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A review by bejulien
The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports by Michael Waters
informative
medium-paced
4.25
As i mentioned in my review of last night of the telegraph club, i really love hearing queer stories that are barely documented. michael waters does this so much for us, here. i am now obsessed with the trans people that set olympic world records, discovered their gender, came out, and paved very public path of options for so many queer people after them. their transitions in the 1930s (namely Zdenek Koubek, Mark Weston, and Willy de Bruyn whose tales were detailed in this book).
I also feel like this book gives such a voice and weight to the lives of intersex people and often how they’re the first victims of gender/sex discrimination and harassment (and continue to be). We often (if unintentionally) leave intersex people out of the conversation when we advocate against gender violence and bills. However upwards of 2% of people are intersex and are just as much hurt as trans and non binary people. We call these things “transphobic” and that word in itself leaves out so many others.
This book digs into the history of “sex testing” (originated from the Olympic games during WW2, in Germany of course) and how they struggled even then to define definitions for binary sex categories:
I also feel like this book gives such a voice and weight to the lives of intersex people and often how they’re the first victims of gender/sex discrimination and harassment (and continue to be). We often (if unintentionally) leave intersex people out of the conversation when we advocate against gender violence and bills. However upwards of 2% of people are intersex and are just as much hurt as trans and non binary people. We call these things “transphobic” and that word in itself leaves out so many others.
This book digs into the history of “sex testing” (originated from the Olympic games during WW2, in Germany of course) and how they struggled even then to define definitions for binary sex categories:
“Throughout recent centuries, sexologists who studied chromosomes, hormone levels, external genitalia, physical pheno-type, internal organs like ovaries, and more have found again and again that all these traits exist on a broad spectrum. Chromosomes don't always fit a neat XY and XX pattern; there is no cutoff hormone level that separates male from fe-male; and so on. Many individuals are born with some qualities that we typically associate with maleness and some that we typically associate with femaleness. How a government or regulatory body defines "sex" is actually a subjective choice, one that, over the last century, governments and regulatory bodies have taken it upon themselves to make.
Understanding this is important, because it allows us to see that when the Department of Motor Vehicles adds sex markers to driver's licenses or, more to the point, when the International Olympic Committee decides whether someone should be allowed to participate in men's or women's sports, they are not reflecting some objective reality. Instead, they are making arbitrary decisions about what "male" or "female" means to them at each historical juncture. We tend to think these processes are rooted in science, but they are not and have never been.”
Docked a fraction of a star because it was almost too much into historical stats and facts that at points it get repetitive or slightly dull, but it was worth it! I also would love have to learned of more about transfemme athletes back then (if they existed?).
TL;DR: Trans people have always been hot, forms of queerness were WAY more normalized than we thought in the 30s / before fascism, and FUCK avery brundage!!!!!!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Antisemitism, War