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Wrapping Up the 2024 Summer Olympics · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and Samantha.
0:06
Speaker 2: Welcome to Steph.
0:07
Speaker 3: I never told you a production of iHeartRadio, and we
0:19
Speaker 3: are back with our wrap up of the Olympics, the
0:22
Speaker 3: Summer Olympics twenty twenty four in Paris.
0:26
Speaker 2: Honestly, this one got a little out of hand.
0:29
Speaker 3: There's a lot to talk about, so if I miss something,
0:35
Speaker 3: please let us know, because this was mostly me so
0:39
Speaker 3: Sabbathly you're going to come along the ride, but I'm
0:42
Speaker 3: sure you'll have thoughts about it. But yeah, there has
0:44
Speaker 3: been a lot of conversation that's come out of it.
0:47
Speaker 3: And unfortunately, because I got so caught up in the controversies,
0:53
Speaker 3: we're not talking too.
0:53
Speaker 2: Much about some wins that I wanted to talk about.
0:56
Speaker 2: So maybe there will be another one. Maybe there will
0:58
Speaker 2: be another one.
0:59
Speaker 3: Also, pair Olympics are coming up August twenty eighth.
1:03
Speaker 2: We were recording this August twenty seventh, so hey tomorrow. Awesome.
1:07
Speaker 3: Happy birthday to friend Tyler, who has long worked at
1:12
Speaker 3: our company in its various iterations, and we got to
1:15
Speaker 3: hang out with recently in Washington, DC, which is cool.
1:19
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen him in a while.
1:21
Speaker 3: Also kind of related when I first started, when I
1:25
Speaker 3: was an intern. We used to work on what was
1:28
Speaker 3: called the fish Bowl and it was just the video
1:32
Speaker 3: department did and I was on the video department at
1:33
Speaker 3: the time, and so it was just like a circular
1:37
Speaker 3: glass bowl and people could see inside and it was
1:42
Speaker 3: There was another woman who worked with me, but she
1:44
Speaker 3: rarely came in, so it was me and like seven guys,
1:47
Speaker 3: all who were cool when I'm still friends with.
1:50
Speaker 2: Tyler was one of them.
1:52
Speaker 3: But one day one of our bosses came in and
1:56
Speaker 3: he was announcing that I was quitting and he was
1:58
Speaker 3: going to WWE, and he looked directly at me and
2:02
Speaker 3: he said, I know you're a girl and you don't
2:06
Speaker 3: get it. Well yeah yeah, and I was like, you know,
2:11
Speaker 3: I whatever, I don't I don't get it, so whatever.
2:14
Speaker 2: Then he left and Tyler looked at me and he
2:16
Speaker 2: was like.
2:16
Speaker 3: I don't get it either, So you good. So thank you, Tyler.
2:21
Speaker 3: Happy birthday, Happy birthday. Yes, unfortunately we are. There is
2:27
Speaker 3: a content warning for this one for trans zobia, fat phobia,
2:31
Speaker 3: discussion of wait, yeah, yeah, there's some stuff I was
2:36
Speaker 3: getting really I was getting riled up last night Smitha
2:38
Speaker 3: when I was researching Oh so yeah, uh for this episode.
2:43
Speaker 3: We're going to do some brief overviews on the ups
2:45
Speaker 3: and downs of this Summer Olympics, and we have done
2:50
Speaker 3: two three I think we did a feminist around the World.
2:54
Speaker 3: We've done it. We did one of those, and then
2:56
Speaker 3: we did two Monday minis related to this Olympics. So
2:58
Speaker 3: we've done a couple of things. Also see our past
3:00
Speaker 3: Olympics episodes for more on this. But yeah, we did
3:04
Speaker 3: want to touch on the fact that the host city,
3:07
Speaker 3: Paris was really touting this being the first gender equal
3:11
Speaker 3: Summer Olympics. So let's break that down a bit. When
3:15
Speaker 3: it comes to the US team, US did send more
3:18
Speaker 3: women than men for the fourth straight Summer Olympics, three
3:22
Speaker 3: hundred and fourteen women to two hundred and seventy eight
3:24
Speaker 3: men when Paris a last hosted the Olympics. By the
3:27
Speaker 3: way of over three thousand athletes, about one hundred and
3:30
Speaker 3: thirty five were women.
3:32
Speaker 2: So we have come a long way.
3:36
Speaker 3: There's still still room for improvement because, as we all know,
3:40
Speaker 3: this metric is not the only thing to take into account.
3:44
Speaker 3: In the words of Purdue University professor who studies this
3:47
Speaker 3: kind of thing, Cheryl Cookie Quote, Yes, the IOC has
3:50
Speaker 3: achieved a gender parity if we're looking at this specific
3:53
Speaker 3: indicator our criteria of gender equity, and there are still
3:57
Speaker 3: ways that women athletes are not given the same kinds
4:01
Speaker 3: of quality of opportunities, same types of resources, investments, and
4:04
Speaker 3: so on. So she was saying, like both can be true.
4:07
Speaker 3: Others have pointed out that in general, the delegations can
4:11
Speaker 3: be pretty uneven. Some may bring a lot of women,
4:13
Speaker 3: some may bring no women. This was the first Olympics
4:18
Speaker 3: to institute caps on the number of athletes that could
4:21
Speaker 3: be sent, after there had been steady growth that led
4:25
Speaker 3: to a record of eleven thousand athletes in Tokyo. So
4:29
Speaker 3: the cap was set at ten thousand, five hundred plus backups,
4:33
Speaker 3: half for women, half for men.
4:35
Speaker 4: Right, So here's a quote from the AP there's still
4:39
Speaker 4: a slight edge toward men. Among the three hundred and
4:41
Speaker 4: twenty nine medal events at the Paris Olympics, the IOC
4:45
Speaker 4: has said there are one hundred and fifty seven men's events,
4:48
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty two women's events, and twenty mixed
4:51
Speaker 4: gender events. Of the thirty two sports, twenty eight are
4:54
Speaker 4: quote fully gender equal, the IOC said, including the new
4:58
Speaker 4: event of breaking to music. Rhythmic gymnastics is still for
5:02
Speaker 4: women only, but men are allowed to compete in artistic swimming.
5:06
Speaker 4: In track and field, which has qualifying standards so that
5:08
Speaker 4: athletes must reach there are fifty more registered for the
5:11
Speaker 4: men's events than women's one thousand ninety one to one
5:15
Speaker 4: thousand forty one. In swimming, the difference was four hundred
5:18
Speaker 4: and sixty four two three ninety three. In soccer, with
5:21
Speaker 4: sixteen teams in the men's tournament and just twelve and
5:24
Speaker 4: the women's the athlete tally was three hundred and fifty
5:26
Speaker 4: one to two sixty four. The wrestling entry has one
5:30
Speaker 4: hundred and ninety three men and ninety six women, with
5:32
Speaker 4: a men's only category in Greeco Roman. You know what,
5:36
Speaker 4: I don't know if I would know the difference of
5:38
Speaker 4: what that is to be fair.
5:39
Speaker 1: With the WWE question.
5:41
Speaker 4: So leadership is an area that has a lot further
5:44
Speaker 4: to go in terms of gender parity. At these Olympics,
5:47
Speaker 4: forty two percent of the coaches were women, which is
5:50
Speaker 4: way up from a decade ago. Women make up thirty
5:54
Speaker 4: three percent of the IOC's executive board and women lead
5:57
Speaker 4: forty two percent of their commissions, which we did talk
6:00
Speaker 4: about earlier.
6:02
Speaker 3: We did, and there was a big scandal about this
6:05
Speaker 3: at the last Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where basically one
6:08
Speaker 3: of the higher ups was like, women talk too much
6:11
Speaker 3: at meetings and that's why that.
6:13
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and we were like, why would you say?
6:15
Speaker 1: Do you just want people to hate you?
6:18
Speaker 2: I know?
6:19
Speaker 3: And speaking of there were as we discussed instances of
6:26
Speaker 3: sexism from commentators. There was one that was fired for
6:29
Speaker 3: making a sexist remark about the Australian women's swim team,
6:33
Speaker 3: and there was another that said it was pretty bad
6:37
Speaker 3: as well. He did not get fired, but it was like,
6:39
Speaker 3: what are you doing?
6:41
Speaker 2: Why would you say that?
