"Let Us Play: Winning the Battle for Gender Diverse Athletes" featuring Harrison & Rachel Browne

[MUSIC] And so we wanted to really call out this idea that's being perpetrated particularly by the right that trans people are somehow the biggest threat to women's sports. When an actuality, it's trans people who are bearing the brunt of harassment and violence. [MUSIC] Good morning, afternoon or evening from wherever you are tuning into today's podcast from. I'm Julia F. Aheadagomas co-hosting with Lindsay Heyhurst today, and we'd like to welcome you to the Sport Social Justice and Development Podcast. A podcast that aims to critically explore the utility of sport and other forms of physical activity, recreation and leisure used around the world for developmental pursuits. To do this, we engage in exploratory and in-depth conversations with practitioners, researchers, organizational staff, and participants involved with sport, social justice, and development. In this episode, we'll be talking with Harrison and Rachel Brown about their new book Let Us Play, winning the battle for gender-diverse athletes. In Let Us Play, trans-athlete, Harrison Brown, an investigative journalist, Rachel Brown, reveal how the opposition towards gender-diverse athletes is fueled by fear and a moral panic. As opposed to facts around what makes a level playing field. Today, we'll get a little bit more into that. Welcome, Harrison and Rachel. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Before we dive into Let Us Play, can each of you share a bit about your background? For instance, what may have drew you both to sport? What led you to care deeply about gender inclusion in this space? Yeah, for me, being an athlete, I think, in retrospect, it was a nice solace for me as I was dealing with gender identity things growing up. But it was a space where I could be an athlete. I didn't have to be a boy, I didn't have to be a girl. I could just reside in that identity. And yeah, I just really, really enjoyed sports and hockey, specifically, is my sport. I was the first transgender athlete in professional hockey. And I just loved the different elements of hockey, the cold, the speed, putting on all the equipment. And it was just a really great space for me to be among friends and fighting for a common goal. And I really loved pushing my body in that way. And it was my life for a big chunk of time. And for me, I mean, Harrison has always been the sportier of us too as siblings. But for me, when it comes to these issues, I'm someone who feels passionate as an ally for Harrison, as a defender of people who are from marginalized communities, and also people who are grappling with human rights issues. And that's always just a passion of me in my career, what I cover as a journalist. And then, you know, during the pandemic, we kind of came together as the rhetoric around trans athletes was reaching new lows really. It was really becoming harsh and dehumanizing. And so we wanted to combine our backgrounds and passions together to take this on. Thank you for sharing. It does seem like we're in this weird space where we're a bit regressing when it seemed at some point where it did feel like gender inclusion and gender diversity was at a point of progressing. I'll similarly to that. I'm wondering how your sibling relationship shaped your collaborative writing process. We're writing this book, especially in balancing investigative journalism advocacy, your professional experience as well Harrison. Yeah, absolutely. This book started out as a memoir based idea. But then when we saw the rhetoric shifting for trans exclusion rather than trans inclusion and the conversation around trans athletes on a global scale started to become more hostile. And we really wanted to switch how we were going to approach this book. And I couldn't have done it without Rachel. It was a really daunting task for me to undertake a large project like this and writing and bringing Rachel on. We were able to really make this global and broader and tackle and share more trans stories from all over the world. Share more perspectives from families from kids from policymakers and make this like really all encompassing. So bringing Rachel in and also tying in my connections to the athletic space and the athletes that I have access to. It was a it was a dream team. It was amazing. Yeah, I mean Harrison kind of encapsulated everything there. And I think the big thing for me was having a support system in the writing process. So, you know, a lot of times, of course, I'm working with editors and things, but it was nice to have some a writing partner and an interview partner in the room with me when we're talking to all these different types of athletes and policymakers as Harrison mentioned. But also just to have someone to bounce ideas off of and to kind of help offset times when I was feeling low energy or hitting a wall on certain ideas. Harrison and I can really chat through things and kind of, you know, we know each other so well and in such a different way than than just knowing a colleague. So it was a really kind of organic and interesting way that we could offset and build off of each other's different skill sets. Right. It almost sounds like you have like a sounding board for your ideas during the writing process. And it's really cool to hear how it evolved from a memoir to encapsulating all of these stories. Are there any unexpected moments, perhaps that emerged during the writing process that deepened the project in unexpected ways? I think something that was surprising for me as a trans individual and as a trans athlete was my own biases that I carried into this project. And I had a lot to learn of what hormones played in the body and a lot to learn about different trans experiences past mine. And questioning when I felt uncomfortable when I felt things that I was thinking I was feeling while I was learning and just really diving into that discomfort and admitting what I didn't know. So learning a lot about athletes when I thought that I knew everything was very humbling and I'm really happy that we're able to do that. And I think for me as well was, you know, I'd never really delved into the science and the research that has been done in this area granted. It's quite limited in scope and there's a lot more that could be done. But I think as someone who was unfamiliar with the scholarship around this topic, it was really interesting to see what has been done in terms of research on the participation of trans athletes and athletes at elite