Sports Science Dudes
The Sports Science Dudes cover all the cool topics on sports science, nutrition, and fitness!
Email: SportsScienceDudes@gmail.com or Exphys@aol.com
Hosted by Dr Jose Antonio
BIO: Jose Antonio PhD earned his doctorate and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He is a Co-founder and CEO of the ISSN (www.issn.net), and Co-founder of the Society for Sports Neuroscience (www.neurosports.net). He is a Professor of Exercise and Sport Science at Nova Southeastern University. Twitter: @JoseAntonioPhD Instagram: supphd and the_issn
Co-hosts include Tony Ricci EdD FISSN and Cassie Evans MS RD CISSN
Sports Science Dudes
Episode 78 - Jennifer Sey - Fairness and Integrity in Women's Sports
Jennifer Sey, a seven-time U.S. Women's National Team gymnast and 1986 All-Around National Champion, shares her incredible journey from elite athletics to corporate success at Levi Strauss and Company, and now, to founding XX-XY Athletics. Her story is one of resilience, candid advocacy for open schools during COVID-19, and a bold stance against what she considers woke antics in the apparel industry. Her commitment to protecting women's sports is both inspiring and thought-provoking.
From the physical toll of elite athletics to the evolving standards of body image in sports, Jennifer opens up about the realities behind the scenes. We discuss the severe strain on athletes, touching on her own experiences with injuries, and the shifting ideals of female athleticism from grace to power. Don't miss this compelling conversation on female sports.
About our guest: Jennifer Sey; she is an American author, filmmaker, business executive, and retired artistic gymnast. She was a seven-time member of the U.S. Women's National Team and was the 1986 U.S. Women's All-Around National Champion. Her first memoir, “Chalked Up,” was released in 2008 and detailed abuse in the sport of gymnastics. Sey also produced the 2020 Emmy-award winning documentary film, “Athlete A” on Netflix, which connected the crimes of Larry Nassar to the broader abuses in the Olympic movement.
Sey began working at Levi Strauss & Co. in 1999, rising to chief marketing officer and then Brand President. She was named one of Billboard’s Most Powerful People in Music and Fashion in 2016 and was twice named to Forbes’ Most Influential CMO list in 2019 and 2020.
Starting in 2020, she risked her reputation, community, and friendships to speak up against the harm being done to children by the extended closure of San Francisco’s public schools.
She resigned from Levi’s in 2022 and has been focused on her own writing and filmmaking projects. She has a documentary film in post-production called “Generation Covid” about the harms to children from prolonged school closures. And now she has her own brand, XX-XY Athletics. She is a mother of four and lives in Denver with her family.
Welcome to the Sports Science Dudes. I am your host, dr Jose Antonio, with my co-host, dr Tony Ricci. Also joining us is Cassie Evans, a PhD student in exercise science. You can find our podcast on Spotify, youtube, apple Podcasts and Rumble.
Speaker 1:Our special guest today is Jennifer Say. She is an American author, filmmaker, business executive and this is really cool retired artistic gymnast. So quite the athlete, wow. Um, you are a seven-time member of the us women's national team and and was the 1986 us women's all-around national champion. Uh, your first memoir chalked up was released in 2008 and detailed abuse in the sport of gymnastics. Say, also produced. Produced a 2020 Emmy award-winning documentary film, athlete A on Netflix Make sure you catch that, yeah which connected the crimes of Larry Nassar to the broader abuses in the Olympic movement. She began working at Levi Strauss and Company in 1999, rising to chief marketing officer and then brand president. She was named one of Billboard's most powerful people in music and fashion in 2016 and was twice named to Forbes' most influential CMO list in 2019 and 2020. However, we are here to talk about we'll talk a little bit about sports physiology, but I really want you to tell a little bit about your story and how you came up with. I got to put the hat on XXXY Athletics. Super cool logo, looks good.
Speaker 3:Thanks, yeah, I was joking around the other day. A lot of people when we launched the brand, which was only four months ago, and I'll get into the backstory of how people, a lot of people mostly the haters were like that's a terrible name, it's so stupid, no one's ever going going to say it. And now, with this whole sort of conflict at the olympics with the boxers, I think they see my point with the name this time. Um, so, yeah, it was. Uh. So I resigned from levi's in what year was it 2022? And I took a break. After working there for 23 years, I wrote my second book and then I started to go about getting a job and interviewing again, which I hadn't done in a really long time, because I'd worked at Levi's for 23 years, although I did interview, of course, sometimes when I was there, but I found so I had been very outspoken during COVID about the need for public schools to be open, and that was very controversial, as you might remember wait back time you were living in, what state?
Speaker 3:California. I was in California you were in California.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were in Florida, so it was a lot different yeah, you weren't.
Speaker 3:I was not only in California, I was in San Francisco, so sort of like the epicenter of nuttiness We'll stay home forever if that's what is required, and we'll put four masks on our two-year-old, if you tell me to. So I was very outspoken and as I went about interviewing for jobs in 2023, for CEOs and big jobs like that people would ask me well, will you apologize for what you did, meaning advocate for open schools? This is 2023 at this point. So it's pretty clear and the unanimous agreement, even in the New York Times, is the schools should not have been closed for 19 months in places like California. And I said, excuse me, apologize for what I was. I was right about everything and I just realized I could not go to work in an established corporate structure and, you know, sign away my voice.
Speaker 3:And so I started to brainstorm about what I was going to do. Next, because I have to work, I have four children. I'm the breadwinner in my family. Next, because I have to work, I have four children, I'm the breadwinner in my family. I'm not in a position to not work financially.