6:43
Speaker 3: It's twenty twenty four would you say that? And yeah,
6:50
Speaker 3: there there's other things related to that, like there some
6:56
Speaker 3: of critique the camera angles used for women's sports as
6:59
Speaker 3: compared to me. We're gonna talk about the uniforms. We've
7:01
Speaker 3: talked about the uniforms before. We'll touch on them again
7:05
Speaker 3: in a second. These Olympics did put in place non
7:09
Speaker 3: mandatory guidelines. We're giving women's sports more coveted time slots
7:13
Speaker 3: and coverage. As we did discuss women's basketball and the
7:17
Speaker 3: women's marathon closed out these Olympics, which is usually it's
7:21
Speaker 3: men's events that close out the Olympics. But still, yeah,
7:27
Speaker 3: things haven't been smooth sailing completely. There's a lot of
7:32
Speaker 3: progress that has been made, a lot to be made
7:35
Speaker 3: in the future. So we did want to go through
7:38
Speaker 3: some of the bigger controversies.
7:40
Speaker 2: There are a lot. Again, if we miss them, let
7:44
Speaker 2: us know if there's something you think we should talk about.
7:47
Speaker 3: One that's ongoing is in gymnastics, so this is yeah,
7:54
Speaker 3: it's an ongoing mess. And the women's individual floor routine
7:57
Speaker 3: metal and I, like I said, I want a lot
8:00
Speaker 3: of Olympics live because the time zone was such that
8:05
Speaker 3: I was able to do that. Sometimes you know, it's
8:07
Speaker 3: the middle of the night where they're taking place and
8:09
Speaker 3: I don't get to see it. But this time I
8:11
Speaker 3: was able to see a lot of stuff live. I
8:14
Speaker 3: saw this happen live and this is how it unfolded.
8:17
Speaker 3: As a viewer. Simone Biles has got a solid silver.
8:22
Speaker 3: Brazilian gymnasts Rebecca on John gy was a lock for gold,
8:28
Speaker 3: but the bronze medal scoring changed, bumping us shownas Jordan
8:32
Speaker 3: Chiles from fifth into bronze medal position over Romania's on
8:37
Speaker 3: a barbosu. And this is because her coach petitioned seemingly
8:41
Speaker 3: successfully to up her difficulty score for an uncredited move
8:46
Speaker 3: that she did so she should have gotten more points,
8:49
Speaker 3: and the difficulty score went up. Her score went up.
8:52
Speaker 3: She gets the bronze, and there was a lovely pitcher.
8:55
Speaker 3: I was taken on the metal podium of both Childs
8:57
Speaker 3: and Biles, bowing to Androji, the first metal ceremony of
9:01
Speaker 3: its kind, beaturing all black women. But Romania was very
9:06
Speaker 3: unhappy about this. Understandably, I would say a flurry of
9:10
Speaker 3: things happened. Chiles coach inquiry was voided because it was
9:16
Speaker 3: determined she'd made it four seconds too late, because you
9:18
Speaker 3: have one minute to make it. This put Chiles back
9:22
Speaker 3: in fifth place. US officials appealed that the Court of
9:26
Speaker 3: Arbitration of Sport refused to reconsider their decision, even in
9:30
Speaker 3: light of new proof that allegedly showed the inquiry being
9:32
Speaker 3: completed in time. Chiles was ordered to return her medal,
9:36
Speaker 3: where both of you got a separate medal at a
9:39
Speaker 3: small ceremony. There were stories of things just getting sent
9:44
Speaker 3: to wrong emails, the wrong people being nodeified. All kinds
9:47
Speaker 3: of things was a huge mess. It continues to be
9:49
Speaker 3: a huge mess because it's not over right.
9:51
Speaker 1: There new inquiries happening.
9:53
Speaker 4: One went to from the US to like backtrack that,
9:57
Speaker 4: and then another one from Romania to backtrack that, like controversies,
10:01
Speaker 4: and then like theories that there's a dude who was
10:05
Speaker 4: on the committee that was Romanian base.
10:07
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, dear, oh dear.
10:10
Speaker 4: I don't quite understand why they would not allow there
10:13
Speaker 4: can be an appeal and an appeal to that appeal.
10:16
Speaker 4: Why can't there be another appeal because they blocked that
10:18
Speaker 4: last appeal for some odd reason.
10:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, proof right, yes, and you can look into there.
10:28
Speaker 3: There is a lot being discussed about yes, uh, connections
10:32
Speaker 3: to Romania by some of the people on the board.
10:35
Speaker 3: You can look into that. The yes, there is another
10:39
Speaker 3: quote conspiracy theory that upon replay the other Romanian gymnasts
10:44
Speaker 3: Sabrina Manisha Vawena received a deduction for stepping out of bounds,
10:48
Speaker 3: but she actually didn't, meaning she should have gotten Lebron's.
10:52
Speaker 1: But then that's the other conversation.
10:53
Speaker 4: Then they're way too late, like there's a week or
10:57
Speaker 4: two late, like this should not even be a conversation.
10:59
Speaker 4: Then that's like if she there's so many conversations.
11:03
Speaker 3: I don't think she's I could be wrong, because this
11:06
Speaker 3: is a mess. I don't think she's like actually appealing.
11:10
Speaker 3: I'm just saying I think people are saying, well, clearly
11:16
Speaker 3: something we weren't paying attention to the right things and
11:19
Speaker 3: this or it wasn't being scored properly. Unfortunately, this is
11:32
Speaker 3: something that's going to come up a lot in this
11:33
Speaker 3: When I was doing this research, social media backlash WHOA,
11:38
Speaker 3: the backlash against Chiles, A lot of it was very
11:40
Speaker 3: racist in nature, was intense, and she posted on social media,
11:44
Speaker 3: I have no words. This decision feels unjust and comes
11:47
Speaker 3: as a significant blow not just to me, but to
11:49
Speaker 3: everyone who has championed my journey. She later took a
11:52
Speaker 3: break from social media for her mental health, and a
11:56
Speaker 3: lot of her teammates have been very outspoken and supportive
12:00
Speaker 3: of her. In USA Gymnastics is continuing to pursue this issue.
12:05
Speaker 3: In my opinion, this is a IOC governing body problem,
12:10
Speaker 3: and neither athlete should be punished for their failures. I
12:14
Speaker 3: feel like she shouldn't have to go through the ringer
12:16
Speaker 3: because you awarded her a pros.
12:20
Speaker 4: It's this conversation we've been kind of having because we've
12:24
Speaker 4: seen so many like questionable decisions by referees and officials
12:29
Speaker 4: and like all these things that this is kind of like.
12:34
Speaker 1: Is this legit?
12:35
Speaker 4: Are you doing something that is sketchy? Are you not
12:38
Speaker 4: reconsidering things? Are these rules outdated? Much like some of
12:43
Speaker 4: the laws we have in real life. Like, there's so
12:45
Speaker 4: many to that conversation, especially when you have people who
12:49
Speaker 4: that's heart reaching and on international TV, like the reaction
12:55
Speaker 4: of childs Like for the US, people are like yay,
12:58
Speaker 4: and she gets to like celebrates, but then the reaction
13:01
Speaker 4: of the Romanian who was crushed because for a good
13:04
Speaker 4: like ten minutes she really thought she won. Like, there's
13:07
Speaker 4: so many things to this that's like in conversation about
13:12
Speaker 4: who is seen as the authority.
13:15
Speaker 1: And about whether or not they understand.
13:18
Speaker 4: And I say that for all the events because we
13:20
Speaker 4: saw things happening tennis, same thing's happening, and like so
13:23
Speaker 4: many other things, whether it's referees making bad calls, we
13:25
Speaker 4: saw things happening in basketball men and women's you were like,
13:29
Speaker 4: what is going on?
13:31
Speaker 5: Yes?
13:32
Speaker 3: And I want to add two things to that. In
13:35
Speaker 3: my previous Monday Mining where I was just kind of
13:37
Speaker 3: gushing about things I saw that I liked. I talked
13:40
Speaker 3: about how the soccer one of the women who was
13:44
Speaker 3: commentating the soccer women's soccer match really went in about
13:47
Speaker 3: like we're not putting the health of athletes first. And
13:52
Speaker 3: I saw another article that followed up on that about
13:55
Speaker 3: this whole thing that was like, this backle is cruel,
14:01
Speaker 3: Like ultimately, it's kind of cruel to your athletes that
14:03
Speaker 3: are doing this, and it's on you. You're the ones
14:06
Speaker 3: that made the mistakes, all right, but they're the ones
14:09
Speaker 3: that are dealing with it, right.
14:11
Speaker 4: Yeah, and being like literally being harassed for the day
14:14
Speaker 4: things that they don't have anything to do with. It's
14:16
Speaker 4: not a personal vendetta against other athletes.
14:19
Speaker 1: I mean maybe I don't. I don't know.
