Transcript: 1/200 S2E149 - Sport NZ and Transgender Inclusion
This episode of 1/200 was recorded on July 26 released on July 27 2025
Host: Kyle Church
Guests: Jen Shields, Alice Soper
Kyle: Welcome to 1 of 200, the politics and media podcast. Doing something a little bit different today, still doing a little bit of current events, but hopefully gonna add lighter content, maybe alongside the horrible shit we tend to deal with. Got a couple of great guests this morning. We are on Saturday, the 26th of July. Always remember, check the summary. We've got the Patreon link there. So if you're enjoying the podcast, pop in there. Give us a bit of funding to help us continue creating independent media. On to our guests. We're joined again by Jen Shields, how you doing Jen?
Jen: Thanks for having me back absolutely anytime
Kyle: And first time guest. Alice Soper, how are you? fantastic to have you on.
Alice: Kia ora koutou, I figure I should actually do like a little bit of a proper intro, because people might not know who the hell I am. I'm a jock, so I'm hanging out in sports land most of the time, so it's not always overlapped. So yeah. Tenā koutou katoa. He uri au nō ngati koterangi, ngati airihi, cornwall hoki. My colonizer whanau is from Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall. I tipu ake ōku mātua i Gore, but my parents are from Gore.Engari ko au he putiputi i puāwai i roto i te whanga-nui-a-tara, but this beautiful blossom bloomed here in Wellington. Ko Alice Soper tōku ingoa, tēna koutou, tēna ra tātou katoa, so my name is Alice Soper. My pronouns are she/her. And I generally say I'm not interacting with politics, but that's a bunch of bullshit, because I write a weekly column and write other places, and I actually write about politics through sports, because it's rife with it always, because the intersection of social issues and sports are so clearly there. When people want to talk about fairness in sports, they only need look at who it is. We spotlight who gets to play sports, who doesn't, which sports it is that we play, how we play them, how we celebrate them. All of that is political, and so it never runs out of giving me things to talk about. So yeah, let's pop into some stuff today.
Kyle: Wonderful. Thanks so much for joining us. Alice, Jen, just want to give a quick intro for who you and where you come from, for people who haven't heard you on the podcast before.
Jen: Yeah, can do. So my name is Jen. My pronouns are she and they, my whanau, mostly whakapapa back to Scotland and England. I've lived here in Ōtautahi Christchurch most of my life. Spent 10 years in Tamaki Makaurau, but I've been back here for another 10 years. I do a lot of rainbow community advocacy work, in particular around trans advocacy and trans health and wellbeing, and like, as we all know, it's so good when you can get out of the house and have a little wander around your park and go play a casual game of sports with some folks in your community. And that's really good for your wellbeing. So I, yeah, feel quite strongly about our right and ability to participate in sport.
Kyle: Yeah, that's the news this week has been pretty horrific. It hasn't really been announced. It just kind of happened. You know, there's some little warning for people who are tapped into the different, I guess, political networks or we're getting those releases around what's happening with the Sports New Zealand guidelines and the removal of, is it any mention of “transgender”, Jen?
Jen: I think it is now any mention of “rainbow”?
Alice: I was gonna say it's they've haloed us all in because if they try to separate the T off LGBT all the time, but they didn't with this one. So I guess there's progress?
Kyle: Yeah. I mean progress in a direction. It's, well, this is what people have been saying since, I guess, forever, but specifically around the trans rights discussions, is this isn't just gonna target like one part of the community, and it is gonna go further than that, and this is, this feels like a pretty clear further warning signal. I was gonna say early warning signal, but we're well past the early warning signals that there is a, a feeling or a desire or an ideological bent, or whatever you want to call it, among the people making decisions about the stuff at the government level, and in some places, at the institutional level, where they understand what the wedge is, even if they're still doing the PR that's trying to, I guess, mitigate the public response to that. When did you first hear about the incoming changes, Jen?
Jen: I got a little bit of an early heads up from a reporter at The Herald who heard the day before. And even that was kind of weird, because she initially had said that she had received, like an embargoed press release that was going to go out that afternoon, which must have been Wednesday, and then it turned out she hadn't been sent a press release by the Minister, but had had confirmation that it was going to happen. And did have a press release from Save Women's Sport Australasia that she provided to me. And I was like, this is weird, weird, but she was looking for people who could give comments. So I reached out to Tabby Beasley from Inside Out, because they did a lot of the work on developing those guidelines alongside Sport NZ. They hadn't heard the news, so I'm really curious to know who found out when and why and what that process looked like, because really surreal series of events.
Kyle: Yeah, like, generally, even with, you know, we've gone back and forth over the term culture war, like, policies, you can see a clear line of it being developed, and then they'll create some media noise around it, and then, like, oh, we just have to do it right? Like, or whatever, they'll kind of make some excuse for it. This is really a change in the way that implementation has occurred. It feels like, in terms of, usually, we kind of know maybe a couple of months ahead that they're holding back a report, or that something's on the way, there might be a review coming, or something along those lines. It just doesn't seem to have been anything. Someone has made a decision here. Told some what I mean, would you call Save Women’s Sports, anti trans just in general?
Alice: Yes. Yes.
Jen: Yeah.
Kyle: Like, yeah. Anti trans groups have had enough information to create a press release, which is then going out to other people before you've even known that the situation is on the table.