Speaker 3:So I started to just sort of brainstorm and I thought there was an opportunity to create an apparel brand for the people out there who feel so kind of pushed away by all that I'm going to use this word for lack of a better one but all the kind of woke antics of all the apparel brands out there. They all seem to sort of be very disdainful of basically half of America. And I talked with a friend and we came up with this idea that seemed just like the perfect combination of. You know my background as an elite athlete, a leader of one of the most beloved brands in the world, so I know how to create a brand that resonates and great product and my willingness to say true but uncomfortable things. So we came up with the idea together for XXXY Athletics, which is the only athletic brand to stand up for the protection of women's sports.
Speaker 4:Love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the you know. The irony of this is, you know, as we were mentioning off offline, is that both myself and Tony we've been teaching probably for 30 years. I've been teaching physiology since God, since when? Since Ronald Reagan was president, I think. So it's been a long time, and their entire chapters, books, papers on sex differences in sports.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's why, you know, for the people who don't understand it, I think one way to make it, I guess, more palatable to people who may not know the science is that if you go to any road race let's take the simplest sport, running you have it segregated by sex because clearly men are faster than women. You also have it segregated by age Young people are faster than old people and then you get into sports that have weight classes weightlifting, boxing, wrestling it's segregated by weight class. So clearly we need these distinctions to separate big from small, old from young and then male from female. However, however, the part and I don't even know when this started, I mean it just I don't know if it was like this slow trickle, like huh, people think men and women are the same, but that's weird. And then it just it was like a snowball effect to the point where wait a minute. There's actually a lot of people who think this and I'm not sure when that happened, but it was like when did it happen?
Speaker 3:Well, it started, I think, in the early 2010s, and that's when you really started to see this explosion of what they call rapid onset gender dysphoria, and you just had increases by, you know, 100, 200, 1000% of young people saying that they were born in the wrong body and that they're actually male or female. So it started in the early 2010s and then, I would say, in the last like four to five years, it's just become kind of mainstream to parrot the point that trans women are women. You are. You know, I can't define what a woman is. I'm not a biologist. If somebody says they're a woman, they're a woman. That is in the ether. Now, I mean our.
Speaker 3:You know, katonji Brown Jackson, the Supreme Court Justice, is the one who said I can't define a woman. I'm not a biologist. Yeah me, neither I can define a woman. So it's like all the insight, knowledge, just the most basic truth we knew to be true since the beginning of time, is now like you're a moron if you think that, right, it's so much more complicated than that, and you guys are the scientists. I'm not. I don't think it is actually that much more complicated. I think we're making something complicated that isn't. And you know, if this complicated thing was now reality? Where's the? Where's the scientific study that says this? Where's the, the Nobel prize for the scientists that determined that you know your sex is what you say? It is not what you're born with.
Speaker 3:It's just the most absurd and ridiculous time, and I think you're right that it like snuck up slowly and we gave in, we conceded on points. To be nice language, um, we used terms like sis, and then we used terms. You know all this language. It crept up on us and now here we are and you can't unwind it because we not me, but collectively, the culture has said well, trans women are women. If you say you're a woman, you're a women's. Sports, you've already said trans women are women, and I know the boxers aren't trans in the Olympics. I know that. But that, that concept of you are what you say you are, comes from the gender ideology movement, and you're right. It was slowly and then all at once, and that's why I have no patience for the language games anymore. I will not play them at all.
Speaker 2:I really get annoyed too this is just personal in terms of like when they say like gender assigned at sex as a doctor, like was like giving you an assignment. Now I do understand, like in a case of I believe it's called Sawyer syndrome or DSD, where sometimes anatomically something might appear differently. But but we do have other tests, and especially here in America, where they can tell you the gender of a baby when you're 12 weeks pregnant. So it's a little bit different now, right. But that other thing too. It's like this doctor is just arbitrarily saying like I'm going to assign this person this gender. What do we do.
Speaker 3:It's absurd, it discredits a lot of people.
Speaker 2:And then you're also giving power to children to make a decision before they're 12, which you know. So many other things you're not allowed to do before you're 18. So many other things like borderline personality disorder, which cannot be diagnosed until they're 18. Oh, interesting, personality is not fully developed In most cases. There's always going to be an exception to that. Typically, you wait until their personality is fully developed, which is generally 18. So now, all of a sudden, we have younger kids. That might be really stressed, covid, I'm sure numbers increase stress and anxiety, and maybe this is, you know, they saw a friend do it to coping mechanism. But, like you said, it's gotten us to the situation now where, like, everything is so jumbled and then I feel like as a female um, now I'm, I'm kind of back at square one in terms of, you know, is it fair for me to compete.
Speaker 3:Well, and for women it's like everyone. Okay. So trans women compete in women's. People with DSDs, like swires, which is more complicated, I think, than some of the others, because you actually have X Y chromosomes and you actually have female internal organs, is my understanding. You might have a uterus, for instance, whereas that five ARD, that is not the case. You're XY with underdeveloped genitalia. Why, I know. All this is really. I wish I didn't know all this. But basically everybody gets to compete in women's sports. So trans women, males with DSDs, women who are non-binary, they're not female, they're non-binary or they might even be claiming to be male, but they compete in women's too, women. So basically everybody competes in women's. Women's is the open category now and men's is just for men, and it should be literally the exact opposite, that the female category should be for XX only and the men's category should be, open or could be open, which I believe technically it is in most instances.