levels of sports in particular, trans women participating. And, you know, I think the big thing we took away from this is that in order to broaden the scholarship and research on this topic, it's better to have more inclusion. If we keep excluding trans athletes, we won't be able to get the data and we won't be able to get the insights both qualitative and quantitative. So that was really eye opening for me as well. And that sounds like an incredibly reflexive experience to go so deep and personal into your own biases, perhaps or viewpoints and paradigms really when having these conversations with Sony diverse athletes and people with different experiences you've as well in sport. I'm wondering, I know you spoke to particularly the political climate, giving more of a pusher reason for shifting the conversation from or the book from a memoir to more so often, conversing many stories of gender diverse athletes and bringing light to a very important issue. What public conversations or silences or gaps in public discourse, were you hoping the book would disrupt intervene or perhaps and fanciful? I think we really wanted to call attention to the fact that this there's an outsized outcry and an outsized reaction to a very small and very marginalized population of people trans people, trans men and women are some of the most marginalized and targeted people in society around the world. The percentage of hate crimes that are perpetrated against trans people is astronomical compared to cisgender people. We wanted to really call out this idea that's being perpetrated particularly by the right that trans people are somehow the biggest threat to women's sports when in actuality it's trans people who are bearing the brunt of harassment and violence and bigotry and hatred. We really wanted to make that clear and to ask people on all sides of the political spectrum including progressives who are increasingly latching on to and agreeing with this idea that trans people need to be excluded from sport. We really wanted to push people to look at the hard numbers and look at the fact that trans people represent 1% of the population and an even smaller percentage of elite sports and Olympic level sports. Why are we allowing people to spend so much time and energy going after this population when clearly it's a distraction, it's a tool of distraction from the much larger issues that play. I couldn't agree more and thank you for sharing that Rachel. I'm going to pass over the mic to Lindsay and less Harrison is there anything to go to add to those comments? Oh, I think Rachel had the nail on the head there, but I think something that we also wanted to show through this book was the nuances of sport. We're not talking about the different skill sets that each individual sport has and when we talk about blanket bands of somebody based on one certain aspect of their body, it really negates all the different things that make an athlete an athlete and we'll get into it as we get further but talking about socio economic status and access. It's because you've had a testosterone driven puberty does not mean that you're going to be an amazing athlete and I think that that's getting lost in the discourse right now and that's what we really wanted to amplify. Yeah, thank you so much and it's you know today the New York Times just came out with a podcast on this very topic like I think again this what we're discussing now couldn't be more timely. I think across North America we're really seeing yet we're seeing a wave obviously of anti trans legislation targeting youth we have Alberta is bill 26 which is restricting access to gender, firming care. That gain traction in December in the US of course we have Trump other political figures that are calling for bands on trans athletes in school sports and we'll get to your chapter on the school the school yard in a moment. But I mean again this book couldn't be more timely I've marked it up a lots of little post it's letting it go back to. But Harrison you really wrote very candidly and openly about transitioning while competing as an elite athlete and you kind of took us inside that whole experience. Can you tell us and our listeners a bit more about how you navigated the tensions between being an elite athlete and undergoing a gender transition emotionally socially and of course institutionally during that time. Yeah, I would say that transitioning socially so I played on the women's side and trans man and the anti-doping protocol at the time was that I couldn't go through to testosterone. I was a hormone replacement therapy in a physical transition but I could socially transition so for me I wanted to be myself as much as I could while still playing my sport so that meant changing my name on the roster asking people to use different pronouns and the tensions with that weren't really that great within the hockey space my teammates welcomed me the front office of the NWHL were absolutely amazing no questions asked just wanted me to feel comfortable playing in my sport. Their league the fans were absolutely amazing the year that I came out I was the fan vote into the NWHL all star game my jersey was one of the tops jersey sold behind a man of castle and Hillary night better to Olympic gold medalist and I was voted one of the fans who stars the season so the hockey community really rallied behind me. The difficult part of socially transitioning and also playing in a gender titled league a national women's hockey league every time I tell a stranger what where I play I'm outing myself and there was more just discomfort outside of sports identifying as a man but not being able to take testosterone to lower my voice to masculize my face. It was very confusing for the public to know where to put me and that was just the disconnect of feeling like I could be myself in my sport but also feeling like I had to be somebody totally different outside of it that juxtaposition was what made me retire at an earlier age. Yeah and I just you know that broke my heart and I'm sure when when when folks read the book will feel the same I mean you you kind of take us through that experience and you also I think you know very usefully for us you foreground what the social transition meant and you discuss how it's something that's overshadowed by what we're seeing right now what I just talked about in these kind of political attacks around. Like medical transition and then how that's then weaving and to sport policy debates. Why do you think this aspect around social transition remains so neglected