Alice: I mean, I feel like signals of this were here, though, right? Like this was in the coalition agreement. So, like, in terms of, you know, if you ask me, When did I know that this was going? I knew this was coming when we saw the coalition agreement, and that there was a reference in there, which was a line directly lifted from Save Women's Sports propaganda, anti trans propaganda, and put into an agreement because Winston Peters did what Winston Peters always does, which is a grab bag of ideologies to punch down with to get himself just over the 5% back into government. Like he will find whatever fringe group hates enough people that he can rally people around to get back in right? Like, that's his modus operandi. And when it comes to, like, with this, it's like, Oh, yeah. I mean, one thing you can say about these bloody minority parties in this government is, I've never seen people deliver line by line, like, actually on their promises. Like, it's kind of incredible. And I hope that, like the left are taking notes that, wow, do you know you actually can do the things you said you do for your base. It's wild. Like, who would think so? You know, you've kind of seen that.
And there was, like, I know when, when that first came out, I had written to my local MP, who was the Minister of Sport at the time, Chris Bishop, and expressed my concerns, and also expressed to him that the language, actually that was in that coalition agreement was broad enough that I was like, you know, you could actually backdoor a Title Nine in office, which, like, this is some niche sport shit, okay,
Kyle: Get in. Get in.
Alice: Okay, so, like, Title Nine is a piece of legislation, actually, that has just been under a lot of attack in the US, with all of their transphobia. But Title Nine was a piece of legislation that was brought in, basically into, like the university systems in the US. And its primary function actually was about giving access to education opportunities for women and within the tertiary sector. But the like, halo effect, because this is always the thing, like, it's one decision, and then all the halo impacts and the halo impact of business, this had a massive positive impact on women's sport, because basically what it said was, if you are going to be providing something for men, you have to also provide the same for women if there's going to be, like, federal funding. Okay, so that's the basis of Title Nine.
What ended up happening, in practicality, is like the US women's football team is the most successful team in the world. Now, before Title Nine was introduced, there were, like, a handful of football teams around the country. There are now so many, so deep, so established, and that was a direct result of Title Nine. We have needed something like that here in Aotearoa for a while in terms of government funding parity between men's and women's sports programs. I'm being nice and just saying parity, not reparations, because to be honest with you, men's sport has been massively overfunded compared to women's sports for decades, for a century, probably.
So, you know I had said in my letter to Bishop. I can't remember it right now, off the top of my head, but it was broad enough that it was like, we can't have funding related to gender. And I was like, well, you could actually, you agreed to this, these words, but you could twist this and actually make it into a positive thing, if you wanted. I know enough to know that, like, politics is basically a pain game, and so it's up to the people in positions of power to figure out where it is they're willing and comfortable to inflict pain, and so obviously they go to their favorite people to hurt. So it's been Māori, it's been people with disabilities. It's been now transgender folks. Also been rainbow folk, in terms of the general RSC type of stuff, but it's all of this type of thing, right? So we knew we were going to sell them out, but I had to give them a chance to do good.
Kyle: But also put them on record as knowing that there was a way to do it and then deciding not to. I mean, you can come on a podcast like this and say, I told them, and they chose not to.
Alice: Oh yeah. I also, I also that was like, back when Twitter was still like, I don't know, the last dying moments that was there. I was also real cheeky, and like, I had written to his office and he hadn't replied to me. And then it was Pride season, and I was like, You better not be turning up at any pride events before you reply to a Pride constituent, I am a constituent like, not just, you know, an outspoken person for the women's sports community, but I'm also in your area. So as my local MP, you have to reply. I know this because I used to work for a local MP, so, but yeah. So then he shamefully replied, and it was again already there, language that indicated that, no, they were going to be willing to sell out trans focus. So it was just a matter of, kind of when that was going to happen.
And I don't know like and this is, I'm not saying that what's happened this week isn't harmful, but there's also part of it that it's kind of actually nothing as well. It's like, it's the kind of, it's the horrible thing of, like, I don't believe in trickle down economics. I do believe in trickle down attitudes. So I think that this is really infecting in terms of that trickle down attitude, if you're removing people and trying to say that they don't exist, well then, you know, that's never a good thing. But there's another part of it, which is like these guidelines were just that, they were guidelines. And each of these sports, through these processes, have actually developed their own and like, for example, my own chosen sport of rugby union, is actually a lot more progressive here in New Zealand than we are in World Rugby. World Rugby has a ban on trans women's participation New Zealand Rugby doesn't and so like these, like the guidelines from sport New Zealand, like they're really going to impact small clubs and smaller sports. But the major sports actually are kind of down the road on this, like they've been through this consultation process. They were consulted as part of this development of this document, but they have their internal policies, and I don't think that removing this from the website is going to change that right now. And so, like, I say in a weird way, it's kind of actually like the least impactful anti trans thing you could do. Would you reckon I'm right, Jen, or do you think that I'm talking shit there?
Jen: No, no. I think, I think you're totally right. Like, I think it's really interesting that this is the move that they've taken right. So pretty quickly, Bishop announced that they were asking Sport NZ to review the guidance right, to add in these new principles of like, fairness and safety. And that works been like underway ever since, like, I have heard from folks within Sport NZ who were working on that updated piece of work this week, you know. So it's like they kind of tried to do the anti trans thing right at the very start, and then got really impatient because it took too long and needed, like, the bow on the top of the story to be like, “Look, we did it”. But it like you say the guidance was optional.