14:20
Speaker 4: I don't know about them athletics, but you know, sometimes
14:23
Speaker 4: basketball and when they have like direct contact seems heted.
14:26
Speaker 1: But but I mean they're not.
14:30
Speaker 4: They have not even mentioned, honestly mentioned each other except
14:33
Speaker 4: for like we have no you have complete respect for
14:35
Speaker 4: the other athletes. It's a whole level. And then this
14:38
Speaker 4: going back and forth and back and forth and back
14:40
Speaker 4: and forth. Yeah, that's got to be mentally taxing.
14:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I feel like as a viewer sometimes we
14:48
Speaker 3: can forget that that's like your whole life and it
14:50
Speaker 3: happens four years and you might not be there in
14:52
Speaker 3: the next four years.
14:53
Speaker 2: This is like a huge, huge deal.
14:56
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
14:58
Speaker 3: Yes, the other thing I did want to mention just
15:02
Speaker 3: because I feel like I should. This is definitely not
15:05
Speaker 3: the first time somebody's medal has been taken away. But
15:08
Speaker 3: what makes it unique is every other time it's usually
15:13
Speaker 3: had to do with doping or some other scandal, like
15:17
Speaker 3: some something. So it did have like, for instance, the
15:22
Speaker 3: US skating team from the Winter Olympics two years later
15:28
Speaker 3: just got their medals because it took that long to
15:31
Speaker 3: judicate it. It's true, so it could take a while, unfortunately,
15:36
Speaker 3: because I can only imagine how miserable this is.
15:39
Speaker 2: Right.
15:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's that, And now let us talk about breaking.
15:46
Speaker 3: It is called breaking, breakdancing. Lot of people call it,
15:50
Speaker 3: but it is.
15:52
Speaker 4: It's interesting because it is a US based activity sport.
15:58
Speaker 1: I've never heard any one they breaking.
16:00
Speaker 3: I haven't either, and I usually say breakdancing because no
16:04
Speaker 3: one knows what I'm talking about when I say breaking.
16:07
Speaker 2: But that's what it was called.
16:10
Speaker 3: And there's probably a reason to that, which speaking of
16:12
Speaker 3: this is just gonna be a snippet of what happened
16:14
Speaker 3: at this.
16:15
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie giggled when I saw this topic.
16:19
Speaker 3: Just now, I feel like we had to talk about it,
16:23
Speaker 3: But there is a lot more stuff that we can
16:26
Speaker 3: and probably should come back and talk about with this.
16:30
Speaker 3: This is just going to be a brief overview of
16:32
Speaker 3: what happened, because again, I was watching this slide and
16:34
Speaker 3: I was like, WHOA. So I also, yeah, I'm not
16:38
Speaker 3: going to go to in depth about it because I
16:40
Speaker 3: feel like it has been done to death in the news.
16:43
Speaker 3: But yeah, we do need to talk about women's breaking
16:44
Speaker 3: in the Olympics. So this was the first and potentially
16:47
Speaker 3: last Olympic Games to feature breaking, though that decision had
16:51
Speaker 3: already been made and had nothing to do with what
16:54
Speaker 3: happened here. It had been made in twenty twenty three.
16:57
Speaker 3: Snoop Dogg opened the event, which was cool. Yes, I
17:00
Speaker 3: watched it live and I was so mixed. There were really, like,
17:03
Speaker 3: so many impressive things, and then there were things that
17:05
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, that's white people, cause playing as
17:07
Speaker 3: black people. It just had a vibe that I couldn't
17:11
Speaker 3: quite pin down.
17:13
Speaker 4: The amount of teams that didn't have people of color
17:16
Speaker 4: on their teams was shocking, and I'm not going to
17:21
Speaker 4: say so like a lot of we know that a
17:23
Speaker 4: lot of countries, there's not a lot of diversity in
17:26
Speaker 4: that country, which is another thing we should question, like
17:29
Speaker 4: why aren't you, Why aren't you What is happening there
17:31
Speaker 4: that is not welcoming or is it other issues? There's
17:34
Speaker 4: so many things, So that's a controversial statement in itself.
17:37
Speaker 4: But the fact that we did have countries that do
17:40
Speaker 4: have a pretty diverse community didn't still didn't and I
17:44
Speaker 4: was like, I don't And even with the US, I
17:50
Speaker 4: was still kind of confused.
17:52
Speaker 1: There were a few, like.
17:53
Speaker 4: There were all people of color if if I remember correctly,
17:57
Speaker 4: but only a few came from like black or life
18:00
Speaker 4: Tino background. So I'm like, question mark, But that's again
18:06
Speaker 4: a whole different episode.
18:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, just because of the history, yeah, which we did.
18:12
Speaker 2: We did briefly touch on.
18:13
Speaker 1: That, and yeah we did hip hop yeah women.
18:17
Speaker 3: In which was one I felt very awkward talking about,
18:20
Speaker 3: but it was important to talk about.
18:21
Speaker 2: So check out.
18:23
Speaker 3: Yes we did, we did, and I will say, like
18:26
Speaker 3: the unfortunate thing about this, which I'm going to talk
18:28
Speaker 3: about a little more. There was like people who were
18:31
Speaker 3: doing amazing work. They really were, and we're just not
18:35
Speaker 3: talking about them. We're talking about not.
18:38
Speaker 4: That, which may be part of the problem, Like that's
18:40
Speaker 4: the controversy too.
18:42
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, absolutely, but there were people I was watching
18:46
Speaker 3: it was like, damn, that's amazing. But yeah, there there
18:50
Speaker 3: was a lot to There's a lot to unpack here
18:52
Speaker 3: because it was the first time, so there was a
18:55
Speaker 3: lot riding on this event. It was very highly advertised.
18:59
Speaker 3: It was the only new spore added to this year's Olympics.
19:02
Speaker 3: There were a lot of questions about how to score it,
19:05
Speaker 3: and they remain. Two, we can't just ignore the fact of, yes,
19:09
Speaker 3: the history of breaking being rooted in black culture, and
19:13
Speaker 3: so both of those questions sort of intertwine with the
19:16
Speaker 3: with breaking the soul of it. And so Three should
19:20
Speaker 3: it even be an Olympic sport? Not because it is
19:22
Speaker 3: an athletic, but like, yeah, how do you judge it?
19:24
Speaker 3: The hip hop scene is pretty anti establishment. The Olympics
19:27
Speaker 3: is like the establishment in sports. However, on the other
19:30
Speaker 3: side of that, it could bring knowledge and attention to
19:33
Speaker 3: something lesser known, inspire others to get involved.
19:36
Speaker 2: It also should be recognized and given attention. So I've
19:39
Speaker 2: seen like arguments on all around all of those things.
19:43
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the question is is the Olympics the
19:47
Speaker 4: appropriate place? Like what type of attention are you giving it?
19:50
Speaker 4: Are you giving it as full of respect?
19:53
Speaker 1: Yeah?
19:53
Speaker 4: The scoring? Who is scoring it? Like all of those
19:56
Speaker 4: questions like who have you brought in to score this?
19:58
Speaker 4: Also the music it was interesting.
20:02
Speaker 2: The music was interesting. The music was interesting. So yes.
20:07
Speaker 3: The most obvious example of what kind of went wrong
20:09
Speaker 3: here is Australian Rachel gunn Our Reagan, who's a thirty
20:12
Speaker 3: six year old white academic who has a PhD in breaking.
20:17
Speaker 3: There has been so much discussion about how in the
20:19
Speaker 3: role she qualified, although I will say most of the
20:21
Speaker 3: conspiracy theories about how she cheated or rigged her way
20:24
Speaker 3: in are largely untrue about who she might have blocked
20:27
Speaker 3: entry from. It is true that the breaking community where
20:30
Speaker 3: she came from is very small and the entry fees
20:34
Speaker 3: and travel costs are prohibitive, which I think is another
20:36
Speaker 3: part of the conversation sort of what you were talking about, Samantha,
20:40
Speaker 3: which always does have issues of class and race around it,
20:44
Speaker 3: And I do think Reygan needs to ponder about all this.
20:47
Speaker 3: But I once again to think maybe we should be
20:49
Speaker 3: putting more blame on the organizations that allow for this, right.