in public and institutional discourse and why is it critical that we center this dimension of lived experience. Well I think it's critical to not paint all trans people or gender diverse people as the same transition looks different from person to person and I think we need to understand the nuances of that to truly include this segment of the community as best as we can. And we don't hear about trans men a lot in this discourse because it's written in misogyny somebody that's born in a female centered body. They're automatically deemed as not being an athletic threat which is not the case at all we see people like Patrice Omanwell. Transboxer competes against cisgender men and is gone three and one and absolutely dominated cisgender men in the ring. So when we can switch the discourse to just not being centered around trans women I think the conversation around trans participation in sports will be different. And I think most people are really focused on policy and hormones and that's a reason why to bar an entire community when not all trans people want to go through hormone therapy and there are ways that trans people can be included within leagues in terms of gender neutral language and certain things that you can change without having a drastic policy change to make it inclusive for everybody. So I think keying on socially transitioning as well as a great way to make question the gendered aspect of sports that's so pervasive. And I also add that when we're talking about a social transition as well like this is very applicable to youth and children who are not being subjected, nor should they be subjected to an anti-doping protocol or restrictions around hormones and that sort of thing. Talking about social transition in ways that we can include youth as they go through their journey as children would help set people up including athletes sports administrators coaches parents just set up that understanding of the trans experience and the gender diverse experience to maybe help build a better future should these athletes go on to elite sports. But at the end of the day we know that the vast majority of people do not become elite athletes so talking about things like a social transition is a way to also acknowledge that sports at the end of the day for the vast majority of people are a source of enjoyment friendly competition and just community building and building self confidence. That's right and you know I'm sorry I keep going back to these political attacks because it's this is what's happening now and I do want to hear from you in terms of you know we're talking about direct political attacks to to health care and sport these are shaping the ability of gender diverse youth to as you just mentioned participate safely and fully and hold hard to lead in sport. So what what do you feel that this moment kind of reveals about the role of sport in broader struggles over bodily autonomy inclusion and justice. Yeah just can you tell us a bit more about that. I think that we're looking at a broad attack on bodily autonomy and on human rights so when we're talking about barring trans people from sports. That is part and parcel of the effort to dismantle access to gender affirming care for youth as well and not just youth but also adults I mean the right loves to say that adults can do what they want with their body but we know that that's simply not true we look at the reversal of row we look at the removal of access to birth control. We cannot look at the attacks on access to gender affirming care for gender diverse people as divorced from supporting access to health care and reproductive care for women it's it all needs to be viewed as part of the same thing because once we start seeing rights being shipped away in one area which we have seen with abortion rights in the United States look at what's happening with access to trans care it's all happening simultaneously at the same time so that's why we need to look at. At better ways to embolden ourselves to take on the debates around transaction at trans access to sports and the ability to participate in sports because again as I said it's all part of this bigger conversation of. The rights that we all have that are on the chopping block at the moment. We also have a lot of media onslaught into investigating her as a trans woman which was completely false and also illegal in her country so could put her at very much danger but we also open the book in our in our chapter of moral panic with us. We also have a gender girl who in BC was targeted by a grandparent a grand dad in the audience screaming that that's a trans girl get him or her off the off the field is a cisgender girl who has short hair so we're opening the door for cisgender girls to be surveilled if they don't fit into this gender binary box or step out of it in any sort of way. We also have a gender girl who is a trans woman and the ones that are affected the most by this so we need to make sure that we're not seeing this as just a trans issue. This is a global issue. I guess I want to know a bit more about the resistance that you have encountered Harrison internal or external because you have firmly placed your story at the heart of this broader political and cultural narrative right now. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, I think what people aren't understanding the most is that to some this can just be a debatable topic this can just be a conversation that you can have a dinner you can be an armchair expert if you want to and just discuss trans participation in sports. But there's humans behind this topic and for me everywhere I go as soon as I divulge anything about my identity and my transness I suddenly am thrust into a debate from my humanity and it's exhausting. So for me like writing this book there were moments of exhaustion where I had to debate with people because we talked with people that were against trans inclusion in sports because we wanted to get the full scope of this and we wanted to hear why people are thinking these things because when we can understand that we can chip away. That was something that was great with Rachel and I's writing process was she could shoulder that that burden when things got a little bit too personal for me and a little bit too emotional but I think what people just aren't realizing is that myself like I'm a 32 year old man. I'm able to get through some stresses and things like that but youth are having to to advocate for themselves and they're questioned and they're attacked at every every step of