Most of the major organizations have already done the work the influence has already been done. They can't tell, you know, sporty organizations to not include trans people. This is probably the closest that they can get. But at the same time, it does still have that impact on, like, I think about like, just your smaller community, casual soccer team who, like, has a trans person in the community who's interested in joining, and then they're like, well what do we do about this? We don't have a resource. This individual's gonna have to figure it out with us together. So that, I think that impact is gonna be quite significant, you know, for people on the ground, and then the symbolic effect of like, the because it's yeah, the news story, and then the absolute removal of like, the whole rainbow inclusion section, including like an e-learning module and everything just completely wiped from a government site, feels pretty unprecedented, and that it's come in the same week that the Spinoff has broke this other story about how Winston Peters has personally intervened into like, New Zealand's diplomatic agency pages to prevent them from posting about Pride this year. Like, there's a pattern that we're starting to see develop. And I can see, think we can see the like, next steps of that playbook having played out in America this year, and it's the you can kind of see where it leads. So I think this, this decision this week, impact maybe less, less so, but the trend is, what really gets me?
Alice: I think you're spot on in terms of, it's like, it's like they're testing the waters, like, it's like National themselves are testing the waters on transphobia, right? Like, that's what it feels like. Because when I say in terms of, like, this is something you could roll back quite easily to do, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just thinking about the political game of it. I feel like this is a testing of waters. And so that's actually where it's really important that we come out and go, no, no, no, and with the spray bottle immediately, do you know what I mean? And shame them, because it is shameful. It's shameful pathetic behavior. And like, again, I think kind of a benefit of how this is, like, a shitty benefit of how this is rolled out, is the whole way that they've taken a swing at all of Rainbow, like, they like that we're not, they're not doing transphobia right. Like, if we are looking, like, if we look at international examples, you guys aren't doing it right. Like, this isn't how you're this isn't the play like it is, but it's like a New Zealand version, so it's not as good.
Jen: You’ve jumped ahead a few steps,
Alice: Yeah. And so, like, you're supposed to. You can't hit your friendly, you know, neighborhood gay person at the same time as a trans person, like, you're supposed to, you know, desensitize us slowly to this process. And so it's like, almost like, you've gone too hard, too fast, that, I think that it's also too close in memory, right, to like how the general public actually did turn up. Like I was here in Te Whanganui a Tara, where we had a protest for someone that didn't even bother turning up, old mate rubbish face from the UK, and that was, you know, Civic Square was full, and it's that type of thing. It's like we're too close to that, that I feel like there is, there is just enough to get people's radar up, and absolutely should be, but there's also just enough to organize around, because it's clumsy and it's foolish, and so we just need to go hard, like in the opposition of that stuff.
Kyle: This is something going to come back to on the podcast of a fair amount, which is that one of the main ways for us to win, is that the far right and the right wing here are just pretty incompetent, yeah? The New Zealand exceptionalism, that actually is kind of true, is that they're kind of shit getting things done, which is great. Unfortunately, like you know, there are less people. The population of people who are available to organize and have capacity and resource to do that pushing back is also much smaller than in places like the UK and the US and one of my, I guess, worries around what the strategy is here from Peters and others in those kind of far right groups that cling or utilize anti trans ideology, is that there's a two fold thing they're doing here, and one is to empower the base. To give energy to those really motivated. And you know, I'm sure all of us and many of our listeners have interacted with, or when I say interacted, have had anti trans people in their comments online. They're already pretty motivated, and they're already quite unmoored from reality, and giving them little pushes like this is part of the way that this operates. And, you know, it's swiftly moving, and you've seen it in the UK and the US towards stochastic stuff, right? Where we're seeing this uptick in abuse, violence, deaths.
And the other thing that it does in terms of the guidelines themselves that I think is important for the way that the far right operate, particularly in this country, but I guess, modeled on what's happened in the US, but all the way down from federal to local level, is it takes away that umbrella that smaller communities and institutions are able to go, oh, look, look up there. We're under that. We can refer back to that and use it to protect ourselves from people making claims about what we're doing. We can go, oh, no, but the guidelines say this, so we have to follow through and be trans inclusionary, right? And what the far right tend to do quite well at like, a community level, I guess, is organize and attack communities, and we're seeing that happen in local elections at the moment, and back in 2023 as well, and then all the way back during covid, where they'll try and get on school boards, they'll try and get on health advisory boards. And I'm imagining we're going to see some of that around small sporting clubs, where you've got these really activated, like, “oh yeah, but policy’s on our side”, freaks in the community who are like, “Oh, I'm gonna go and join my local rugby club and just start, you know”, and we've got playbooks for this, and we've seen some of these released, whether they're not gonna go in and saying, like, oh, we have to get rid of all these people. They're gonna go, Oh, I've just got some concerns. And you know, that's, that's how that stuff operates. And I guess this comes back to that trickle down comment you were making Alice around the way in which these things flow from the top, and particularly in the New Zealand context, where maybe the culture is a bit more conflict averse, and people like to have something more official to rely on and appeal to authority when they're being challenged, you know, in bad faith or otherwise,
Alice: Yeah, and like, we have to remember that. Like, particularly in the sports space, this is very vulnerable, because New Zealanders do still hate women, right? So, like, this is, you know, the thing about transphobia is, like, you lift off the face and, oh, it was misogyny all along! You know, like you listen to any of the arguments that they have against trans participation in sport, and they're rooted in, like, the myth of male exceptionalism, like, that is just not true, and makes me incredibly frustrated when I hear and, oh, don't even get me started. Jen, like, Ryan bridges talking points where I'm like, brother, meet me in the car park, because I could fold you in half. Like, this is, you know, and it's that whole thing, you know. It's that whole thing of like, it really frustrates me that a woman can dedicate their whole life to a sport, and that that is apparently completely pathetic in the face of, you know, male puberty, it's like, that's that's not how sports work, like physiology is one piece. But it's also like, you build your physiology over training over time, like I was one athlete, and then I went to the gym in my mid 20s, and I became another athlete, like, and I have multiple brothers, and like, my body is different and capable of more things because I have spent more of my time being an athlete. And so it's like, this is just not how it goes.