Speaker 3:You know your example about running and the different categories you know in gymnastics, my sport, sport it's not even the same sport like. The events for men are literally different. They have six events and they're designed for upper body strength essentially, whereas the women's events were more designed around grace and flexibility, although at this point the sport is about sheer power and women's as well.
Speaker 4:But they don't do rings, for instance right or the or the pommel horse right. Yeah, so it was upright.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't see anything like balance beam. I don't believe so. I mean, everyone, I think, does vault, but they don't do uneven bars, they just do high bar.
Speaker 3:Men have high bar and parallel bars. Women do uneven bars. They both do vault, they both do floor, but men don't have music on floor.
Speaker 1:I'm sure men do rings pummel horse yeah they have six events and women only have four. Let me ask you this. First, a short story. My wife is a competitive master cyclist and ironically she used to be a competitive runner. But injuries and whatnot.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For years I told her you should probably take cycling it's easier on your body and you'd probably be really good. So about three or four years ago she basically transitioned all the way to cycling. Wow and this no exaggeration she pretty much wins every race, okay.
Speaker 3:Amazing.
Speaker 1:But here's the funny part when she first entered it, no one knew who she was. So there was this one race where and I'm trying to find the quote um, this guy did not believe her time. In fact he said you know, based on your time, you would have been like top five in a college male division, top three in this division, like male divisions. And he basically gave her a backhanded compliment by saying oh, are you trans it in it's in an email. So I was like what? I mean? In a weird way he's complimenting you because he doesn't believe that, but you're actually that fast.
Speaker 3:So well, it's definitely been an issue in cycling, but my understanding is that the whatever the cycling governing body has made the right ruling and trans women are not able to compete in women's sports. Although, did you see where was the recent cycling competition? It was pairs, and first, second and third. One of the pairs in women's was male. It was like last week.
Speaker 1:Was that in the US or was that in Britain?
Speaker 3:It might have been in another country it was in the last week or so, but in the US. I believe that the governing body has made the right decision on this one.
Speaker 1:Right, and I guess sort of the point of the story is that within and my wife says this all the time she goes women who don't exercise or train or compete. They don't understand this stuff at all, they're like oh yeah, trans women can be this. They don't understand this stuff at all. They're like, oh yeah, trans women can be this.
Speaker 1:It's like women who compete in a sport, well, it should be segregated by sex. And so at the local level, everyone knows this to be true. It's like, of course you segregate, but people are afraid to say it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's what I was going to say, because you do have within the athlete community, yes, any woman that has ever trained her heart out. I mean I was training, you know, 10 hours a day as a child, like regular people don't understand how hard you work and how much you give up to. Um, you know, hopefully, achieve, achieve whatever it is you know you're dreaming of achieving and I always say I lost more than I won, as everybody does who competes, and I could always accept losing in a fair fight, but I can't really imagine that I could accept losing because I had to compete against men. But you do see very few people who are currently competing or, you know, newly exiting sport. In fact, there was a letter signed led by Megan Rapinoe of the former Team USA soccer world championship winners, where she got, I think, 100 female athletes to sign, basically saying trans women are women, so are they just brainwashed? Are they? They don't care, they're not competing anymore. I mean, I think some of them really believe it.
Speaker 1:Or they're taking a political stance.
Speaker 2:maybe but it's also a small. So let's say there is a small fraction of people that really do believe it. It is really small compared to the amount of women that are actually competing in women's sports, and so when you look at, like, how much harm are we doing? Do we just disregard 98% of the population for 2%, I mean, I do think that there's not really a fun answer. In terms of like, okay, I do believe that strictly XX women should compete in women's sports. I feel sports should be inclusive. I don't know what that means for the smaller minority you know separate category but but at the end of the day, I want to protect women's sports. I do sometimes think, though, that this idea that women can do anything men can do which I agree to a certain extent I think sometimes that you that gets confused with women compete against men, right? So there's always going to be an exception to the rule, like, for instance, carla, who is amazing at cycling, and she will smoke some of the men at the local level.
Speaker 3:But when it comes to elite athletes. You need those gender differences, you need those different categories. It's I mean, I'm not telling you all anything you don't know it's the single biggest determinant of athletic performance, the single biggest. Nothing else compares, even steroid use. It doesn't compare to the sex differences.
Speaker 2:Even testosterone block or testosterone blocker, I believe it is, but there's still. I mean like if a man takes steroids.
Speaker 3:The difference between in performance on average between a man taking steroids and a man not is not as large as the difference between a man and a woman.
Speaker 2:That's all I meant. Well, but even though, for the, the trans community that are taking, I guess, drugs or medicine to block the testosterone, there's still a performance advantage. So it's, if you're taking these drugs after puberty, you still incurred some of these changes as a biological male, that that are set into place before you hit puberty. This, your height probably is not going to be, uh, you know, retracted by taking testes blockers the size of your heart, the strength of your bones things like that can't be reversed.
Speaker 2:A lot of people think, oh, it's just hormones, so as long as the hormones are fine or or or matched, it's okay and nothing else.
Speaker 3:It's not just hormones, no, there's so many other factors. I want to just to respond to your point about you want to be inclusive. Of course. Nobody has ever suggested that everyone shouldn't get the chance to compete. You know, we're all told.
Speaker 3:Those of us who, you know, strongly advocate for women's sports being for I hate using the term biological women only because there only are biological women. That's the only kind of women, but no one's suggesting you can compete in the category that you were born into. That has always been the case, which is what the NAIA has already ruled a couple months ago, and I believe that's the right decision. You could also create another category. You could have three. You could have men's, open and women's.