the way and they might not have the same support system or the thick skin that I have like I don't think I don't know what I would have felt had I come out at that stage when I came out publicly in 2016 there's a very little conversation about trans participation in sports and very little backlash. And now it's just in the short amount like nine years it's just been totally totally backrolled but yeah I think what people don't understand is there's a lot of there's a lot of emotion behind that in the trans community and more tired. Yeah thanks for sharing that Julia. Right and it always feels like the people most centered to these experiences are the ones holding the burden to educate everyone else who don't have those experiences and can't resonate with feeling gender dysphoria. And so thank you so much for sharing that and you spoke as well to Iman Kulief and how this isn't just excluding gender diverse people but it's threatening women sports broadly and you write this for has truly never been fair through many examples such as Iman Kulief such as Kastas and Iman. And other examples that you point to what in your view makes this myth so politically durable and we've seen so many examples of it not being factual. I think there's this idea there's just sort of this notion that's almost like a religious belief that sports are automatically fair and that fairness is this thing that is achieved automatically I mean I think we also take for granted that sports are fair and that achieving fairness needs to be done sort of on the biomedical biological side. But but of course it's always more complicated and more costly to talk about fairness in terms of access in terms of socio economic status and how access to things like nutrition equipment training facilities having caregivers who are able to take time out of their day to drive you as a kid to turn them in and practices and that sort of thing. Those are not the kind of sexy headline grabbing conversations and topics when we're talking about access to you know people with certain body parts are certain hormones flowing through their body people don't want to talk about access in terms of class in terms of wealth in terms of race. And so that myth that this idea that sports is fair and needs to be achieved by looking at people's gender is just an easy way to capture people's basic instincts but it's much more difficult and much more it requires a lot more critical thinking to come out there and frame fairness in terms of these things that can make people uncomfortable. And we're talking about things like race and socioeconomic status and that makes a lot of people especially on the right uneasy. I couldn't agree more and especially to your discussion about the reductive argument of bio like this biomedical understanding of gender and sex that is truly surface level and as you stay. There is is very like doesn't have a factual basis to it particularly with the variations in sex from like an embryologist standpoint even and just taking this like reductive standpoint of fairness as we're looking at it through not a sociopolitical framing and thinking of it more so reductive reductive what are the rest you think. Of of describing inclusion through this reductive biomedical framing. I'll let Harrison weigh in two after but I think I think the risk is that we then will just continue to see discrepancies between between sports on the women's side and sports on the men's side we know that there's a discrepancy in terms of resource in terms of media attention in terms of political support. And it's getting better there's no doubt that support and resources for women's sports is getting better but there's still a huge gulf between the two sides and you know looking that across all sports and from elite levels downward there's a discrepancy and there's this pervasive idea that women's sports is automatically second tier and is viewed as lesser than overall compared to the men's side. So if we continue to take this you know reductive approach to it then we'll just continue to see that discrepancy and that divide in those disparities at play we'll just continue to see those continue without it being addressed properly and address the manner that will actually bring about more equality. Definitely and I think I think really focusing on bodies as the as the means of fairness and the biometrics as you mentioned we don't see that same discourse on the men's side like the biggest example is microfelps and it's ability to process lactic acid. And then castor cemenia has a natural occurrence a tab a little bit more testosterone in her body it's how is that different and why is that body being policed when on the men's side you're not capped in what you can do as an athlete and I think that when we can shift that conversation to access and things that aren't just bottle bodies. And then we can take that out of the conversation on the on the women's side then we can really try to achieve some sort of fairness but fairness in sports is is a fallacy all all bodies are different all some people are taller some people are shorter some people have different advantages to different sports if we all were the same sports would be awful to watch you know and we want to root for the underdog no one would see the blowout games that we love to see sometimes it's that's just not the true nature of sports that's not the true nature of humans. I think we need to really understand that there's nuances in all body types look on the street there's all different body types there's all different body types for transgender women as well and we're losing that right now. I absolutely agree and there isn't this like one size that's all you know way to make sport fair and as you said it very much as a fallacy I think that we did get to this a little bit but if y'all would like to maybe elaborate a little bit more of how you think we could move beyond the reductive arguments about testosterone and hormones and as you mentioned here and they're not policed on the man side for one to create policies rooted in dignity complexity and human rights for all sports no matter what your gender is. I think you know first and foremost when we're talking on sort of the sports administrative side the sports policy side there are a number of organizations that coaches and regulators can connect with if they want to move this conversation. And you know beyond beyond the sort of narrow scope of looking at biomedical factors and if we're talking about trans inclusion as well there's athlete ally