And again, this is where I'm, like, making a plug for a book I didn't write, but like, honestly, Open Play the Case for Feminist Thought. This came out this year. It was written by Dr Cheri Becker and Stephen Mumford. It is a manifesto, which I enjoy. They say it's a manifesto in the first chapter. So I was like, you've got me immediately. But the thing that's really important is, like, in the first page, they basically lay out how there is no record that has ever been set in men's sports that hasn't eventually been broken also by women. And so they make the case that basically, then the only fundamental difference is time. But the scale of time we are talking about is not large enough to speak to a biological, evolutionary biological advantage. We're talking a 50 year timeline, not 1000s of year timeline. So if it's that type of timeline, then what we're talking about is a sociology issue. We're talking about the barriers, which I am only too familiar and spend all of my fucking life talking about, in terms of the actual issues that are facing women in sport. And that's why I always go back to it's like, how do you know that trans women are women, because they're also treated like shit by sport, because their experience is my experience in sport, of people looking at you sideways, being I don't know if you can play this, and particularly that this is a crunch point around contact sports like this is again, like, hello, you can go back into the archives here in Aotearoa, New Zealand, women have played rugby in New Zealand since rugby was here. We had our first recorded match that I've been able to find played in 1888 and even that game, they wanted to modify the rules because they were worried about women's physicality, and it would be too dangerous for them, right? And then fast forward to the 20s. There's like columns and columns and columns of these quack doctors talking about how it'll be dangerous to a woman's temperament and physicality. Temperament will be bad. We won't be able to get married, because you're going to make mannish girls and shit, like our bones are soft, and if we fall we'll never be able to find our way back to our feet, as if, like, childbirth, doesn't exist? So it's like, you know, just all of this shit. And it's like, these are all echoes, right? Like all of these shitty ideas have a whakapapa and, like, the transphobia, so many of the lines that are used now and put on trans women are the same things that were actually put on sport as a general when, like, when women first started getting involved.
And this, again, is like, I need people to understand the history of, like, how sports evolved, and I'm sorry I'm going to keep going on one here. But like, the reason why rugby is New Zealand's national game is because in the late 1800s New Zealanders were looking around to bring a sport into boys schools, and they picked rugby because they were worried about the effeminizing effects that city living was having on their young men. And so they chose rugby because it was something that was like the most he-man like thing they could think of, beat each other up. So they lifted that out of the English school system, and they put it into the boys schools here in New Zealand. And so, of course, immediately, at its origin point, we have no room for women in that conversation. Because if you have bought sport into the consciousness, into society organized sport as a combat for feminization of your population. You then cannot let women play it, because that counteracts everything you're trying to do over here, right? So it's really important to understand that stuff, because then you can understand all the echoes of this all the way along, and how we're still having the same argument, actually, like, 100 plus years later, it's just some of the characters have changed, but it's the same bullshit, which is to say that my body is, like, so fragile and whatever. No, it isn't like, I can tell you it isn't. And it's also like, doesn’t make any sense, because the Black Ferns right now they're preparing for a World Cup. Their last test was on the 12th of July. Do you know who they're playing before they go to the World Cup? Men. They are playing men, and they did this before the last World Cup, too. So it's like, What the fuck are we doing here? Are they the most dangerous thing in the world, or are they not?
And don't even get me started on trans men, because we never speak about them, and yet they are the ones that like, actually, excelling, you know? Like, if we're talking about getting right up there in other sports, like, everyone's so obsessed with trans women. Unfortunately for trans women, we haven't actually seen them really realize their potential yet, but trans men are smashing it, but they don't exist. And why don't they exist? Because, again, it's the misogyny of it all. It's the patriarchy of it all, because we're actually quite comfortable with male identities taking high risks, but we're not comfortable with any type of femininity really full stop. And there's my big rant on all of that.
Kyle: Hell yeah,
Jen: Fuck yeah that's the best TED talk I've ever heard.
Alice: Yeah, sorry, you've got to get me at some point. But it's just, I'm just like, fuck off. Basically, you grant your great grandfather said this and it was done then, so shut your mouth. I'm sick of it.
