1. The Olympics
“So are you watching the Olympics this year?”
I can’t remember the last time the Olympics were a huge topic of conversation in my world—not in Tokyo 2021, certainly, except for a few discussions about the oiled-up Tongan flagbearers, COVID protocols, and those “anti-sex” cardboard beds.
One thing I love about the Olympics is that—at a time when nationalist leaders around the world are trying to swap out modernity for paternalistic, patriarchal politics—they celebrate internationalism, immigration, and real family values.
Two examples stand out, both from Team USA: Breanna Stewart, the women’s basketball star (and former Seattle Storm player), was featured in one of the interstitial mini-documentaries with her wife, Marta Casedemont, and their two kids—the picture of domestic bliss, and a well-deserved slap in the face to US viewers who embrace the warped JD Vance version of “traditional American values.”
Second, I fell in love with the bronze medal winner in men’s breaking, Victor Montalvo, whose dad and uncle, Victor and Hector Bermudez, were pioneers of the breakdancing scene in Puebla Mexico. The brothers immigrated to the US in the 1980s, joining family in the Orlando area, and Victor started breaking at around 6 years old; by the time he was in his 20s, he had earned enough through competitions to buy a house for his parents. MAGA America may have convinced themselves that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation, but the triumph of athletes like Montalvo (who won bronze) is a rebuke to their poisonous worldview. Will seeing America’s diversity on display change the minds of any red-pilled Republicans? Almost certainly not, but I’ll settle for making them uncomfortable.
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2. The Olympics, specifically: Surfing, breaking, and trampoline
Another great thing about the Olympics is that it makes millions of people become briefly obsessed with sports they may have never considered or even heard of before—think artistic swimming or kayak cross (the one where they drop into the water from 15 feet). My obsessions this year were surfing and breaking, and my discovery was trampoline, a variation on gymnastics where the men can fly dozens of feet in the air. (Their graceful, inventive routines made me wonder, not for the first time, why floor routines are considered too “feminine” for male gymnasts.) I love watching basketball and gymnastics as much as anyone, but I was just enthralled by this year’s surf competition (won, on the women’s side, by Team USA’s Caroline Marks) and by breaking, which was new at the Olympics this year; watching the men’s trampoline competition, meanwhile, gave me sympathetic stomach drops every time the competitors approached the net—and, yes, sometimes they fell off the side.
3. Tested
To keep with this week’s highly unusual sports theme, I highly recommend this CBC podcast about 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 imagine. The point of sex testing, from its origins in the early 20th century, has been to exclude women with characteristics deemed insufficiently feminine, such as large muscles, a “manlike” appearance, or internal testes. Originally, this was done by forcing women to strip and display their external anatomy. Today, women who are suspected of being insufficiently “female” are instead subjected to intrusive blood tests; the results can require them to abandon their careers or take unnecessary hormones, even in the absence of evidence that testosterone alone confers any special advantage on female athletes.
Whether women’s sports are already an area of interest or if you’re just curious about how elite athletic institutions decide “who is a woman,” this podcast is a timely reminder that even in the supposedly merit-based world of athletics, women are always subject to special scrutiny.