Speaker 3:When this has been offered in the past, the trans women, the trans identified male athletes who want to compete in the women's category rejected. People like Leah Thomas rejected because I really feel they're using sports and the women's category to validate their identity, and that is not the role of sports. Sports is about competition and the governing bodies owe as fair a fight as possible. There are obviously people who are so much better and there's nothing you can do about that. That's still a fair fight. Like I said nobody's suggesting anyone be barred from competing. But here's the other thing I will say Nobody is owed a spot in the Olympics, right.
Speaker 2:I would have loved to be in the Olympics as a kid. I'm just saying, you know, like I still joke all the time, I'm trying to figure out what sport as at 37, I can do to, maybe just. But yeah, I'm not owed it. Just because I want to be there, just because I want the experience, doesn't mean that I get to, and I think there are a lot of other, you know, we could say fair, unfair advantages that prevent people from going to the Olympics, that have nothing to do with sex, and we aren't bringing that up. You know, sometimes things aren't fair.
Speaker 3:They're not. Sometimes it's not fair. A lot of people, I'm sure, would like to play in the NBA and they're five foot four and it's not going to happen. Like tough shit. I don't know what to say. It's just the way it is.
Speaker 1:But anyway, yeah, complicated, it shouldn't be complicated though I really believe it's not complicated yeah, I think uh, some people find, like, when you talk about um sex differences in athletic performance, a lot of people misconstrue that as as sort of an affront to them personally. When, when you're just stating a fact and I put together this is talk I gave a while back.
Speaker 1:Looking at um, I always look at track because it's the easy sport to get numbers on their numbers on men and women going back god knows how many years and and basically in track, uh, and we could deal with field events later. If you, if you look at distances from the hundred meter dash all the way to the, let's say, 10,000, because that's the longest distance on a track, there's a consistent 10% difference between the best men and the best women. However, the best women I always tell people, the best women can be almost every man in the world. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But they just can't be the best men in the world.
Speaker 1:And so I think people think it's. It's not an insult to the best. Yeah, it's just that men and women are different. And then the other thing is and this is where the idea why testosterone it's not just testosterone, because if a male goes through puberty, um, those differences post-puberty you can't reverse just by blocking testosterone. And if you look at the age, the age at which elite high school boys exceed, um, the fastest females in the history of athletics, it's usually by age 15. And you know, I tell my class here at nova southeast and I say you could probably find 12 boys in south florida that are already faster than I forget who won the 100 meter dash this year the lady from St Lucia.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You can probably find 12 high school boys that are already faster than her, and if they decided to transition they're going to be faster.
Speaker 3:So yeah Well have you seen the stat? You know who Allison Felix is?
Speaker 3:She's one of the greatest female track athletes from America and she was a world champion, and I don't even remember what her events are. What is she? 200, 400, something like that. She the year that she was the fastest woman in the world. There were 1500 boys and men who in the country who had faster times than her 1500. So that means basically all the high school state champs, a lot of men who competed on college teams around the country. I mean, not only would she not have been the fastest woman in the world, she wouldn't have been in the olympics, she wouldn't have even made the trial.
Speaker 1:That's right, right, right, and that's, that's the perfect argument where you have to have segregation by sex, segregation by age, segregation by weight class, I mean up until, I guess, 2010,. This was widely accepted in the sports science community. However, I will say most people in sports science are either afraid to say anything or, in private, they're like well, of course you're right, we know you're right.
Speaker 3:But what do they say about why they're afraid? What do your peers say about it?
Speaker 1:Every word that ends with phobic, they're called yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that's true. Why should I?
Speaker 1:waste my time defending science when there's not really a conversation that makes any sense. It becomes name calling and it's like well, how can I converse with you if you're just going to call me transphobic or whatever phobic call.
Speaker 3:So yeah, it's kind of sad that there's so many people who do it's true.
Speaker 3:I just I feel like we have to do it. We have to do it, we have to stand up anyway, because it's literally defending basic truth. And if we let untruths take over, I mean, what kind of world are we living in then? Do you know what I mean? Like, if we can let agitators and activists and the government define what is truth and have it not be ground in any literal reality or factual reality, then we don't I don't know know that's not a world I want to live in. So, believe me, I understand. I get called all those names too. I get, you know, threatening voicemails. I get people showing up at readings that I do and trying to physically harass me. I mean Riley Gaines, who's kind of the face of the movement, has been physically harassed repeatedly. But I don't know, it feels too important to me, I don't. I just don't think we can say, oh well, we'll just let them decide that men can be women.
Speaker 2:I mean look at, children are being harmed. Yeah, I'm hoping it's coming to a point now where people are no longer afraid to, or more afraid of the outcome than they are of speaking up. You know, I think in the beginning I know for me, like especially my first year teaching I was a little hesitant, but now I don't care because I just say it's not moral designation being different, it's not bad, it's just different.
Speaker 2:And these are things that have been around forever and there's a lot of different. We can look at it just not in, you know, sports, but like, in terms of like personality traits. There will always be an anomaly, there'll always be an exception to the rule, but, like, in terms of like, statistically speaking, men tend to be, you know, maybe better, I think, at like negotiating skills, whereas, like, women tend to be more empathetic and tend to be better at like nurturing skills. It doesn't mean that a man can't be nurturing, but it's just, it was biological difference even affect our personality traits and I think it's very strange to ignore that. Will there always be, like I said, somebody that you know doesn't fit that typical mold?