Kyle: I want to come back to, you know, you quickly mentioned Ryan Bridge there, But Jen, you had an interview with Mr. Bridge earlier in the week, and I just want to give you the opportunity to, like, respond some of the questions that you were meant to be asked, because I think it's really important, you know, because it's important to have those questions asked, and this is how they roped you in. So those who aren't aware, just want to give, like a very brief rundown, so you don't have to relive that shitty experience?
Jen: Yeah. I mean, I don't know if interview is the word I would necessarily use for it. So again, I was invited to give comment on this Sport NZ story for Herald Now, which is their new live breakfast TV budget. You know, bottom of the barrel show, by the sounds of it, and they had sent through a list of questions that were all framed around, like, what this news will mean for trans communities, and what does this mean now for like community sporting organizations, you know, what do they do next? So I agreed to it under those terms, and then as soon as I got on air, just was berated constantly and really, really pressured to agree with Ryan's personal opinion that every single trans woman is inherently a threat to every single cis woman because of the obvious and undeniable biological advantage, which, like Alice has just said, absolute nonsense, right? Like the idea that you could put me in a boxing ring with someone who actually trains as a boxer and goes to the gym and that I would be the threat to them is like nonsense. So apparently they are giving an on air apology on Monday's show. So it'll be interesting to see how sincere that is.
Kyle: Oh, that's really interesting so the complaint came through?
Jen: They were only willing to talk to me about it over the phone, which is very entertaining.
Alice: I saw also, I'm not sure if you clocked it. There was a different, I can't remember his name right now, but there was that the other journalist who took the political panel for Herald Now on Friday, and his talking point very different, like his angle, also very different. And he because he had Willie Jackson and Paul Goldsmith on there. What's his name? I can see his face. I can't think of who he is anyway. His line was, Oh, but I coach. What does it matter? I coach my kids sports. What does it matter? Community sports everyone should be playing. And it's like, oh, okay, yeah. So I would say, like that, that again, is that making sure you push back on this stuff? Because, you know, Jen, that's a great example of you saying, hey, no. And then actually getting, not only this potential on air clip, but it's switch. I heard the tone shift in that Friday conversation, suddenly we've gone from one side of the steering of conversation to the other side of the steering of conversation.
But this is just also, like, the, I don't know, the commentariat of it all right? Like, I can't this look. I technically now am mainly employed as a journalist. Am I? Like, what a scam. But like, I am also very clear in everything that I do. I mean, a lot of what I do is opinion writing. So it's very clear that I'm leading with that, but I'm also opinion writing when I'm writing interviews with people, and I'm also opinion writing when I'm covering certain topics, because my lived experience is always going to end up on the page or in the tone of questions that I ask, and my lived experience is always going to shape which quotes I pull from a transcript. And so just the falsity of like impartiality, that exists within politics. I'm so sick of it like it's not there. It doesn't exist, you know. And if, and if you are completely devoid of any opinion on an issue, why are you talking about it? Because then you have no stakes in this game, so you're actually not going to understand the heart of the thing. So you're not going to be able to identify clearly the notes that are being played on both sides of that conversation, and that whole both sides anyway, when it comes to this issue, the two sides are sitting right here on this call, right? We got a cis women and we have trans women, and that is the conversation that we need to have, and that and people that are directly impacted by it. And that's, again, the thing that's going to make me forever hoha about all this. Winston Peters, you have never been anywhere near women's sports. You never will. You are making decisions for a group of people you do not know. Like this, again, was all of the feedback. The reason why New Zealand Rugby was more progressive on this issue is because when they went out and consulted with my group with the women's rugby community, they said, we're chill. We're so chill, like, we just want people to play. We're always out there recruiting. So if people want to come play, mean as.
And then the other whole part of that is, like, I can tell you from people who I like have shared their identity with me. I have only ever played women's rugby with trans men until a point it was, you know, no longer comfortable for them in terms of their journey to play with us. And so these are people that, by, like the sports science of it all, actually have the biological environment, you know, advantage, because they are actually on the testosterone, which we're apparently, is supposed to be the most powerful tool in the world for sports ability. And, you know what? Like, catching hands still weren't that great, you know, like, like, lovely, lovely chap, but like, he wasn't the best player I've ever played with, you know? And it's just all of these type of things you just think you're so far removed from who we are. Because, yeah, like women's sports again, like, if we're talking about separating the T of the LGBT, you cannot separate the LGBT out of women's sports. We're queer as hell. And so it was like, no, it's just like, when you do the surveys on queer women, right and how we feel about trans women, we're all like, Nah, 100% get out of here old terfs. That's not the general consensus of my community, and that's the same in sports.
And generally, the people that are most uncomfortable are people that didn't play team sports, which I think is interesting. And it's people that come from very privileged sports, white sports. And I also think that's interesting, because chances are, then they probably haven't experienced other, you know, barriers to their participation along the way, and so that is going to make them less attuned to like, hey, this sounds a lot like the bullshit that was thrown at me for years. And so, yeah, if there's a sports sociologist that actually wants to study that, like, I would love someone to do the research, because I think that there is a link between anti trans women in sports and individual and privileged sports, because I keep seeing that pattern again and again. And this girl loves some pattern recognition,
Kyle: Well this is one of the things right. Like, think about the number of one to one sports people were just like, oh, you know, it was the refs call. It was like, my racket was slightly broken, like, I've got this little problem. The other person cheated. Like, this is part of that culture. And, like, high level individual sports, you know, there are people who rise above that and are really humble and, like, generous to their opponents, but there are a lot of people who are just real assholes. And they’ll be looking for anything to be like, “I didn't lose because I am a worse sports person. I lost because of reasons that make my opponent immoral or unethical or etc, like they're cheater”.
