1. The Olympic Games
“Are you watching the Olympics this year?”
I can’t remember the last time the Olympics were a major topic of conversation in my world – certainly not Tokyo 2021, aside from a few discussions about the oiled Tongan flag bearers, Covid protocols, and those “anti-sex” cardboard beds.
What I love about the Olympics is that, at a time when nationalist leaders around the world are trying to replace modernity with paternalistic, patriarchal politics, they celebrate internationalism, immigration and true family values.
Two examples stand out, both from the US team: Breanna Stewart, the basketball star (and former Seattle Storm player), appeared in one of the intervening mini-documentaries with her wife Marta Casedemont and their two children – a symbol of domestic happiness and a well-deserved slap in the face to US viewers who represent JD Vance’s distorted version of “traditional American values”.
Second, I fell in love with men’s breakdancing bronze medalist Victor Montalvo, whose father and uncle, Victor and Hector Bermudez, pioneered the breakdancing scene in Puebla, Mexico. The brothers immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s and joined family in the Orlando area. Victor began breakdancing at about age 6. By the time he was in his 20s, he had earned enough from competitions to buy a house for his parents. MAGA America may have convinced itself that immigrants “poison the blood” of the nation, but the triumph of athletes like Montalvo (who won bronze) is a rebuke to their toxic worldview. Will the display of American diversity change the minds of any red-pill Republicans? Almost certainly not, but I’m content to make them uncomfortable.
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2. The Olympic Games, especially: surfing, breakdancing and trampoline
Another great thing about the Olympics is that millions of people become briefly obsessed with sports they may never have considered or heard of before—think synchronized swimming or kayak cross (in which you jump into the water from 15 feet). My obsessions this year were surfing and breakdancing, and my discovery was trampolining, a variation of gymnastics in which the men can fly dozens of feet into the air. (Their graceful, inventive routines made me wonder, not for the first time, why floor exercises are considered too “feminine” for male gymnasts.) I enjoy watching basketball and gymnastics, but I was fascinated by this year’s surfing competition (won in the women’s category by Caroline Marks of Team USA) and breakdancing, which was new to the Olympics this year; During the men’s trampolining, I got a sympathetic feeling in my stomach every time the competitors approached the net – and yes, sometimes they fell off the edge.
3. Tested
Sticking with this week’s highly unusual sports topic, I highly recommend this CBC podcast on the history (and present) of “sex testing” in women’s sports – a sordid tradition that goes back much further and is far less “scientific” than you might think. The point of sex testing, since its origins in the early 20th century, has been to exclude women with characteristics deemed insufficiently feminine, such as large muscles, a “masculine” appearance or internal testicles. Originally, this was achieved by forcing women to strip and show their external anatomy. Today, women suspected of not being sufficiently “feminine” are instead subjected to intrusive blood tests; the results of which can lead to them giving up their careers or having to take unnecessary hormones, even when there is no evidence that testosterone alone confers any particular advantage on female athletes.
Whether women’s sport is already an area of interest for you or you’re simply curious about how elite sporting institutions decide “who is a woman,” this podcast is a timely reminder that even in the supposedly performance-based world of sport, women will always face special scrutiny.