Speaker 3:Of course, you know but that doesn't mean we disregard everything else. Yeah, I mean, I think you raise a good point, because women do tend to be, you know, rank higher on traits like empathy, and I actually believe our empathy is being weaponized against us in this instance because, no, we don't want to be mean, we don't want to exclude anyone, we don't want to be called a bigot, we don't want to be told we're being hateful. I mean, my husband doesn't care and he's atypical, even as a man, where it just sort of rolls right off, and he just I've never seen anything like it. It's amazing. And he'll say to me why do you care that you're being called these names? It's not true. So why do you care? And I've gotten much better at not caring, but I think generally women do. And I want to build bridges and I want to be inclusive and I want to be nice, but I'm not going to be nice at my own expense.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and the empathy is a one way street though, jennifer. I mean that's right Because, for example, I do have empathy for the young swimmer female whose mom got up at four o'clock in the morning for 10 years, brought her to practice. Right, she got there, did the best she could, work day in and day out. But the problem they have is they've also cornered the empathy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the empathy only goes one way it goes to the athlete that maybe potentially has transitioned and now you're excluding them. But there's zero empathy for the young woman or girl who's worked her tail off for 10 years, who got up at four o'clock in the morning to be or the best gymnast or one of the best swimmers in the world to be, or the best gymnast and one of the best swimmers in the world, and that's another thing. Outside of the names, they actually they're very good, some people, at cornering the market on any type of emotion, any type of nomenclature or any type of position. Right, my empathy is for the young woman who got up and swam her tail off for 12 years and now is potentially being excluded.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my empathy is for the Italian boxer who got punched in the head by a male. I have a lot of empathy for her and I recognize that that male is not trans. Not trans. He has a dsd. Um, and I understand or I can glean from the story and what's being shared that he probably believed he was female up until puberty. Um, at a certain point that probably became clear that it was not true. Um, I don't have empathy for getting into a ring and beating the shit out of a woman once you know that I don't you know and I know go ahead?
Speaker 2:oh, I was gonna say, did the, the world champion? Uh, a different governing body other than the ioc, I think, barred a particular athlete from the iab, I think it's called.
Speaker 1:And then yeah, they.
Speaker 3:Someone from IAB made a statement this morning, uh, confirming XY chromosomes, uh, having failed the, the sex eligibility test, um, and the IOC has taken authority away from the IAB to govern boxing internationally and at the Olympics, which?
Speaker 2:is actually kind of crazy, because one of their statements in the framework is that they say that they're not actually in a position to let me look at it issue regulations to define eligibility criteria for every sport or event across the different jurisdictions. So they actually say that, that we don't have that, and then, in this particular case, they go ahead and do that, and it's to me that's kind of strange.
Speaker 3:Well, it's interesting. I, I, I have been reading a ton on this and trying to understand why. Because for the other sports, you know, world aquatics governs swimming. I can't remember what they call running the global governing body, but in gymnastics it's FIG, like it's the individual sport governing body, but in this particular instance the IOC snatched back governance. Now they're claiming it's because the IAB is corrupt, which is really something coming from the IOC. Who has been charged and found guilty of corruption on, you know, more fingers than I have on my two hands. So you know, I don't know why they did, and I believe it's the only instance in the only sport they're governing directly.
Speaker 2:Well, there is an instance of Castor, who ran DSD, I think the same one, the.
Speaker 3:SWIR.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's five. Is it ARD? Five? Ard know maybe some of the nomenclature that we use today before some of the people come out against or in for trans in sports, but it's just interesting to see them do kind of the opposite of what they did.
Speaker 3:But see, first of all, Castor has kept his medals, so has kept all the medals and I think, one of the races in one of the Olympics, or maybe it was Worlds. It was literally three D-mails on the platform.
Speaker 4:Yeah, top three won Silver fronts top three.
Speaker 3:But it's not the IOC that governed. It was the world running organization led by Sebastian sebastian co who made the call. So caster's been permitted to keep the medals, but going forward um the I don't know why I can't remember the name of the global governing body.
Speaker 1:But it's the running track, no international track federation it's called like world athletics or something like that.
Speaker 3:It doesn't have running in it. I think it's called like world athletics or something like that. It doesn't have running in it. I think it's called world athletics. I can look it up.
Speaker 1:I have a phone, um anyway, but that's because the ioc didn't make the call the weird thing about the ioc is they, they, they based the two uh boxers, uh, whether they're male or female on their passport, so they actually said well, the passport says female, so we're going to go by female, which, of course, is the most non-scientific way of determining.
Speaker 3:I know I cite it it's called World Athletics, that's the global governing body, and it's led by Sebastian Coe, the Olympic gold medalist. Yeah, there's an instance which is easy to find Chinese gymnasts faked their passports to say they were younger than they were.
Speaker 1:Ah OK.
Speaker 3:And it was in the 2000 Olympics. You know they weren't of age eligibility. Their passports were faked and then they competed again two Olympics later and the age showed up differently, which is what tipped people off, and they had won a bronze medal, in fact I think, in the 2000 Games in Sydney, and that medal was taken away from them in 2010. They were stripped because they lied on the passport about age.
Speaker 1:What's the age range for gymnastics?