20:53
Speaker 4: I mean, there's again because it was a huge thing,
20:57
Speaker 4: and there was a lot of back and forth and
20:59
Speaker 4: people were like praising her for the confidence she had
21:03
Speaker 4: and the entertainment that she gave. Again also really like
21:06
Speaker 4: going after her because they felt like she was mocking
21:10
Speaker 4: what this was and though she said she knew she
21:13
Speaker 4: couldn't win, like she put that as a statement, she
21:15
Speaker 4: was giving her all. Like people were trying to figure
21:18
Speaker 4: out if this was performative and this is a part
21:20
Speaker 4: of her academic work that she was trying to do,
21:22
Speaker 4: which I even mentioned that in an episode, like is
21:24
Speaker 4: it Maybe? I don't know because there had been she
21:27
Speaker 4: has deep research about cultural content like this. But I
21:32
Speaker 4: think there's also that bigger question, like people started her
21:35
Speaker 4: specific team started going in on and we are an
21:38
Speaker 4: intersectional feminist show. As a reminder, apparently that's a really
21:42
Speaker 4: hard term to remember, and I feel like we need
21:44
Speaker 4: to go back to that because we had a whole incident.
21:46
Speaker 4: That's a vice, but that's another story, But that they
21:51
Speaker 4: were attacking her because she was a woman and that
21:53
Speaker 4: they were like if this was a man doing this,
21:55
Speaker 4: we were like, okay, we're all about when sexist conversations happen.
22:04
Speaker 4: Your Australian counterpart did it, he did it correctly, he
22:08
Speaker 4: did it well, like they did start showing him being like, yeah,
22:11
Speaker 4: he actually knew what he was doing. He had a
22:14
Speaker 4: lot of experience and he's like, I think nineteen, so
22:16
Speaker 4: are very young. So all these level of conversation was
22:20
Speaker 4: like no, I think they immediately came in about her
22:24
Speaker 4: outfit and for some reason it did look differently on
22:28
Speaker 4: her than it did on him, and it may have
22:30
Speaker 4: been like how she wore it or whatever whatnot, and
22:33
Speaker 4: that's not the important part, but it just was one
22:36
Speaker 4: more part too. Yeah, this seems like a caricature of
22:40
Speaker 4: what this event was supposed to be, like literally putting
22:44
Speaker 4: on a whole show, as if you were trying to
22:48
Speaker 4: make yourself stand out in this specific way.
22:50
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of that, and maybe.
22:53
Speaker 4: There's some comments that I miss And for y'all who
22:56
Speaker 4: have may paid more attention to this or seen more
22:58
Speaker 4: content about this, I don't think any of the conversations
23:02
Speaker 4: was out that they just didn't like her because she's
23:05
Speaker 4: a woman, because we had plenty of women who did
23:08
Speaker 4: amazing the Chinese breaker who did an amazing job. She won,
23:13
Speaker 4: and she won far and swere it was really well done.
23:16
Speaker 1: Still like that, this is.
23:18
Speaker 4: Not that and that's what they really wanted to jump on,
23:20
Speaker 4: which I think was a huge mistake. It is, and
23:22
Speaker 4: it's somewhat insulting to all the other athletes there who
23:27
Speaker 4: didn't have to have that conversation. And I'm not sure
23:30
Speaker 4: if it's because she didn't do like the athleticism level
23:34
Speaker 4: that everybody else did. I know part of the scoring
23:38
Speaker 4: was originality, and I'm sure that's that one point she got,
23:41
Speaker 4: even though she got zero. So there's a lot to this.
23:45
Speaker 4: And if you're from Australia, because I know we have
23:47
Speaker 4: a few listeners, I need to know your take, y'all
23:50
Speaker 4: need to tell me.
23:51
Speaker 2: Yeah.
23:52
Speaker 3: Well, so I was reading a lot about this, because
23:57
Speaker 3: there's been a lot written about this, and I read
24:00
Speaker 3: a lot from the Australian breaking community. I will say
24:05
Speaker 3: I'm not part of that community, so I can't really
24:08
Speaker 3: speak to it, but I will say that in the
24:11
Speaker 3: articles I read, people were talking about how it's evolved
24:14
Speaker 3: in different places, and I people were talking about how
24:18
Speaker 3: it can look differently in different places, and yeah, again,
24:21
Speaker 3: like how do you score it when.
24:24
Speaker 2: It's like it's so difficult to score?
24:28
Speaker 3: But yes, Reagan once again got a ton of abuse online.
24:33
Speaker 3: The AOC even released a twelve point fact check to
24:37
Speaker 3: combat all the mis and disinformation about her. But so
24:41
Speaker 3: have many young breakers, many girls and women in Australia
24:44
Speaker 3: and nearby. So yeah, listeners, if you know about that,
24:48
Speaker 3: let us know. And as I said, it's unfortunate because
24:51
Speaker 3: all of this has overshadowed the winners and those who
24:53
Speaker 3: were looking to this movement to put breaking on the
24:56
Speaker 3: global stage and have a bigger conversation about it.
24:59
Speaker 4: So right, I mean we're having a conversation about it.
25:01
Speaker 4: I will say this event could have just like died
25:04
Speaker 4: away and no one really cared. She did do something,
25:08
Speaker 4: she do the attention, not the best, not the best.
25:13
Speaker 4: I do know that she stayed in Paris for a
25:15
Speaker 4: long while with her husband, and the videos that I've
25:17
Speaker 4: seen with both her and her husband, they are similar
25:20
Speaker 4: in style. Let's talk about the boxer and the lawsuit.
25:34
Speaker 4: I feel like that's the story in the story.
25:36
Speaker 1: Right the way I put it so.
25:38
Speaker 4: In our recent Olympics episode, we discussed all the controversy
25:41
Speaker 4: around Algerian boxer a mon Khalif. If you need to
25:44
Speaker 4: take a take a listen, take a pause, We'll go
25:46
Speaker 4: see a talk TikTok.
25:47
Speaker 1: There's so much information.
25:48
Speaker 4: Hopefully the right side is kind of complicated, but essentially,
25:52
Speaker 4: the IOC no longer accepts the authority of the IBA,
25:55
Speaker 4: the International Boxing Association, since it's headquartered in Russia. The
25:59
Speaker 4: IBA disqualified both Khalif and Taiwanese boxer Lenn Ut in
26:04
Speaker 4: a decision that IOC labeled as sudden and arbitrary and
26:07
Speaker 4: without any due process. This means the IOC is in
26:11
Speaker 4: control of the athletes they can compete in Olympic boxing,
26:15
Speaker 4: not the IBA. So the IOC backed Khalif, who went
26:19
Speaker 4: on to win the gold medal, Algeria's first women in
26:22
Speaker 4: boxing and returned to a hero's welcome in her hometown. Yes,
26:27
Speaker 4: she deserved the congratulations, everybody clap. Notably, neither had had
26:32
Speaker 4: issues competing before. In Kalif's case, this disqualification happened after
26:36
Speaker 4: she defeated a Russian boxer. We did talk about and
26:39
Speaker 4: the president of the IOC said, we have two boxers
26:42
Speaker 4: who are born as women, who have been raised as women,
26:44
Speaker 4: who have a passport as a woman, and who have
26:46
Speaker 4: competed for many years as women. And by the way,
26:51
Speaker 4: it wasn't and they had done so and lost many
26:53
Speaker 4: and they didn't pay attention to them until they won.
26:56
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, which I will come back to, Okay,
27:03
Speaker 3: that being said, the online uproar about Calief's gender after
27:07
Speaker 3: these unspecified failed tests from the IBA was immense. From
27:13
Speaker 3: Time magazine quote, despite being born and raised as a woman,
27:16
Speaker 3: she found herself in the crosshairs of Western debates about gender,
27:19
Speaker 3: sex and sports after failing unspecified and untransparent eligibility test
27:23
Speaker 3: for women's competition from the now banned International Boxing Association
27:28
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three. It even drew in high profile
27:32
Speaker 3: names that we wish we didn't have to discuss, like
27:35
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, jk Rowling, Logan Paul, though he later deleted
27:39
Speaker 3: his post and said he might be guilty of spreading misinformation,
27:44
Speaker 3: and Donald Trump, who all referred to her as a
27:47
Speaker 3: man in abusive social media post. So, yes, this just happened,
27:52
Speaker 3: As I said, today is August twenty seventh. But I
27:55
Speaker 3: think it was last night, so jk Rowling took a
27:59
Speaker 3: break after she got sued, which we're going to talk
28:01
Speaker 3: about a second by I'm on Khalif, But she's back.
28:06
Speaker 3: She first tweeted under a photo of Khalif's about with
28:08
Speaker 3: Italian boxer At Karini, the smirk of a male who
28:12
Speaker 3: knows he's protected by a misogynist sporting establishment and joined
28:15
Speaker 3: the distress of a woman he's just punched in the
28:18
Speaker 3: head end quote, watch this whole thread, then explain why
28:22
Speaker 3: you're okay with a man beating a woman in public
28:24
Speaker 3: for your entertainment. This isn't sport from the bullying cheat
28:28
Speaker 3: and read all the way up to the organizers who
28:29
Speaker 3: allowed this to happen.