Jen: It’s like this swimmer in the states who, yeah, fourth in a race that is, like, I would have come first, if it wasn't for the trans woman I tied fourth equal with. Like, what are you talking about? What about the other people that were in front of you? Like, where is this coming from? And then I also think, Alice, what you were saying about this, like, individual privileged sport, and thinking about some of the more out of pocket sports that have, like banned trans participation recently, like chess, for example, for undeniable biological advantage gives you at chess, right? Like, why it's it's the same, the individual, the privileged sports, the white sports the people that haven't experienced those barriers. Those barriers themselves, that are continuing to lay that down.
Alice: And sports that were socialized earlier for women, that's another part of it. So if we think about like the Olympics, for example, the earliest sports that were like allowed into the Olympics were tennis, were swimming, were these things so sports that were deemed, like, feminine enough or feminine coded enough that it was okay for women to participate. And so it's really the crunchiest point of this, like, anti trans debate is happening at the place where, actually, they don't want women, and so they want to talk about that, and they can't, so they talk about that instead. And so it's like, just be honest, and you say you don't want to see women boxing, you know, because that's the thing. Women have only been able to box in the Olympics since, I think 2010 like, something like that, very recently. And so it's like this, you're very concerned about preserving women's boxing. You don't even want women to box until, like, five minutes ago. So what are you talking about, you know? So these are, these are parts of it.
And of course, I'm, you know, talking about the core and the halo impact, like this again, when we were going through the consultation process with New Zealand Rugby, and we were talking, you know, and not everyone in that room agreed, but what we did all agree was that we loved women's rugby, and so we were having, like, a conversation. And so that's the difference, right? Like we have to start these conversations from inclusion, because fairness doesn't exist in sports no matter what. Like, there is no such thing as fairness, like, everybody turns up with some sort of advantage.
Kyle: I thought we all just wanted participation trophies for everyone?
Alice: Yeah, right? So it has to be inclusion first if you want to get to any type of fairness. Like, the route to fairness is paved through inclusion. So we were all there, and we're having this conversation, but I was like, Okay, let's go a couple of steps down the road team, you know, this was on the point of self identifying, right? And I said to them, it needs to be that, because if it isn't, who's to say that if I was to move to a different part of the country, me, I'm a butch lesbian. I wear my hair short. I wear male coded clothing. I carry myself in a certain way. Who's to say if I turned up in a different part of New Zealand where I am unknown to the local community, that people don't start turning around, going, pointing at me and doing trans you know, what is it like? Transvestigate? Transvestigate me, and then all of a sudden, I have to get out my birth certificate, I have to show my genitals. I have to do all of this because somebody has accused me of not looking like a woman. And that is where we start getting into some really yucky stuff. And again, when we're talking about the trickle down attitudes, yeah? I felt that of late, like it definitely, for the most part, I have a filter on the stares, but if they’re particularly aggressive, yes, I do clock them, and I do have people telling me I'm going in the wrong bathrooms and all that type of stuff. And so it's like, yeah, it's this is why it's like, if trans people are included in sport, I am more safe for them having been there, because they are expanding what our ideas are like of gender are, and I'm already also there, you know, if it's a spectrum, I'm right next door going, yep, choice man. As you know, trans folks have always understood better than my CIS mates. Why do I carry myself like this? We don't have to explain it. We get it. You're like, oh yeah, you're just doing your little thing over there, being yourself, gorgeous. Love that view. And so it's like, why would I then turn around and be like, “not you though”. That's mad.
And so I just you know that again, that wider impact of you're going to start getting everyone caught into that. So I'm saying that as a butch lesbian. But the other part, which we saw last year during the Olympics is the racism of it at all as well. Because if transphobia is take off the mask misogyny, it's also holding hands with its best mate, which is racism. Because so many, if we look at the evolution of the way in which we have tried to police gender in sports, so many of these measures have been tipped in a scale against, you know, athletes, black athletes, brown athletes, who have different levels of different things in their biology, naturally, and we are punishing them. So again, what does it all come back to? It's like, and I'm going to pick up the book again. Open Play. They articulate this beautifully. They say sports are for cis men what beauty pageants are for cis women, and that it is a display and a performance of your country's version of masculinity. And so when we are talking about women participating, we also need them to be playing the equal and opposite part. And so if we are making our men strong and dominant, then our women need to be weak and submissive, and sport is very dangerous to the patriarchy, and so that's why they are attacking us, because they cannot tell us that cis or l trans women are weak, incapable of things, need their men, if we're out there kicking ass on our own, fuck yeah. I had a bit to say on the sorry team.
Jen: Fuck yeah.
Kyle: No it’s good this is why I wanted you on the podcast.