there's the Canadian Center for ethics and sport that has a lot of great frameworks and guidelines for going about this that's rooted in evidence and science and is a acknowledges that there can be a sport by sport approach there is no one size fits all approach for this so moving the conversation and we can include those voices and of course you cannot have sports policy discussions at any level with regards to gender diverse inclusion without and without speaking to gender diverse people directly if if there are these sports bodies that are making policies that have not included properly the perspective of trans and non binary athletes then it's pretty useless and it's pretty insulting. So I think that you know a way to expand the conversation is by including a wide variety of voices and taking them seriously and taking their perspectives and experiences and sports seriously. I study policy and at york is part of actually I'm teaching of course right now on on sport and health policy and I'm kind of fascinated by comparative policy approaches and also transnational advocacy networks with the use of kind of reaching across oceans, continents borders to say hey we're all facing this what are you doing about it from a policy perspective and we know in Canada here we have the future of sport commission happening and there's opportunities I hope. For gender diverse youth to have those voices encapsulated in policy discussions I'm trying to stay optimistic but I'm wondering kind of how these policy narratives differ we talked a bit about you know what's happening in the US and Canada. You know also there's there's I mean there's there's stuff happening all over the world but particularly US Canada and UK can you tell me a bit more from your lens how these policy narratives might differ or remain the same across those three contexts and what the possibilities are for building like coalitions and advocacy networks. I think that there's there's a lot of possibility and ongoing efforts as you mentioned across all three jurisdictions for like minded organizations and like minded people and athletes advocates to come together in the face of opposition and we're seeing the fiercest opposition to trans people in general and trans athletes in particular in the US and the UK now with that recent Supreme Court ruling in the UK. And so I think that where we're sitting in Canada where you know of course we're seeing opposition to trans rights and trans participation sports brewing up I don't think we have it's certainly not as much of a it's not under attack the same way as it is in the US and the UK. Especially in the US where we have hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills this year alone that have been put forward just this year. So I think Canada in particular is on many many respects but on this issue in particular at this moment can be a global leader in setting the tone and looking across provinces where sports bodies have implemented or are pursuing inclusive policies. I think Canada and Canadian athletes have an opportunity at this moment to to continue standing up as best they can to fight for inclusion and to fight against policies that are rooted in transphobia and that will ultimately as we've talked about targets as gender women the most at the end of the day. Absolutely Harrison not sure if you want to add anything. I think what was interesting but also we also have to keep in mind that we are seeing some stuff come out in Canada as well and like we need to stay vigilant to the types of messaging that we're seeing and people need to educate themselves and stay on guard because as we can see things can change in an instant so for me I'm wary of feeling secure anywhere. But something that was interesting when we were having doing our research and interviewing individuals the difference of the narrative of why trans women particularly shouldn't be participating in cisgender women categories between the UK and the US the US looked at it in a way of like competition thinking that trans women are going to take away Nettles they're going to take away scholarships they're going to take away spots for cisgender women and we need to protect their right to be able to excel in the UK I really saw the argument of the safety and that trans women are going to harm cisgender women if they're allowed to be in that so the difference between the safety and the access lens same argument but seeing it come from different different scopes is it was illuminating and how we need to check where this is where this argument is coming from from all angles so that was the big difference that I saw in the UK and the US Thank you for sharing that I actually haven't heard those distinctions before and I find it fascinating even though you know statistically quantitatively I feel like those have been debunked I don't think there's any empirical evidence to bolster either of those arguments and yet they continue to circulate which blows my mind I'm not I'm not sure I mean I mean we can guess we know the political power and we know that you know there's lots of folks behind those myths and you know what I actually wanted to turn to is kind of when these myths begin to take place and get traction and you talk a lot about the school level right and you know I'm I'm the mother for young kids and all of them are in various sports and you know I'm seeing this firsthand in my own community I see that many gender diverse and queer youth face hostility in school and community sports you know some of my extended family members we've experienced recently last week one child being called gay as a slur on the field being misgendered by coaches or peers as you said Harrison having a grandparent yelling you know get that boy off the girls team like things like this right so I guess you know I'm wondering what what can parents coaches educators teammates do to better support kids in these moments and in the bigger picture and how can we navigate these ongoing debates around mixed for single sex sports in a way that we can really foreground safety dignity inclusion for all youth I think what we really need to focus on is anti bullying what we're seeing through this rhetoric and these articles and this villainizing of the trans community is opening up children to be bullied to be ostracized to be excluded because when you bar a segment of a community from one space it it others them in other spaces when you don't have equal access to everything you're not seeing as fully a member of society and you're dehuman so