28:31
Speaker 2: This is men reveling in their power over women. That
28:34
Speaker 2: was what she first tweeted. So then Musk and Trump
28:39
Speaker 2: joined in, and Trump promised to keep men out of
28:42
Speaker 2: women's sports if he was elected. And then yeah, she
28:46
Speaker 2: took this break, and now she's back, and she tweeted
28:50
Speaker 2: about the lawsuit. It's important to highlight that launching a
28:54
Speaker 2: PR campaign in applying layers of thick makeup requires far
28:57
Speaker 2: more time and effort and simply making DNA test results public, which,
29:00
Speaker 2: as many people pointed out, it's very.
29:03
Speaker 5: Bizarre to ask for someone's test results.
29:09
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Yes, she's like that.
29:13
Speaker 4: She takes all her money. Oh I want at this point,
29:16
Speaker 4: I want a mon to like own all of Harry
29:18
Speaker 4: Potter content so we can go back and enjoy it.
29:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, that would be nice.
29:23
Speaker 4: But here's the other part to this, And I'm just
29:25
Speaker 4: gonna quickly say this. We know she comes from a
29:28
Speaker 4: country that does not welcome trans the trans community openly.
29:34
Speaker 4: There's so much irony and concern to this implication worldwide,
29:38
Speaker 4: Like this is a whole understanding of conversations of like, yes,
29:41
Speaker 4: we want her to take the stand, but is this
29:43
Speaker 4: also doing a precedent about biological women, which is already concerning.
29:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we'll talk about that in a second.
29:50
Speaker 3: But it's also it also became very It became a
29:54
Speaker 3: big deal for Algeria in a lot of ways, who
29:58
Speaker 3: felt that they were there, she was being attacked, right,
30:02
Speaker 3: So it did become a very patriotic issue, which also can.
30:08
Speaker 2: Be can be messy. But yes, this lawsuit we've been
30:13
Speaker 2: alluding to.
30:14
Speaker 3: After the Olympics concluded, Clive filed a lawsuit against Twitter
30:18
Speaker 3: slash x alleging cyber harassment in France a sustained quote misogynist,
30:24
Speaker 3: racist and sexist campaign, and she named Musk and rolling
30:28
Speaker 3: in it. And I will tell you the laws in
30:31
Speaker 3: the European Union around this are stricter than what they
30:35
Speaker 3: are in the US. So I'm interested to see how
30:39
Speaker 3: this place out. It would be nice if she won,
30:42
Speaker 3: that would be lovely.
30:45
Speaker 4: So many things to that, Like, there's so many wins
30:47
Speaker 4: to this that were like a wins of win, Like
30:49
Speaker 4: take them down to at least consider what they're saying.
30:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean it was huge. It was a
30:56
Speaker 2: huge backlash.
30:57
Speaker 3: Like those tweets I read I they had like two
31:01
Speaker 3: hundred million views.
31:02
Speaker 4: And that's not including like the publications that took it
31:04
Speaker 4: and men with it, right, and like that was.
31:06
Speaker 3: One of the first things I saw when I was
31:07
Speaker 3: researching last night on YouTube. It was a bunch of
31:10
Speaker 3: videos of like sha a man or a woman, which
31:13
Speaker 3: again is messed up conversation be having in the first place,
31:18
Speaker 3: for a lot of reasons, right, for a lot of reasons.
31:21
Speaker 3: But as you said, Samantha, it is interesting that no
31:25
Speaker 3: one seemed to care until she started winning. And I
31:28
Speaker 3: found a related quote from Poebus. Skate shooting was an
31:32
Speaker 3: open sport in Barcelona in nineteen ninety two when Jang Shan,
31:35
Speaker 3: a Chinese woman, won the gold medal. Subsequently, skate shooting
31:39
Speaker 3: became segregated by gender. There's nothing in the record that
31:42
Speaker 3: says and then once a woman won, we decided to
31:45
Speaker 3: have gendered categories.
31:47
Speaker 2: But the timing is notable. Donley said, I.
31:53
Speaker 4: Just baffle, Like people will talk about like, yes, we
31:57
Speaker 4: do want inquality, we do want all these things, and
31:58
Speaker 4: be like, oh, but equalized in like you are lesser
32:01
Speaker 4: than us. Still, like we might not say that loud, right,
32:06
Speaker 4: our ego, if you're harming our ego, we definitely get.
32:09
Speaker 2: Right now now, well, we've got to do something about this.
32:14
Speaker 1: Right, they'll take over the world, right.
32:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I will say it has been heartening to
32:21
Speaker 3: see people who have competed against her being like no,
32:23
Speaker 3: she's just that good or like which you did talk
32:26
Speaker 3: about in uh the previous episode. Uh it was feminis
32:30
Speaker 3: around the world, I believe. Yeah, so that's been heartening.
32:33
Speaker 3: I like that, but this is like ridiculous, it's ridiculous,
32:40
Speaker 3: which does bring us to Yeah, the question of gender
32:42
Speaker 3: at large at the Olympics because it is still the
32:45
Speaker 3: gender binary that leaves out. Are even prohibits non binary
32:49
Speaker 3: intersects or transgender competitors. Often there are a couple of exceptions,
32:56
Speaker 3: and as many have pointed out, historically transgender women are
32:59
Speaker 3: the ones that face more scrutiny and testing. So you
33:02
Speaker 3: can go check out our past Olympics episodes for more.
33:04
Speaker 3: But the SE does not have a great record at
33:08
Speaker 3: this at all. Where they would used to do like
33:12
Speaker 3: what were they called nude parades that there's like a
33:15
Speaker 3: lot of disturbing stuff in the history around this. In
33:18
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, they essentially threw the issue to sports organizations,
33:22
Speaker 3: which is sort of the same as we're like leaving
33:25
Speaker 3: abortionship to the states here in the US, if you will,
33:28
Speaker 3: so you can see the problem. It's not consistent. Several
33:32
Speaker 3: organizations have banned trans people. Some have banned them with
33:36
Speaker 3: very specific rules like when did you transition? Things like that.
33:40
Speaker 3: Also a brief note about the uproar around the quote
33:44
Speaker 3: drag Last Supper tableau at the opening ceremony, though the
33:49
Speaker 3: artist does maintain it was not mocking Da Vinci's painting
33:52
Speaker 3: of the Last Supper, but one of the participants has
33:56
Speaker 3: filed a complaint against online harassment abuse because this was
33:59
Speaker 3: of course featured on Fox News as being like the
34:01
Speaker 3: worst thing ever and Donald Trump said it was herndous
34:04
Speaker 3: or some variation of that. So they got a lot
34:07
Speaker 3: of hate online as well.
34:09
Speaker 4: Why can't people just say I don't like this, and
34:12
Speaker 4: if it's not actually damaging, right, just move on, I
34:16
Speaker 4: wish like to themselves and don't need to say it
34:19
Speaker 4: out loud, right, just move on?
34:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, don't like Dori fan fiction. The rules.
34:26
Speaker 3: Okay, this is another one. This is a quick thing.
34:29
Speaker 3: It just caught my attention about what was being called
34:33
Speaker 3: extreme fan culture in China. So China started cracking down
34:38
Speaker 3: on fans of athletes, leading to at least to one
34:41
Speaker 3: arrest and a handful of people being detained for defamation.
34:45
Speaker 4: So here's a quote from the New York Times. Celebrities
34:48
Speaker 4: globally have to deal with fans who are sometimes invasive,
34:51
Speaker 4: but in China this phenomenon can be especially intense. Fan
34:56
Speaker 4: groups spend it lavishly on products endorsed by their idols,
35:00
Speaker 4: deploy bots to ensure their favorites stay atop social media
35:04
Speaker 4: tending lists, and even mount harassment campaigns against other stars
35:09
Speaker 4: and their supporters. Some fans stalk their idols and sell
35:12
Speaker 4: their photos of personal information.
35:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.
35:15
Speaker 3: So, athletes have been hounded at airports, rassd online, and
35:19
Speaker 3: seen their hometowns flooded with visitors. Rival supporters get into
35:23
Speaker 3: vicious online battles, and some have reported them being visibly aggressive.