What has been the reaction among the community, Jen, that you've seen? Because it's something that I don't think I've really seen covered anywhere. And just to get into, like, the kind of media critical frame this has been the pattern as well, right? Like, we're having these conversations, like there are heaps of people who have expertise in this. We've got a lot of good advocacy groups. There are a lot of experts around, I use a lot. Like, there aren't a lot, but there are plenty who could be platformed even if you wanted to do both sides to discuss these things? But the framing tends to be either whatever Ryan Bridge thought he was doing the other day, or just this very like kind of bullshit impartiality, I guess, as you put it, Alice, where it's like, oh, the minister says this, right? And some kind of foul shit that the minister has spewed forth, but yeah, what I mean, what is happening in the community, and how is that decision being read? And I guess is there, you know, we've talked about, like, the maybe there isn't a huge impact from this just yet, but is there any elevated worry around the track we're on, especially in regards to where we've seen this play out in other parts of the world?
Jen: Yeah. I mean, I Yeah. What I was really disappointed to not see in any of the media coverage was like, just some of the facts and the truth of what we know about, like trans participation in sport in Aotearoa, right? So the most recent, Counting Ourselves data from 2022 found that trans and non binary folks are participating in forms of organized recreation or sporting activity at about half the rate of the general population. So we overwhelmingly prefer individual, like solo recreation, activities over anything organized or or more collective, and something like two fifths of the community said they would be more likely to engage in that kind of sport if gender wasn't an issue, which is exactly the thing that these guidelines are like we're trying to address right, and to give, you know, smaller community sporting organizations and teams the means and resources and ability to help involve their whole community without folks having to, like, worry about how they might be treated or what someone might say, or what bathroom they'll have to use, or whether they'll get, like, fucking bullied or not. Because that was one of the things.
And the guidance was, like, you know, how can we work to prevent harassment and bullying? So, like, really sad to not see that in the coverage. And I think on the ground, people are, I think, seeing it for what it is. There's the understanding that this is largely a symbolic move. It's the removal of some optional guidance and resources. But people also see what that might mean for them on the ground. And I've heard from, like, a few trans women in particular this week who have shared their stories about, like, you know, I've been really wanting to get back into the sport that I used to do a long time ago, and now I just feel like I really can't even, like, broach the subject, and it's those kind of, you know, we've got all the evidence about the protective factors for your well being, and everything that being involved in sport recreation can do.
But like, I think about the smaller, more human side of it, of the fact that there are, like, more people in the country this week who have really wanted to be involved in the sport and feel like they can't than there were, you know, last week. And that's like I played hockey in high school and really enjoyed it. I, you know, was, you know, not elite competitive, but enjoyed it. And it's always been something that I've been wanting to get back into. And just like never kind of got the momentum to be able to do it. And, like, I can see how this decision would just put someone off from trying at all for the foreseeable future.
Kyle: It's really upsetting the way that, you know this country, they have sport as such a part of our national identity, or whatever you want to call it, right? Like, oh, everyone get involved, like back the whatever team go and have that community level do a social sizzle, etc. So integral, and that makes it that much more clear that this is about trying to erase trans people from the community, right, try and ensure that they're not visible, because it's so outweighed in our communities as like, a part of the lifestyle.
Alice: I just want to like challenge also for cis folks that are listening. One of the things I think I hear, like it's said with good intentions, and I think I probably articulated this in the past as well, is that we talk about, like, the number of trans people who are involved in sports, as if, like, that's why it's not something to worry about. Like, we're like, oh, there's, oh, there's only, you know, X number, I think, what is it? 0.14% of participation rate, I think, currently. And it's like, oh, like, so. So don't worry about it. There's so many other things to worry about. And the problem with that framing is it suggests that, actually, if we are successful in terms of including more people into sports spaces that it will one day tip over to be a number that we do need to worry about. And so I just really want us to keep challenging ourselves as cis folks, to be like, that's a problem there. Because if we were, if we were saying that with any other group, which is always the very easy way to sense check yourself and being like, am I being a little bit -obia or -ism, in what I'm thinking and saying, even if it's like, I say intentioned well, but articulated perhaps poorly, is that notion. So it's like the number, the small number, should also actually be part of the problem, in terms of flagging to us that we have an issue around inclusion in sports and that that shouldn't be that low, that our participation rate of trans folk in sports should be in alignment with what you know, what our number proportionally is in population. And if it's not that, that's then speaking to us around all of the challenges that you've laid out, Jen around how people feel when they walk into environments and all of that.
And again, I would just like to stress that, like anything that we could do in terms of changing our community spaces to be more welcoming for trans athletes will have positive impacts on our athletes who are women, our athletes who are not white, our athletes who are maybe have some sort of disability, like all of these, there's got to be a positive impact in this, because you're going to have to check your attitudes across a lot of things, and if you start pulling the threads of it, you know, and as I keep saying, that misogyny and transphobia are linked.
