in this other fictional world really, and I think it's so important that what you do is you ground this conversation in facts, in humanity, in real people, and of course you dissect policy, of course you do all those things, but it re-center. It does a really good job, I think, re-centering the conversation around actual, real human beings, which is where, which is what this should all be about. There are four athletes that you really hone in on MacBags, the wrestler in Texas, andrea Yearwood and Terry Miller, the two Connecticut runners, and Leah Thomas, the swimmer. All four of those are trans athletes who made quite huge waves and headlines, and I found it very I covered all of those stories to some extent while they were happening and yet found it really effective to revisit them with the, with the temperature turned down, like you do in your book, and just like looking back at those stories holistically as opposed to just living by the, beat by beat, headlines, result by result, headlines that we're so heated.

Speaker 1:

What do you hope people get from kind of the revisiting of those stories? Is there probably four people that people who read this book will be tangentially familiar with, at least space? Maybe from right wing attacks, maybe because they followed it personally? But what do you, what do you hope you get that people get from revisiting those stories and is there anything that you think people got the you think maybe correct the record about these individuals?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think like honestly, that is what I hope people get is so much of those particular stories that are that are still talked about publicly is they've kind of, you know, been vaporized into the public there and so I'm very good word.

Speaker 2:

What I mean? It's just like this, like ethereal mist of like that bags and I'm drinking your wood and the atomic, like they are not people, they are clouds. You know, I'm just like, okay, well, first of all, let's remind folks that they are people and they have stories and they have lives and you know, I think that was really important and also not necessary for me. It's like it's not necessarily correcting the narrative per se, but it is about, you know, re centering those stories in a fact based way and, in some ways, cutting through narrative and saying, like this is actually who Mac begs, it is actually what he went through, this is who Andrea, your what is and what she went through. And this is Leah Thomas and like, especially, I think, with Leah, where so little of her voice is out there. You know, people talk a lot about Leah and we hear very little from her, and some of that, I believe, is by design. I do not envy being in her position in any way, shape or form, and you did mention the book that.

Speaker 1:

You know that she, at the beginning of all this, had maybe asked people not to Talk about her, which I had known, and so maybe she asked, like allied organizations, to not mention was that? Do you believe that was her attempt to quiet the noise? And then maybe that was a misguided attempt, because there was no such thing is doing that, I well, I think at the time.

Speaker 2:

I think it's fair to say that no one whether we're talking about you know the swimming and diving program at Penn Penn as an institution. Leah Thomas herself, her family like I don't think anybody was prepared for not just the initial Like explosion of coverage, but also like how long of a tail it has had. Like I'm somebody who has Leah Thomas Google alerts because that's my job and there is not a day that goes by that I don't get something new off of those alerts and she has not been in a pool since March of 2022. So, like it's an ongoing thing, which I think is partly why we haven't heard from her after she's, you know, after she's completed her swimming career is other than this book, really, and the interview I did with her for ESPN, and it's because anytime she speaks, it becomes incredibly political immediately and she's a very reserved person.

Speaker 2:

There's, you know, for all the caricatures that are out there about her, like she's very reserved, and so I think at the time, you know when this was all happening, like you know, I don't want to speak for her, but I believe that like she mostly just wanted to stop and I think that's ultimately probably what she wants now. Is she prefer people not talk about her, and yet here, here we all are and it is something I think about a lot in terms of the responsibility of covering a story and also, you know, the damage and the harm that potentially can come from that. It's a tough balance. One of the things that made me really, really sad.

Speaker 1:

You know you said you maybe wanted this to be. You know, started a long time ago with this. Babies have some uplifting stories and there is so much inspiration to gain from looking at the stories of these athletes and that is a part of it. But it seems like most of them don't Play or compete in sports anymore like they're they're done, and that makes me really, really sad and I mean, I know part of it is like a lot of people go to college and do different things. Like a lot of people stop sports when they get to college and I didn't know how much of it was that. You know their interest change versus Did the fear mongers win? Did the right wing win? Did this, did they do it?