35:29
Speaker 3: At least one athlete said he would have rather performed
35:32
Speaker 3: worse and been left alone. Others have said that they
35:36
Speaker 3: were afraid to return home. Others have had family members
35:39
Speaker 3: contact them and told them not to return home. One
35:42
Speaker 3: of the most severe instances of this was during the
35:45
Speaker 3: women's table tennismatch between two Chinese players, which I did
35:47
Speaker 3: watch live and I was like, oh, in which people
35:51
Speaker 3: were firmly in one of the two camps. There was
35:53
Speaker 3: a lot of booing. Women's diving played out. Similarly, the
35:58
Speaker 3: government removed tens of thousands of social media posts in
36:01
Speaker 3: China for quote inciting conflict to women were detained. And
36:06
Speaker 3: obviously there's a lot more going on here that we
36:08
Speaker 3: can unpack, but the theme of social media keeps popping
36:11
Speaker 3: up again and again.
36:11
Speaker 2: Everything I was like, oh, yeah, we.
36:13
Speaker 4: Talked about this with a K pop history, like people
36:16
Speaker 4: who stand and especially in Asian.
36:19
Speaker 1: Culture, And I could be wrong.
36:21
Speaker 4: I guess the US has this individual stalkers, but we
36:23
Speaker 4: don't see it to the level that we see in
36:26
Speaker 4: some things and K pop stands where they literally find
36:30
Speaker 4: where they're going to be at the airport, have incidents
36:33
Speaker 4: where they like come through and block their ways. People
36:36
Speaker 4: try to send odd things. Again, like the US have
36:39
Speaker 4: had a few things, but we don't typically. I could
36:43
Speaker 4: say I'm wrong because I know, like instinct fans at
36:45
Speaker 4: the shows and going to meetups, I like rarely see
36:48
Speaker 4: like that level of devotion, but also so much level
36:52
Speaker 4: of devotion that they're fighting who they think are rivals, Yeah,
36:55
Speaker 4: and somewhat made up rivals, Like they're like can you
36:58
Speaker 4: not enjoy it?
36:58
Speaker 1: Both or not?
36:59
Speaker 4: Like we'd make it was about the Backstreet Boys versus
37:01
Speaker 4: in Sync, but anyway rivalry back from like in Sync
37:04
Speaker 4: and Backstreet Boys, but there's not like I hate you,
37:08
Speaker 4: like I want Backstreet Boys to float away and go
37:11
Speaker 4: to an island or anything like.
37:12
Speaker 1: That's not a thought process for most of us.
37:16
Speaker 4: And I'm not sure if but and I say K
37:18
Speaker 4: pop stands because it may not be based in Asia either,
37:20
Speaker 4: like like there's a base there, but then outside that.
37:23
Speaker 1: There's just as much mini diehards.
37:25
Speaker 4: To that point, like I've seen this recently with like
37:28
Speaker 4: BTS Sugar or Yungi just got into trouble and like
37:32
Speaker 4: they are intense, Like arrivals of that band are like
37:35
Speaker 4: telling him, telling people that he has to be outed
37:37
Speaker 4: from BTS, which is already an established group that has
37:41
Speaker 4: made billions of wand in the in Korea, so that's
37:45
Speaker 4: not gonna happen. So it's just kind of interesting the
37:48
Speaker 4: depth that people will go to, like buying trucks to
37:53
Speaker 4: say I hate this person, get them out to sit
37:56
Speaker 4: in front of like agencies. Yeah.
37:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this was obviously well we'll have to come
38:02
Speaker 3: back and talk about this more, but a lot of
38:06
Speaker 3: the articles we're talking about how it was interesting that
38:08
Speaker 3: it was like in the tennis table tennis example, it's
38:11
Speaker 3: kind of a national sport in China, so it's very popular,
38:14
Speaker 3: it's huge, and so it's and then they also pointed
38:19
Speaker 3: out diving had a similar to women who are friends,
38:21
Speaker 3: Chinese women who are friends getting like.
38:24
Speaker 1: Just torn apart fanfic lore about them by that.
38:27
Speaker 2: I believe it. I believe it.
38:29
Speaker 1: I think that like I remember seeing a TikTok about it.
38:33
Speaker 3: They believe that, but but that it's two women from
38:38
Speaker 3: the same country and usually well I won't say this
38:43
Speaker 3: is only two examples, but what they were saying was
38:46
Speaker 3: in both cases, there's like an older one who kind
38:50
Speaker 3: of represents an older generation and one to kind of
38:52
Speaker 3: represents a younger generation, and so it's almost a generational
38:56
Speaker 3: like divide, right, But it's it's really it was very intense,
39:04
Speaker 3: and it was also talking about just how athletes in
39:07
Speaker 3: China specifically have reached that level of stardom that used
39:12
Speaker 3: to be more reserved for celebrities or singers or something
39:15
Speaker 3: like that, but now it's right.
39:18
Speaker 4: Yeah, China, we know in South Korea and North Korea
39:23
Speaker 4: definitely have athletes that they have groomed their entire lives,
39:31
Speaker 4: so this is their livelihood. But if they fail, they
39:33
Speaker 4: fell alone. If they win, they win for the with
39:36
Speaker 4: the country. Like it's just a different level. And though
39:39
Speaker 4: we do like we do love our athletes, they oftentimes
39:42
Speaker 4: have to have another job, Like they cannot live off
39:46
Speaker 4: of the earnings of the competitions all the time because
39:51
Speaker 4: it's also taxing for their body and they have to
39:52
Speaker 4: retire early, like we know all this as where other
39:55
Speaker 4: places do a whole different level of like elevated status. Right,
40:01
Speaker 4: you're big, but you have to get Simone Biles big
40:04
Speaker 4: to make money.
40:05
Speaker 1: If you're a.
40:05
Speaker 4: Bronze winner, if you're like every now and again, like
40:08
Speaker 4: and if you're not a winner at all, absolutely not right,
40:11
Speaker 4: they don't even focus on you, which is unfortunately at
40:14
Speaker 4: the whole different level. But I find that interesting because culturally,
40:18
Speaker 4: the importance of like representing your country.
40:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's different.
40:25
Speaker 3: It is, and that used to I mean we've discussed before.
40:27
Speaker 3: I get stressed a lot when I watch the Olympics,
40:30
Speaker 3: but that used to be one of my big things.
40:32
Speaker 3: So I was like, I feel like I'm feeling fear
40:34
Speaker 3: from you, like absolute fear when you fail, which freaks
40:37
Speaker 3: me out. One of the reasons this conversation did come
40:42
Speaker 3: up is that I can't remember his name, the Chinese
40:46
Speaker 3: swimmer that one.
40:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had a huge.
40:48
Speaker 3: Social media following and he deleted all of it because
40:51
Speaker 3: he was like, it's so toxic, and so that's part
40:55
Speaker 3: of what jump started this conversation.
40:58
Speaker 2: All right, now we're going to briefly touch on uniforms.
41:02
Speaker 3: We've already talked at length about the uproar around Nike's
41:05
Speaker 3: teen USA uniform reveal for Track and Fields, and how
41:08
Speaker 3: on the mannequin the women's uniform looked extremely revealing compared
41:12
Speaker 3: to the men's uniform. You can see the episode we
41:15
Speaker 3: did for more on that. But that was not the
41:18
Speaker 3: only drama around clothing. The IOC rule that athletes were
41:22
Speaker 3: allowed to wear head jobs or headscarves. However, French athletes
41:26
Speaker 3: themselves were prohibited from wearing them, with the ruling body
41:30
Speaker 3: claiming that it would be an inappropriate display of a
41:33
Speaker 3: religious symbol at one of the world's largest events.
41:36
Speaker 2: This is a.
41:37
Speaker 3: Big law in France. Doesn't get consistently used, no, but
41:44
Speaker 3: that there is a whole law that they have around them. Okay,
41:48
Speaker 3: so because of that, there is an activist organization in
41:51
Speaker 3: France trying to combat this, called Basque Portu Basketball For All,
41:56
Speaker 3: an estimated ten percent of the French population is mum,
42:01
Speaker 3: and as some have rightly pointed out, it seems that
42:03
Speaker 3: Christian crosses on necklaces are just fine.
42:06
Speaker 4: Right.