right now we're seeing this this portion of the community really dehumanized and we really need to rely on the youth level specifically is is parental intervention coach intervention to nip in the bud derogatory language homophobic slurs transphobic slurs and really focusing on gender neutral language the more that we can focus on like small things and empower youth the more that trickle effect that ripple effect will just keep moving forward and forward and forward but right now we're seeing like the president of the United States being able to name call people constantly and it's setting a really bad example for kids to do the same thing so I think right now we really need to focus on that anti bullying segment and also I think you know there's opportunities there's all sorts of trans athletes gender diverse athletes on social media there's advocates in all of our communities we don't have to look very far to find people who may be willing to come in and host a workshop or give a talk to school groups and sports groups at all levels you know whether virtually or in person so I think exposing people from youth children to parents coaches sports administrators to the real human voices and human perspectives behind this with you know there's social media as well there's no shortage of resources on social media to help empower youth and their caregivers and coaches to bring in these perspectives or share them among parents and other kids and other community members as well as as these debates and discussions are ongoing. And Rachel that's fascinating because sometimes when I think of social media I don't think of it as a friend and all this. I get quite concerned about providing access to social media like my children are not on social media but you know you're also suggesting that maybe it could be a sanctuary maybe it could be an area where there's opportunities for education and support and I can see how it can go both ways and along those lines I mean our research lab and Julia has been leading this we created these trauma and violence informed kind of sport community sport for development modules where we're trying to you know ask community sport providers to take these modules these training modules that very much are focused on research like the book you've you've written and other peer reviewed scholarship like as to how they can do better on these issues to ensure that you know gender diverse youth and all you feel safe feel included but my question to you is do you think that these kind of modules do much like is that going to move the needle you know we're finding they're not they take the modules but maybe that that knowledge just isn't isn't sustained or isn't kind of taken seriously so what are your thoughts on you know what else we can do you mentioned social media yeah any thoughts on that yeah I think that's interesting I mean I think that you know I'm not sort of up to speed on the scholarship around the efficacy or long term impacts of these types of modules you would you would know that better than me but I think what you know anecdotally we can say is that if people are feeling drawn to or connected to on their own in their own life they're willing to take on you know they're genuinely curious about this themselves that they may be more willing to engage with people on social media for instance that people like Skylar Bail or Chris Mosher like if they're if they're feeling compelled on their own to incorporate these voices into their social media diet or if it's curated for them by a parent I think that we know the power of that type of messaging and those types of short concise bits of content our attention spans at all levels are are pretty much shot so I think having short digestible forms of content and types of engagement can be very effective and also I mean like we said 1% of the population is trans so it's it may be difficult for people to physically surround themselves with trans and gender diverse people in their community but I also think having sort of in person community events whether that's trans team trans events or gay hockey events those types of events in community that sort of an organic way for families to to go out and be in community with with other people that's a very effective way to build empathy when you're surrounded in your building friendships in real life with people I think we know that that's extremely effective and perhaps it may be more effective than or than being in a classroom as it were or in a more sort of formal education setting or maybe it's good to have those things in tandem sort of more the fun social aspects combined with educational materials materials Thank you I appreciate that. Sorry Harrison I want to give you a chance apologies. Oh no no I don't have anything to add to that I think it's I think it's that's great and like I think yes being exposed to more different types of content that's really good to be exposed to more different types of people just expands your acceptance level and I think it just creates the pathways for empathy so yeah I do think that the storytelling aspect and putting real faces to the terms and things like that really open people's minds and the ways that we need to right now and the work you're doing kind of as an athlete and advocate I mean your position I think is one that that that wields enormous power in these situations and I I'm so just yeah thank you for all you're doing and I think to Rachel the role of the media right are you able to kind of share with us that that piece and what what journalists can do to play a role in kind of shaping and mitigating the effects of these manufactured moral panics around trans athletes definitely I think the media has a huge role to play in the perpetuation of any moral panic and in particular this one we've seen you know the media fuel the this outcry and this over policing of cisgender women in particular and sort of fueling these witch hunts for you know trans athletes in elite sports at the same time I think things are starting to shift it's always kind of two steps forward one step back I think there's always a backlash and sort of this you know sort of false equivalency that that journalists like to pursue in these matters so we see you know these problematic offeds that we talk about in the book in the New York Times for example. So I think more and more it be helpful to see journalists in the media speak to to trans and gender diverse people as much as possible whenever whenever they're reporting on on these topics and there's