Speaker 2:

Well, I would say so, I think, like with Mac and this sort of developed after the conclusion of, like my writing. But he is doing a lot of MMA training, he is competing, he's very happy.

Speaker 1:

Oh good, okay, okay.

Speaker 2:

So in particular he's doing like jiu-jitsu, I think, in the case of you know young athlete who's a new voice in the book, with like River, who's a transgender boy in Kansas, you know he was playing a gendered sport and then decided to not play a gendered sport anymore meaning softball is the sport in question and, you know, was a kid and is now a teenager, about to graduate from high school and is doing other stuff.

Speaker 2:

You know, I think sometimes some of it is that simple, Right, and also some of it is more complicated. You know Leah Thomas did not want to finish her career at the NCAA championships. Doesn't mean that she thought she would go to the Olympics, but it's not uncommon for collegiate swimmers to swim at the closest Olympic trials and then retire Like that is a thing that happens and that's how Leah's brother finished his career was swimming at the Olympic trials and so she also wanted to do that and did not get the opportunity to and was effectively banned from her sport pretty soon after the conclusion of the collegiate season. And that for me was probably one of the biggest gut punches in the book is the scene where she finds out that this has happened.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yeah, she's on vacation, yeah.

Speaker 2:

It was, that one was tough. And so I think, to varying degrees, like with Andrea, would she want to run or do something competitively, or even do something from a club perspective in a sport, you know maybe, but she has chosen not to and she's had an incredibly successful collegiate career, like if you have known Andrea since she was 14 years old and she's about to be a senior in college and like I look at the things she's doing and I remember she told me that she wanted to be a UN translator when she was 14 and she speaks like 8,000 languages now. So I'm like she very well could be, you know, like just doing it. I'm so proud of her, and so I think it's a mixed bag.

Speaker 2:

And also, on top of that, with the specific like, in addition to the specific athletes that I talk about in the book, there are a number of athletes whose voices are not included in the book for various reasons, who are still trying to play or who have been unable to continue to play because of legislative action taken in their states, like the reality is that 23 states have some sort of restrictive policy or law in the books and with that comes the natural effect that there are a number of transgender children who are not able to play school sports in a manner that's consistent with their gender identity, and so, from that perspective, of course that's gonna push trans kids out of sports. There's just no way around that, and that's where we are right now, and that's a hard thing to sit with.

Speaker 1:

It's so hard because, you know, I think a lot about the Center for American Progress Report that put a lot of these studies together a few years ago on trans participation in sports and the youth level, and it was just the thing that was so clear from that report was that when trans people, even if they're not athletes, when they go to schools and are in states that have trans inclusive policies, they are more likely to stay in school, they are more likely to graduate, they are more likely to not be depressed or suicidal and they're more likely to, you know, thrive. And, on the other hand, even if they don't want to participate in sports, just being in that environment makes them so much more susceptible to dropping out to, you know, engaging in self-harm and behaviors. And I always just come back to that. It's like on the youth level, it's like, okay, the worst thing that could happen to a cis kid if a trans kid is involved in sports is that they lose to a trans kid, right, but, like you, sports are supposed to teach you how to lose anyways, right? Whereas, like, the worst thing that can happen to trans you know what happens to trans kids when they're excluded from sports is so extremely bad Like. These are not apples to apples situations or comparisons and should be a no brainer.

Speaker 1:

We're gonna keep talking about this, as well as got some questions about testosterone. We're gonna talk about these fairness of women in sports acts and policies that we're seeing pop it up in the National Women's Soccer League, the Premier Hockey Federation, which RIP, and a few others. So if you're a paid subscriber, you will keep hearing that conversation and if you are not, please go by Katie's book immediately. I hope I've conveyed in this first part what a phenomenal job they did in tackling this subject and I promise you, if you like power plays, if you like this stuff we do, if you listen to this podcast, you will love this book. There is a I guarantee you a one to one correlation.

Speaker 2:

There the Venn diagram is a circle. I'm just gonna cosine that the.

Speaker 1:

Venn diagram is a circle. It's like half HMG difference. Yeah, and so again, thank you.