42:06
Speaker 3: But in the words of Amnesty International researcher and a
42:11
Speaker 3: Blues quote by proudly claiming that the Games will be
42:14
Speaker 3: gender equal. The French authorities are exposing their own hypocrisy
42:17
Speaker 3: of celebrating such alleged advancements while at the same time
42:21
Speaker 3: discriminating against Muslim women and girls through hijab bands in sports,
42:26
Speaker 3: and as a reminder, while more researchers needed, several studies
42:30
Speaker 3: that have been conducted suggests that uniform things like this
42:34
Speaker 3: to ter women from participating in sports, whether it is
42:37
Speaker 3: the sexualized uniform or something like this, because they did
42:40
Speaker 3: interview young Muslim girls who were like, well, I guess
42:44
Speaker 3: I can't play it then, So that's a big deal
42:48
Speaker 3: in something we should be talking about more. Also, just
43:02
Speaker 3: briefly politics, it's always interesting to watch the Olympics because
43:07
Speaker 3: you know, not everyone gets long. So you got all
43:11
Speaker 3: these countries here and there's just some real delicate dancing
43:17
Speaker 3: of what's going on. And yeah, the politics of the
43:19
Speaker 3: Olympics are generally messy because yeah, it doesn't erase what's
43:24
Speaker 3: happening in the world. So, for instance, there were a
43:27
Speaker 3: lot of scandals and issues around Russia. But I did
43:30
Speaker 3: want to highlight one women based one around Afghanistan. Under
43:34
Speaker 3: Afghanistans Taliban regime, women are prohibited from participating in sports. However,
43:40
Speaker 3: three women were allowed to attend the Olympics to compete,
43:42
Speaker 3: though the government did not officially recognize them, instead only
43:46
Speaker 3: recognizing the three men and the delegation. The fact that
43:50
Speaker 3: the IOC allowed Afghanistan to compete gave legitimacy to the
43:54
Speaker 3: unrecognized Taliban regime, at least according to a lot of
43:57
Speaker 3: stuff I read, and a lot of the pieces I
43:59
Speaker 3: read about it, and undermined any goals of gender parody.
44:03
Speaker 2: According to some.
44:05
Speaker 3: A woman from Afghanistan who was competing in the breaking
44:08
Speaker 3: contest was disqualified for displaying a flag that read free
44:11
Speaker 3: Afghan Women, because again, you can't have you're not supposed
44:15
Speaker 3: to have political.
44:16
Speaker 4: Symbols, right right, Yeah, which is brave on hurry anyway
44:23
Speaker 4: in general.
44:24
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and then just I know we've talked about
44:29
Speaker 5: this before, but just to note, as we've discussed, sporting
44:32
Speaker 5: events like this tend to cost exorbitant amounts of money,
44:36
Speaker 5: typically don't pay off, and harm those that are most marginalized.
44:42
Speaker 3: There was a lot of discussion around the unhoused and
44:44
Speaker 3: migrants being hidden away, forced out, and these are people
44:48
Speaker 3: who could use government support while that money is going
44:51
Speaker 3: to news stadium that may or may not be used again.
44:54
Speaker 3: Maybe they could have used something else that was already
44:56
Speaker 3: pretty good. On top of that, there were stories of
44:58
Speaker 3: unpaid and under paid migrant labor being used to construct
45:02
Speaker 3: these stadiums or things like that. So yep, so that
45:10
Speaker 3: brings us to some wins. Like I said, I kind
45:15
Speaker 3: of ran out of steam. I was getting all riled up,
45:17
Speaker 3: and this is like, I'm sure there's so much more
45:19
Speaker 3: we could talk about, but I didn't want to talk
45:20
Speaker 3: about some ended on a little bit of an upbeat.
45:23
Speaker 3: So yes, I despite all of this, and I know
45:27
Speaker 3: there's a lot more. There were plenty of uplifting wins
45:29
Speaker 3: for women. We already went over some of them, but
45:32
Speaker 3: here's a few, and let us know if there's one
45:34
Speaker 3: you really want us to talk about.
45:35
Speaker 2: Because there were so many records broken and so many.
45:37
Speaker 3: First yes, especially of people listeners around the world, please
45:42
Speaker 3: write them and let us know. Yeah, one thing I
45:44
Speaker 3: want to shout out is that there were several older
45:47
Speaker 3: women competing this time around. Yeah, a lot of times
45:50
Speaker 3: in the Olympics, it can be very they're twenty five,
45:54
Speaker 3: they're ancient. Which, by the way, I did see a
45:56
Speaker 3: list that puts some warm biles on the older end,
45:59
Speaker 3: and I get it, like historically, yes, but she's.
46:03
Speaker 1: Told gymnastic right.
46:05
Speaker 4: For gymnastics in itself, they usually don't like remember the
46:09
Speaker 4: back in the day, they were all like eighteen seventeen,
46:11
Speaker 4: They're like, what or sixteen? I mean we have skaters
46:14
Speaker 4: that are at fourteen.
46:15
Speaker 3: I know, Oh, I saw a pretty cute interview with
46:18
Speaker 3: the skater. This is like, oh my god, you're so young.
46:24
Speaker 3: But yeah, there were there were a lot more across
46:27
Speaker 3: the spectrum. There were plenty of young competitors that were
46:31
Speaker 3: so inspiring, and there were plenty of older competitors that
46:34
Speaker 3: were so inspiring. It's not equal by any means, but
46:37
Speaker 3: it was cool to like see the mix, and it
46:39
Speaker 3: was cool to hear like younger players talking about someone
46:44
Speaker 3: they might be competing with or competing against.
46:46
Speaker 2: And how they inspired them. That was really neat. So
46:50
Speaker 2: just a few a few things.
46:52
Speaker 3: In track and field, the US's Sydney McLaughlin Laverne beat
46:56
Speaker 3: her own record in the four hundred meter hurdles. In swimming,
47:01
Speaker 3: USA's Katie the Decki performance put her at her fourth
47:06
Speaker 3: Olympic Games gave her her eighth medal she's died for
47:11
Speaker 3: most gold medals earned and women's swimming and most gold
47:14
Speaker 3: medals one by woman. Olympian simoone Biles won the gold
47:19
Speaker 3: medal for the vault named after her. I did see
47:21
Speaker 3: a quote from her recently where she was like, I
47:23
Speaker 3: will never do it again because I did it good
47:24
Speaker 3: enough and.
47:27
Speaker 2: Died lives perfect. I have no notes. I'm good.
47:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know that she is the most decorated US
47:34
Speaker 3: gymnast in Olympic history. And then I wanted to talk
47:38
Speaker 3: about this because recently, when I did my overview of
47:41
Speaker 3: things I really enjoyed or got sucked into. When I
47:44
Speaker 3: was watching the Olympics, some of you may have noticed
47:46
Speaker 3: a glaring omission. I did not mention women's rugby. I
47:51
Speaker 3: missed it, which is a shame because it sounds like
47:53
Speaker 3: it was a real rollercoaster of a game.
47:55
Speaker 2: I was watching some of the clips last night. Ooh,
47:57
Speaker 2: I would have been so tense. A good check of
47:59
Speaker 2: my friends in college played rugby at one time or
48:01
Speaker 2: the other, so I do have fun memories of it,
48:04
Speaker 2: although they usually got injured pretty good.
48:07
Speaker 1: Yeah.
48:08
Speaker 4: Yeah, when I look at rugby, I'm like, at wow, damaging,
48:14
Speaker 4: I will say, I also did not watch it, but
48:16
Speaker 4: the clips that I've seen professional, Oh.
48:19
Speaker 3: So good, perfection great, and I love reading the quotes
48:22
Speaker 3: about it.
48:23
Speaker 2: It's so great.
48:25
Speaker 3: Anyway, the US women's rugby team pulled off a surprise upset,
48:28
Speaker 3: beating Australia for a bronze US women's first ever medal
48:31
Speaker 3: in sevens, as it's called.
48:34
Speaker 2: This win spurred a whole bunch of interest and donations
48:37
Speaker 2: for women's rugby, including some celebrities doing.
48:42
Speaker 1: Some millions of dollars. I know about up their game.
48:45
Speaker 2: They watching their game. Oh it was so good.
48:48
Speaker 3: But throughout all of this, there was discussion about player
48:51
Speaker 3: Alona Mars body type and her BMI that has been
48:56
Speaker 3: going on online. So here's a quote from people, and
49:00
Speaker 3: this is a TikTok comment exchange quote. I bet that
49:04
Speaker 3: person is a thirty percent BMI, wrote one commenter, who
49:07
Speaker 3: has since deleted their account on one of Mars's TikTok videos,
49:11
Speaker 3: which prompted the Olympian to film a response. Hi, thank
49:14
Speaker 3: you for this comment. I think you were trying to
49:16
Speaker 3: roast me, but this is actually a fact. I do
49:18
Speaker 3: have a BMI of thirty well twenty nine point three
49:21
Speaker 3: to be exact. Mar began in her video, which has
49:23
Speaker 3: been viewed more than four point three million times and
49:26
Speaker 3: liked more than six hundred and twenty nine thousand times.
