An Interview With A Biographer Of Renée Richards, An Actual Trans Pro Athlete

As Lauren Theisen pointed out last month, the ongoing, abstracted debate about trans inclusion in sports uses almost no proper nouns and lots of hypotheticals. Back in the late 1970s, there was a very real, very human example of a trans athlete playing at the highest level of a mainstream sport. Renée Richards competed in professional tennis, and her fascinating life is explored meticulously in Julie Kliegman’s new biography, Finding Renée Richards. The book is an invaluable intervention in the tortured public discourse, which in recent weeks has been polluting the WNBA. Read this book and forget that Enes Kanter Freedom or Royce White exist.

I led a Q&A with Julie for the book’s launch last week, and have condensed and edited parts of our conversation below.