associations of trans journalists as well who provide tremendous frameworks and guidelines for for all journalists who are covering these issues so I think just as journalists it's it's on us to get a lay of the land. And to be rooting our storytelling and news gathering and reporting in empathy and humanity too. Thank you I yeah I can agree more and and you know I am yeah I really admire the you know the journalism I think that that you're doing and of course the promotion of this book as well I think the more attention on it and in the ways you can get created even by you know using social media as well. And using social media as you pointed to does provide hope and kind of a push back against these moral panics Julia I'll turn it to you. Thank you. And I I really appreciate you know your mention and in discussion regarding moving the needle like these little like what seems small like including having gender neutral language and creating a new norm. Creating a new norm with gender neutrality and the way we speak to people using gender neutral tone because they do find that along with language sport and a lot of everything else in society is framed as this heteronormative so that takes a lot of like groundwork that seems really small and it seems like an uphill battle particularly. When everything is already grounded in this rhetoric of this heteronormativity but I also really appreciate you citing like sites of joy you speaking to sites of joy even regarding social media and they're being safe haven't I found found this myself there are other youth that are socially transitioning and. Are open about their experiences being intersects that may not be particularly counted when we're doing research on how many gender diverse people are there in the world when we say 1% a lot of those people there's probably much more than 1% as we know and they're invisible and they don't feel comfortable sharing. So I do feel that social media is a point where they're able to begin to share of course with the caveat that there is a lot of bullying and you know I've struggled with this myself as a child and young person and it's an ongoing struggle of course to mediate these spaces where people might feel more empowered and emboldened to. Spread hate because of just the accessibility and the easiness of it of course again with that with the with also noting that. The social media has become a norm in a lot of ways and a space of joy even for myself despite cyber bullying and and other things that a lot of gender diverse athletes particularly trans people experience online and there's some research as well on that. By Tah-Hatimeer and the book advocates for preserving sport as this space for joy community and I think that when you speak to social media being a space that can advocate for joy it seems a more tangible almost to someone who like a young person or someone who picks up their phone every day. How can we re reclaim sport and social media as these spaces and elements for use to holds belonging. Yeah I think I can speak to the sport aspect of it particularly is with this discourse right now we're getting away from sports being used as means for health and enrichment. We're seeing the conversation just turned from sports just being competition and results goals things like that but I think if we can take it back to the basics in what make people want to play sports so what makes people stay with sports and talk about the friendships that they can make the lessons that they learn the self discipline the self worth finding a purpose maybe connecting with your parents through that as a source of pride. I think if we can get back to the purity of sports in that type of way then we can start reclaiming it as a space for joy for growth and a space for youth to just discover themselves and get away from the stresses of school and family and it's just as used as a sort of reprieve rather than a space to dominate and to excel in those types of ways. I think that that's what we really need to get back to the basics in that in that conversation. Right I completely agree and I think it's it seems like it would be like ideal and of course in a utopian society you know we could bring this purity to these sport spaces. It might not always seem so tangible. Do you think there are what tangible steps might you see for coaches administrative or even like fostering peer to peer camaraderie because we know a lot of bullying takes place between peers that are taught certain things at home and bring it to us for environments. Yeah I think it goes back to it goes back to the anti-belaying aspect and it goes back to the role that coaches play in fostering and setting the tone for what season can look like. So I think that the more that coaches can come at things from a place of a place of joy to come from a place of where where can my team get the most growth. That would be amazing and then also thinking about how to be a good teammate and thinking about how you can support your teammates past just how you can support them on the field thinking about ways that you can support them off the field and focusing more on on mental health and checking in rather than just focusing on physical production and physical goals through the sports. I think if we can look at athletes as humans then that would be the best way to do it. But I think just the role of gender neutrality and coaches when I came out something that really helped me in the dressing room was my coach shifting the verb is to like let's go girls let's go ladies would just be like let's go team let's go folks and things like that my teammates also changing their changing their verbage as well and and allies on my team advocating for me when somebody would slip up and say let's go ladies one of my teammates would be like and gentlemen and point to me and things like that so the roles that teammates can play to shoulder some burden that that is tough for somebody that's gender diverse like myself it was tough to always be like hey can you just make sure you include me it's really nice to have a teammate be proactive and stand up for you in those ways so I think the more that we can think of camaraderie is more than just being an assist on the ice or passing on the ball and softball. The ball and soccer the more that we can think of camaraderie in a way that how can I look out for you outside of the rank outside of the soccer field whatever sport you play. Right I think that yeah that having that camaraderie is really integral to supporting athletes particularly those