Speaker 3:You know what? They change it all the time. It's either 15 or 16. And it it was. I don't know what it was in that Olympics, but it toggles between 14 and 16. Now they lean older 15, 16 and in fact one of the gymnasts on the gold medal winning team in this Olympics was the youngest athlete at the game. She was 17.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, that's interesting, you know. I wanted to just mention, um, some of the you know way back when, when, and dealing this is in dealing with trans athletes, so trans women, men identifying as women, that it would be a rarity that trans women, men identifying as women would take the place of women in sports, when in fact, I guess Leah Thomas was the most famous. But it just started happening and happening and before you know it, I found out and I don't know if these numbers are true, but it sounds correct 93 times a girl was denied an individual relay championship. 52 times a girl was denied advancement to a championship meet. 11 times a girl lost a meet record and this is in Connecticut. 23 girls were denied a connecticut state open team championship.
Speaker 3:So yeah, there's, it's happening a lot it's happening a lot. There's 700 over 700 instances in the last five years alone. It's accelerating for all the reasons we discussed um, that's, you know, instances of men taking a medal, a team birth, a scholarship, endorsement, money away from a deserving female athlete.
Speaker 1:And it goes to you know the whole. I guess, in a way, the revision or rewriting of Title IX, and the whole point of Title IX was protect. I mean basically protect women's spaces, and obviously sports is one of them. So people are like them. So people like you know the people who say, well, it doesn't happen, enough to matter, but it even if it happens, once there's there could be a female who wants to go to college, get a ride, full ride, half ride, whatever, and all a guy has to do is say I'm a girl and say, oh, by the way, scholarship's mine and uh, I guess I wish you know more female athletes would speak up. There's always a few, but at least at the ground level, like you said, I think women want to. They're more empathetic, they want to get along, they don't want to create controversy. You know your husband says why do you give a shit about what people call you? You know it's hard when you're a young person in particular, and I do care.
Speaker 3:I mean I'm getting much better at it, but it is really difficult to endure the hate that gets directed at you.
Speaker 3:It's hard to not want to just sort of try to defend yourself, but you can't because it's all just name calling. There's no rational discussion or argument happening. But the reason I wanted to start this brand is I feel like brands, like other kind of cultural artifacts music, film, movies, all these things can help normalize ideas in the culture. If I could make a really cool brand, like I think brands have a lot to do with body positivity. I don't know if you guys remember the Dove campaign back in, I don't know 2008. Now I think the body positivity movement has jumped the shark and we can talk about that If you want. It's another instance of um kind of denying material reality, like healthy at any size is not. That's not true. That isn't true. You can be a wonderful person, you have value as a human, all of those things are true, but at a certain point it is very unhealthy and it is not good for you.
Speaker 2:Definitely got, uh, totally misconstrued from what it originally was and I think it actually morphed and even changed now. But the initial, like the framework was just so you know, and the healthcare setting that you weren't discriminated against per se or you weren't simply sold just weight because maybe overweight and had a high cholesterol. You were actually said, okay, like these are things that contribute to high cholesterol. Besides that, that's an example, obviously. Yeah, then, including with the founder, I think changed, morphed and turned into something Well it became taken over by activists versus.
Speaker 3:You know the science, I think you know, within the culture, it was a positive thing to see women of varying shapes and sizes and not to only view, you know, in the content we consume, view women who are, you know, 5, 10 and 100 pounds. None of us look like that. None of us measure up as somebody that was, you know, anorexic as a young person, more because of my sport than the media images. But seeing that was, I think, really helpful. And then over the course of 10 years, that whole movement just completely. I mean I can't even imagine what it's like in medicine, you know. I mean, my father is a pediatrician. He's retired now, he's 81. But he told me towards the end of his career, you couldn't even raise it with a parent. You know, getting a child on a sort of healthier diet and exercise program, you couldn't. You would be called every name in the book. You know what are your thoughts?
Speaker 1:you know, in terms of the body positivity movement, when guys talk amongst themselves, they're like it's only women who buy into this. There's not a single guy who wants an obese male on the cover of men's health or muscle and fitness. Yet women readily or will they say they readily accept. I think maybe they say it in public, but in private they're like no, I don't want to look like that. On the cover of cosmopolitan You'll have an obese woman and guys are like you know what? There's not a single guy who would want that on the cover of men's health.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I don't know, the body positivity movement hasn't sort of, yeah, taken over the men's there aren't really sort of.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't see it on a men's magazine, like I have seen it in in the women's industry, or just the influencers.
Speaker 3:I mean you have all of these sort of fat positive female influencers. You have women that you know go around in airports and getting on planes who are morbidly obese and then they complain to the flight attendant. I mean there's all these viral sort of social media videos like body positive, fat positive influencers within. You know, the women, women's space. That's a huge thing and I don't think it is in men's. I don't. I don't know. You're the man.
Speaker 1:You tell us why oh no, uh, if tony gets fat, I just tell tony you're getting fat, and if I get fat, tony's like you're getting fat buddy.
Speaker 4:So well, it might go back. It may potentially go back to the fact, you know, that our empathy isn't as high yeah. I was going to say that it is empathy that tries, and listen it's. It's a strong quality too. Let's not it is. You know, it's a good quality, but I think under certain circumstances maybe it needs to be just slightly checked. But guys don't have that much empathy for each other.
Speaker 3:But you know, you know what I just I guess you're right, it is a strong impulse, but it is so distorted right now and it you know. My view is look, it is not empathetic to talk about, you know, my hometown, san Francisco. It is not empathetic to allow people to die on the streets who are mentally ill and drug addicted, but in very woke San Francisco it is not empathetic to allow people to die on the streets who are mentally ill and drug addicted, but in very woke San Francisco that's considered the empathetic view. And you are anti homeless and like all right psychopath if you think that rather than handing out needles, we should be getting people into rehab or even prison like that.