So if you've got a really, a space that's really anti trans participation, it's probably also not safe for women, and it's probably also not safe for men who might be a little bit more loosey goose in terms of, like, conforming to like, traditional notions of masculinity. You know, we talk about that all the time in terms of how, like, in rugby, where are all the gay men, you know, like, we know you're there, but they cannot feel safe to be out. And this is all attached to that, too. And like, again, at the end of the day, you have to remember, like, what is sport for? It's fun little games that we play as kids and if we're lucky enough, we get to then, you know, play it to higher honors and keep challenging ourselves. But there's so many beautiful things. If you're someone that loves sports, you know what they are, the connections that you build lifelong friendships. There's the physicality and the all types of beautiful resilience and, you know, positive impacts that you can have around moving your body. And then there's also all the gorgeous stuff that's, you know, setting goals and achieving them, all of the things really powerful, life lessons. And so why would we say to this one group that you're not allowed it? And if that is the challenge, not that there is only this many people to worry about, the challenge is that there's this many people that we're saying you can't do it. Because if we start cutting off parts of community from community that's the red flag, and that's what we need to be stamping out immediately, because that if we start saying one group isn't there, who's the next group, and yeah, marijuana isn't a gateway drug, but transphobia is a gateway drug for, you know, the right wingers to start carving off other groups. And so you have to be like, this is the slippery slope that they warned you about.
So all of this too, though, is to remember that, like, politics is cyclical, and we're in another flip around the fascism wheel at the moment, excellent, and we all love it there,
Kyle: Did it again, folks!
Alice: Yeah, woo, white supremacy. But didn't we remember that last time that this stuff all kicked off and was taking over the world? The other thing that emerged during this period was solidarity. It was the union movement. And so that's where the call out is to particularly cis folk don't make this just be a trans issue, because it's not. It's a sport issue. It's a community issue. This isn't them over there having to fight their own thing. This is all of us in and so we are making sure that we say community sport is for community and that's the end of conversation. If we want to talk higher up, that's when we can get into the sports science of it all. And to understand that best, we actually need to fund women's sports science for cis bodies, because we've done fuck all of that anyway. So we don't even know what the physiology of cis women's bodies can do, because up until five minutes ago, we just treated us like we were small cis men in terms of our programming. So we have to invest in that, and then we can understand, you know, what it is we can do and how we can get the best out of everyone.
But all of this stuff is to come back to the challenge is not about small numbers. The challenge is about trying to carve us off from each other. And so when all of this is going on, when the fascism is kicking off, the way that you combat it is to pull everyone closer. And so particularly when we come into next year's election, because they're going to go for it, it's going to be hugely transphobic, it's going to be hugely racist. We've already seen this in this last couple of years. It's going to turn up a notch because it's an election year. So we combat that by pulling all of these groups together. We can fight our own fights on each of them, but we support each other in that and we do not let people try and carve off the T from LGBT. We do not try and get people to carve off trans women from women. We do not get anybody to carve us off from each other because that is the whole fucking point. It's turn up for each other all the time. So just keep finding those places of connection. It's the most radical action you can do.
Kyle: I think we might wrap on that one.
Alice: Can you tell I used to be a community organizer?
Kyle: Fantastic., fantastic.
We were going to try and do a little bit more other stuff, but we're coming up to time we've ended up deep in the political weeds, which is great for me. It's great. It's great for the podcast. But thank you so much for joining us both of you.
Alice: A pleasure. I will come back and talk to you about, like, just sports general, if you want, any time.
Kyle: Yeah, hell yeah.
Alice: And because, again, propaganda, for me, sports means women's sports. I guess men play them. I don't really know,
Kyle: Like,as a man, I don't know what you're talking about. I don’t think we do.
Alice: Do you know that men can play rugby too? They're quite good at it. No.
Kyle: No no no, men's rugby is just a funding carousel. What are you talking about? It’s just how to make money go around?
Alice: Yeah, yeah.
Kyle: No sport there. No sport there. Hey, um, do you want to do a quick pitch? Alice, where can people find you?
Alice: Oh, yeah, okay, so you can find me on the internet. My handle is always Alice Soapbox, because, as you've seen, that's what I do. The best way to support me, personally, though, is like I do have a substack that I put out each Friday. Like I'm a freelancer. I put my ideas all over the place, but honestly, given the general vibes in media, please give that money directly to me and do that via my substack. I'm about to go over to England to support our women on their hunt for their seventh title, their second attempt at a three peat. They've done it before. They've done four in a row, in fact. So we're ready to have a big, exciting time attached to them. But not sure if you're aware, England is quite expensive. So if anybody can chip in on that, you're going to pay for maybe a coffee because it's going to be crazy. But yes, please, substack. So my substack as well is Alice Soapbox. I'm consistent everywhere I go, and that's generally writing about women's rugby, because that is my niche, my special interest. But every now and then, I just pop off on things that piss me off otherwise, as you have borne witness to
Kyle: Fantastic and Jen, where can people find you?
Jen: Yeah, thanks. You can find me on bluesky at jennifilm.nz and I also write at Jenniferkshields.nz, I keep telling myself that I'll do it on a regular basis, but instead it just happens every time something happens to make me mad enough to need to be able to write about it, which actually is quite an effective motivation strategy. So you can find me there.
Kyle: Fantastic. And thank you to our audience for having a listen. That's been another episode of 1 of 200. To draw your attention back to that patreon link in the summary. If you want more content like this, we need money to do it. We need resources to keep putting things out. There's so many fantastic voices across Aotearoa that we’d love to be platforming and doing more than just one a week. Keep in touch, connect, organize, get involved with the community sports teams, perhaps, and we'll catch you on the podcast.
Support us here: https://www.patreon.com/1of200