who are socially transitioning without of course again putting the bounce the burden on athletes themselves to educate others or just them themselves as you said. You know you're giving me hope as a parent who as a coach of a number of different youth sports at the moment and you know I again I go back to kind of these these training modules and thinking about other practical steps that we can take and you've outlined a number of those and I really appreciate it. And I guess I'm curious about the overall response you received from this book since it's been published since you've been you know doing interviews and trying to get the message out there how how has it been taken up what have the reactions been. The reactions have been really positive it's been out for about a week now so we haven't seen the full effects of it but we've had a few in person events where we've been able to see live how people are responding and talk with people right out. And see real time how it's impacting them and just people saying like oh I didn't look at it through the lens of cisgender women athletes and that it's it's misogynistic to through to misogyny to assume that they would automatically be beaten by somebody no matter how hard they train. And that just the empowerment of cisgender women through that messaging or or or simply people saying like I didn't know about Lea Thomas's times dropping for 15 seconds when she started home or replacement therapy so that people are being equipped with these facts and I've heard a lot of people say that they're they feel more prepared to have these conversations and they've had their mind changed. So from the short amount of time that I've been able to chat with people it's been really heartening to see that the type of messaging that we've wanted we've wanted people to take away from it they have so it's just a lot of a lot of people saying I didn't know that and a lot of people opening their minds to a conversation that they might otherwise feel too overwhelmed to even tackle so I think it's made it a bit more digestible for people and that's that's been the end goal. Yeah we're just looking forward to seeing you know how it resonates with parents and coaches and other sports administrators at all levels of sport so we'll look for that in the coming weeks. Yeah and you know what I appreciated too is just how you write immediately in the book you have a you know kind of a concept cheat sheet so to speak where you help folks kind of navigate the different terminology. And I even feel like a fact sheet with all these these stats that people you know weaponize and mishandle and don't seem to understand on the flip side if you had the stats you know like a one-pagered for people to just see oh that's that actually debunks anything I thought I knew about this situation. You know I feel like knowledge is power and even though I'm a qualitative sociologist I do know that you know having these these numbers you know when used in the right ways can can help for advocacy. And so I guess you know we want to wrap up now but we do want to ask what your overall message is to you know young trans non binary gender diverse athletes or even just you know youth who identify that way who are in community sport just just kicking a ball around the yard at recess you know they're trying to navigate exclusion invisibility in sport institutions in the playground marked by hostility what it what's your message to them. I think my biggest message to youth that are struggling right now is that there's a lot of people standing behind you there's a group of adults athletes policy makers that want to see you succeed and are fighting for you every step of the way you're not alone in this even though sometimes it might feel like that there's a lot of people that are rooting for you here and you're absolutely loved and you have every right to play whatever sport that you have. And they would ever sport that you want to play you every right to access any space that any of your sister peers have you deserve it and we're fighting Christmas and change for you. Yeah and I think you know that's Harrison really says it all but I think as well you know turning to people who are allies or want to be allies I would just say that now has never been more of an urgent time for people who. We need people to take to have some moral courage and stand up at this time because this we're really at a turning point I think we've been at turning points a lot over the last 10 to 20 years but really this is a major one where we're seeing in real time the rollback of rights for for trans and gender diverse people and for all marginalized communities so if you feel compelled to educate yourself on this and speak out and use your voice and use your privilege. There's no better time than now. Thank you so much and we do plan to share this episode far and wide along those lines especially you know trying to get it in front of folks in positions of power within sport and outside of sports so really can't express enough or deep appreciation for your time and energy today and congratulations on your book. It's excellent I will be recommending it to everyone I can and we just wish you all the best in your journey promoting it and and you know support you wholeheartedly in this battle so thank you so much. Thank you and thank you and thank you and thank you Julia. Thank you so much both for this really heartwarming conversation and also honestly just powerful. I feel and you vigor almost to work towards many of the things you speak to and challenge the myths of fairness and I just wanted to say again it was to echo what Lindsey had said thank you for joining us. It was part of here and if you want to reach out and hear more about the wonderful things that Harrison and Rachel have spoken to and brought power to and let us play winning the battle for gender diverse athletes. Their book is now available in hardcover ebook and audio book formats through Amazon Barnes and Noble Beacon Press the UUA bookstore and audible. You can follow Harrison on Instagram and X on at hbrown hbrowwne 24 and you can find Rachel at Rachel pre RACHBLP Browne on Instagram or at Rachelbrown.ca. And thank you to everyone listening for taking the time to tune in today make sure to follow us on Twitter. SSJD podcast for updates on our latest episode and SSJD news and stay tuned for our next episode. Thanks again for listening to the sport social justice and development podcast. Music for this podcast was provided by LoboLocal and broke for free.