Speaker 3:That's not an empathetic position. Or you know, I'll go back to my COVID dissenting days. It was not an empathetic position to keep children locked at home for a year and a half. It was not an empathetic position to put two masks on a two-year-old who's learning to speak. And yet that's how it was built. I mean, they're really good at the messaging that. Only you know. Good kind people wear three masks and lock their children at home and don't let them go outside, and the rest of us were evil monsters. So yeah, that empathy gets weaponized, as I said, but I think more often than not right now it's not. It's billed as the empathetic position in all of these areas but it's not in fact empathetic. It isn't kind to tell someone who weighs perhaps 600 pounds, can't walk very well anymore and has all the markers you know that come with that, whether it's cholesterol, diabetes, et cetera. It's not kind to say to that person you, you're healthy at any size. I don't think that's kind.
Speaker 2:I think it's really interesting too because I see it a lot in dietetics is that some people are very quick to talk about the implications of being underweight and the hormonal disruptions that happen from being underweight and not having enough body fat.
Speaker 2:But then all of a sudden, when we do get into the weight, obese category, you can't say those certain things, and so to me it just seems like well then, you know I'm favoring one side over the other. You know, I think with anything like any extreme is never going to be a good thing. But if we're going to mention the extreme on one thing and talk about that implication, then we have to talk about it the other side too. Otherwise we're doing people a disservice.
Speaker 3:I wonder, yeah, that's really interesting. Of course that's the case. And I mean I often compare, as a former anorexic, as a teen, to the, you know, to the trans ideology. A child as a child, an adolescent at 13 or 14, I believed if I weighed 75 pounds, all my problems would be solved. Well, no doctor in their right mind was going to say we agree, here's some, you know crystal meth and we'll staple your stomach. I mean, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:They would have Well, it's a big thing that the eating disorder community to to tell and and I think to a certain extent is a very positive thing to accept your body as is right and and not try especially for somebody like what you were describing, on the anorexic and the things they small and being okay with being in a quote, unquote normal body. But here we have somebody, let's say, that's the same age. It says like I want to cut my breasts off because I don't think I need them. And we says like I want to cut my breasts off because I don't think I need them.
Speaker 2:And we're like go for it, you know but someone that is struggling with an eating disorder might want to do something to change their body and we're like, no, don't do that, you can't do that that's considered a disorder, but this is not.
Speaker 3:You just know if you're nine and you're in the wrong and you're in the wrong body, I don't understand why we have to take everything so far. It's like, you know, the beginning of the body positivity movement. Like I said, it was good, it was great to see real women, not only women who were five, 10 and a hundred pounds um, real women and you know, be able to see that and say to such extremes of seeing, you know, morbidly obese women on the cover of the sports illustrated swimsuit edition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think what's, what's what might be different in exercise and sports science versus? You know, Cassie comes from a dietetics background, initially working with eating disorders. Is that? Is that both, tony? I always frame things in terms of are you going to perform better? Hey, if you put on 10 pounds of fat and perform better, put on 10 pounds of fat, ie sumo wrestling, If, if putting on 10 pounds of fat makes you a slower wide receiver, guess what?
Speaker 1:You know, guys might not be the nicest to each other and say hey, you know, get your fat butt moving. You know you need to lose weight because you want to be faster, but at the end of the day, in sports all that matters is performance, whether or not yeah little fat, little skinny and whatnot. So I think and this is where it gets really strange in the running community when my wife ran a track in college, um, and this again, this is old school.
Speaker 1:So the coach was very cruel, but he was cruel to the guys as well. Yeah, the guys took it. They're like, yeah, you know they're mean to me, but when they were mean to the, he would actually weigh the girls. I mean, this is like, yeah, and you don, you don't do that anymore. And he would call them fat and this and that, and obviously it would result in a whole host of eating disorders. But at the end of the day, the coach, as misguided as he may be, wanted them to perform and his message. He didn't really know how to convey the message. He just said we to get faster. You need to do X, y and Z.
Speaker 3:But don't you think so? I grew up in that environment too. We were weighed twice a day. Our weight was announced on the loudspeaker.
Speaker 1:If we gained a quarter of a pound yeah, that was a big gym.
Speaker 3:They would announce it on the loudspeaker and if we gained a quarter of a pound you had to stay and do an extra hour of conditioning, bullied, berated. I don't coach fat gymnasts, I mean it was crazy. But there was a belief that it was about performance. Like a judge came in, we would have judges come in and we'd do practice meets and she she pulled me aside and she said doing gymnastics at your weight is like doing it with a 10 pound bag of sugar strapped to your back. So I was 17. I weighed 98 pounds and I had like 2% body fat and I had not gotten my period yet. I didn't get my period until I was 19.
Speaker 2:We can all agree, that's an example of another extreme. That's not. It is.
Speaker 3:But my point is in the culture of gymnastics and the girls look much stronger Now the aesthetic back in the eighties was like just amazing.
Speaker 4:they believed they that was required for performance and it wasn't right is my point, so that can be manipulated too, I guess yeah, figure skating had gone that way a lot too.
Speaker 4:We saw the yeah you know, in and out from the type of structure I mean the female body changed. If they put an emphasis on power for one, exactly, and, or that it was back to grace. You know, yeah, and, and that has been one thing though that I think has been really challenging for young women athletes is that, yeah, incessant back and forth of where the emphasis has been, and changing it every four years, has been terrible yeah, no, it's a really good point, and now the emphasis in gymnastics is very much on strength and power.
Speaker 3:I think there's too little emphasis on grace and flexibility. Um, it's a really good point, and now the emphasis in gymnastics is very much on strength and power. I think there's too little emphasis on grace and flexibility. Um, it's just sheer power, and whoever does the hardest tricks, which is always simone viles, wins everything, um, and so the body type has changed to to match that. But I, I mean, I personally think the sport has lost something, and again we just go so far. It's like we went from anorexic pixies to, you know, whatever it is now.
Speaker 1:Well, we see that. I mean, you see that in bodybuilding, if you go back 20 or 30 years, the physiques were actually attainable. Granted, they were all on anabolic steroids, but it was low dose anabolic steroids. Yeah, now the doses are so high that there are guys who are, you know, five foot 10 and they're weighing two, 50 plus easily in the off season. And again, a lot of it is. They train hard but they're also on super high dose androgens and and I don't know if you followed bodybuilding at all but there was something called a vacuum pose where you could literally suck in your gut and from the side view it looked like you had maybe an inch or two. Yeah, now their bellies are so distended and it might be related to growth hormone use. They're, they're visceral, I've hypertrophied, so they can't even do the vacuum pose which is you know, it was it was you know.
Speaker 3:Do they not? I guess they probably don't. They don't test for.
Speaker 2:No, it's Well. They have natural bodybuilding and I think they do do some testing, but I wouldn't say it's probably the most rigorous out there. But there's been a similar shift in the bikini competitors too, where bikini used to be not as muscular. And now I would say that Because I remember I thought bikini was really cool. Now bikini looks like they belong in women's physique. Women's physique looks like they belong in like women's physique. Women's physique looks like they build, belong in women's bodybuilding. And women's bodybuilding is now kind of like its own new territory and category.
Speaker 1:So yeah, bikini weird. Yeah, the winner. Bikini now would have probably won bodybuilding in the 1980s. So it's. And again, women's bodybuilding. Everyone says it's a dead sport. No one watches, watches it. No one wants to see a girl who's 5 foot 10 and, you know, 220 pounds.
Speaker 2:It's, it's, just not it's not even the majority, and there's obviously somebody out there's always, there's no eating, there's still people that are doing it well I'm wondering who I mean.
Speaker 3:Obviously, we've all been paying attention to the women's boxing at the olympics, but, like who wants to watch women box, I don't want to watch women box either.
Speaker 1:Tony and I love watching fights. We're fighters, you know.
Speaker 4:I'll say this I've trained a lot of female fighters and I kind of enjoy it, jennifer, I think, because their skill is improving and they are getting better, and I will say this I mean they've come a long way to the point where they have presented their skills in a manner that and advanced their skills where it can be enjoyable, and I'm happy about that. I'm very proud that women's fighting has taken off in the UFC, for example.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's huge.
Speaker 4:That have done a tremendous, like a Valentina and, you know, Amanda Nunez. These girls are really great athletes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they are.
Speaker 4:No doubt, you know, and I do enjoy it now because they have advanced it so far and I'm happy to see it. And you know I'm biased in the sense where I've worked with so many female fighters, so I do enjoy it, but as a credit to them, they've they've come so far so fast. I think everyone's enjoying it now.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 4:I think that's awesome for women. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Hey, jennifer, we're running out of time, but sort of a fun question. You know, once an athlete, always an athlete, need to know how you train today. What is your training regimen? Well, well, first of all, my body is so broken, so I broken, so I, you know, take, take that as the starting point. You know it's funny. You say that every highly competitive elite athlete seems to say that it's their body's wrecked yeah, you're in care on the body, I would assume gymnastics is brutal, it's like
Speaker 3:I was just having lunch with a former Denver Bronco and he I always. I told him I think football and gymnastics are the two worst. Like every retired football player, I meet walks like I do, which is to say gingerly, and he said he thinks gymnastics is worse. I mean I broke a lot of bones. I never let them heal. I went back too fast, so it's very difficult and it's got. I'm 55. It's gotten a lot worse in the last two or three years. It's just accelerated. So I have an ankle that is basically just non-functional. I've been told I need to get a replacement, but of course, as I'm sure you all know, the ankle replacements are garbage. So the doctors tell me I need one and then they tell me not to get it because they don't work very well. So what do I do? I walk a ton. I walk about five or six miles a day and I have a spin bike like a peloton. I do that and I stretch and lift light weights. That's it.
Speaker 4:But I stay fit you know you're looking a heck of a lot younger than 55, so you're doing well there. Seriously, I thought you were minus 20 years in that just quickly. I'm going to just butt in and say that female gymnastics is harder than football because essentially those young women are weight cutting the whole time. Seriously yeah they're almost in caloric restriction the whole time. Now it's changed now, but in your day, jennifer, it was really brutal it was terrible bouncing around without eating anything and that is really challenging, yeah, that's exactly right, yeah do you do you get um queries from current gymnasts about how to eat, mistakes you may have made in terms of how they can avoid it, and things like that?
Speaker 3:Not anymore. You know I wrote a book called Chalked Up in 2008, which was, like I said, about the abuse in gymnastics, the abuse of training culture, and I used to get a ton of messages about is this okay? My coach does the like you know. You know, not outright sexual abuse, but what I would call severe emotional and physical abuse. But they're would call severe emotional and physical abuse but they're trained to think that that's normal and that's tough coaching. So I would get a lot of notes asking is this abuse? Or even from retired gymnasts who still struggled with the fact that they'd been severely emotionally and physically abused but still hadn't kind of recognized it as such. So they would write to ask me you know my thoughts more, more about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, obviously you're a wealth of knowledge. We're out of time. I want to thank you for coming on. The Sports Science News.