49:29
Speaker 4: Right, and she went on and saying, I remember vividly
49:32
Speaker 4: in high school one time I had to turn a
49:33
Speaker 4: physical into the office and right at the bottom of
49:36
Speaker 4: the page it said overweight. And I was so embarrassed
49:39
Speaker 4: to turn that in and have that written there, She said,
49:42
Speaker 4: my whole life, I've been this way. BMI doesn't tell
49:46
Speaker 4: you what I can do. It doesn't tell you what
49:48
Speaker 4: I can do on the field, how fit I am.
49:50
Speaker 4: It's just a couple of numbers put together. Mar said,
49:53
Speaker 4: it doesn't tell you how much muscle I have or
49:56
Speaker 4: anything like that. So, yeah, I do have a BMA
49:59
Speaker 4: of thirty, I considered overweight. And by the way, even
50:02
Speaker 4: before she has been a huge catalyst on my body image,
50:07
Speaker 4: being feminine while not being what was considered feminine at
50:10
Speaker 4: the time, and loving herself and loving her body and
50:13
Speaker 4: just like being she's hilarious on TikTok. Yeah, if you
50:17
Speaker 4: have a chance to watch any of hers, which that's
50:19
Speaker 4: how I found her. Not because of rugby, because I
50:22
Speaker 4: know nothing, but because of TikTok, and that was like.
50:24
Speaker 1: Over a couple of years ago. I was like, who
50:25
Speaker 1: is this funny person and should I like her?
50:27
Speaker 4: She is y.
50:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, she's been around for a long time doing
50:33
Speaker 3: this and she also we discussed when I was doing
50:37
Speaker 3: my like what I loved about this Olympics. I said,
50:41
Speaker 3: this is a lot of memes. There's a meme of
50:44
Speaker 3: her just like powering through the field.
50:46
Speaker 4: Like not y, like literally grabbing someone by the face
50:49
Speaker 4: and slamming them to the ground, one of my favorites.
50:52
Speaker 1: It made no sense. I'll just sat there, Like what I.
50:55
Speaker 3: Did appreciate When I was reading this I cooker at
51:00
Speaker 3: risk and I read some of the comments under the
51:03
Speaker 3: people article and people were like, did the commenter over
51:08
Speaker 3: in a bronze medal?
51:09
Speaker 2: I think not.
51:09
Speaker 3: Like people were on her side, and it made me
51:11
Speaker 3: very happy to see that because that often is not
51:14
Speaker 3: the case in our online spaces.
51:17
Speaker 2: But I appreciated that.
51:20
Speaker 3: In a different post, she said, as the Olympics officially
51:23
Speaker 3: start today, I want you all to take a look
51:25
Speaker 3: at all the different body types on display. All body
51:28
Speaker 3: types matter, All body types are worthy, from the smallest
51:30
Speaker 3: gymnast to the tallest volleyball player, from a rugby player
51:33
Speaker 3: to the shot putter to a sprinter. All body types
51:36
Speaker 3: are beautiful and do amazing things. So truly see yourself
51:40
Speaker 3: in these athletes and know that you can do it too.
51:44
Speaker 1: I don't know. I definitely can't run.
51:48
Speaker 2: You'll find a sport for you.
51:51
Speaker 4: I was actually pretty good at discus throwing, to the
51:53
Speaker 4: point that I did it accidentally. And we had, you know,
51:56
Speaker 4: the summer children's games. In the school games, they assign
51:59
Speaker 4: you like it's an Olympics. They assigned me that and
52:02
Speaker 4: I flopped because I was so good when the initial
52:07
Speaker 4: when I didn't know what was happening, I was like
52:10
Speaker 4: this discus and they're like, oh, you do so maybe
52:11
Speaker 4: we're gonna put you on the team. I was like, okay,
52:14
Speaker 4: what and then I flopped real hard. I think it
52:17
Speaker 4: didn't go anywhere. I think with the opposite direction. It
52:19
Speaker 4: was one of those I was like, I gotta go
52:21
Speaker 4: home now.
52:23
Speaker 2: I understand. Sometimes something goes wrong, the pressure gets to
52:28
Speaker 2: you something and you just doesn't work out.
52:33
Speaker 1: Third grade, it was sad. That's all right, Scarred obviously.
52:38
Speaker 2: Maybe it's time for you to have a come back.
52:41
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
52:43
Speaker 1: I've been scared ever since.
52:45
Speaker 3: That's yeah, okay, all right, all right, well I did
52:50
Speaker 3: there has been unfortunately, there's been so much criticism and
52:53
Speaker 3: judgment of women's bodies. There always is at these kinds
52:56
Speaker 3: of things, So I think it's got better. I was
52:58
Speaker 3: pleasantly surprised, as I said that, the comments under this
53:01
Speaker 3: article were very supportive. And that's part of why I'm
53:04
Speaker 3: putting this.
53:04
Speaker 2: In the win column. Yes, because I feel like history
53:07
Speaker 2: is on her.
53:07
Speaker 3: Side and I'm glad that she is here saying it
53:11
Speaker 3: and that the rugby team is getting all of this
53:13
Speaker 3: recognition rightfully.
53:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm excited to say, I'm hoping kind of like
53:17
Speaker 4: how women's soccer and I know men's soccer for a while,
53:20
Speaker 4: but really women's soccer to at one point really brought
53:23
Speaker 4: up people's interests in soccer. Men's soccer too, I know,
53:27
Speaker 4: especially when they actually made it to the World Cup
53:28
Speaker 4: rug what wow. But women's soccer, because they kept winning,
53:33
Speaker 4: actually winning for a while while, that really brought up
53:36
Speaker 4: a lot of interest, which is not a typical sport.
53:40
Speaker 4: The most popular sport of sport always in the US.
53:42
Speaker 4: It is more popular now, but if you think about
53:45
Speaker 4: like ten fifteen twenty years ago it wasn't, which is
53:48
Speaker 4: unfortunate because it's a great sport. But football is going
53:51
Speaker 4: to be around, Basketball is always going to be softball,
53:54
Speaker 4: and baseball is definitely going to be around. But I'm
53:56
Speaker 4: hoping rugby, I don't know if they can. Can you
53:58
Speaker 4: do that in high school? That seems like a hus
54:00
Speaker 4: liability that sport.
54:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just putting it.
54:03
Speaker 4: On that because I don't know one mile rugby player.
54:08
Speaker 4: I don't know the one. Yeah, the women I know, Now,
54:15
Speaker 4: that's what I'm saying. I'm like, I don't know about
54:17
Speaker 4: the men, but I know about more. Don't you worry?
54:21
Speaker 2: Yeah? And I did read.
54:24
Speaker 3: Actually I think this was a comment one of the
54:26
Speaker 3: commentators made. It was it was about the basketball. You know,
54:29
Speaker 3: women's US women's basketball, they've won eight times in row. Yeah,
54:35
Speaker 3: and they were saying they were kind of in shock
54:40
Speaker 3: that it was so close.
54:41
Speaker 2: I guess because this has just been a dynasty. But
54:43
Speaker 2: one of the women brought.
54:45
Speaker 3: Up, well, because people are seeing more and more women
54:50
Speaker 3: do this and do it well, the competition is getting
54:53
Speaker 3: stronger from other places that you might not typically associate
54:57
Speaker 3: with winning in basketball or whatever it is. Because women's
55:01
Speaker 3: sport is becoming more popular and things like more broadcasts
55:06
Speaker 3: and all of that that there are more competitors now,
55:10
Speaker 3: which is a great thing which we love to see. Yes,
55:13
Speaker 3: we do love to see it. So that's that's great. Oh, yes,
55:18
Speaker 3: there's so much we could talk about. Would love to
55:21
Speaker 3: hear from you listeners if we miss anything. As mentioned,
55:26
Speaker 3: the Paralympics are coming up. They are also working on
55:29
Speaker 3: gender parody, though at the time of recording, officials believe
55:32
Speaker 3: that only forty two percent of the athletes will be women,
55:35
Speaker 3: which is about the same percentage as in Tokyo Olympics,
55:39
Speaker 3: but that could change based on final numbers. But we'll
55:43
Speaker 3: check back in.
55:44
Speaker 4: And if you're not following their TikTok whoever their social
55:47
Speaker 4: media person is, they're great.
55:49
Speaker 1: They have gained a lot of attention for it and.
55:53
Speaker 3: I love it, yes, yes, and I really appreciated that too.
55:56
Speaker 3: About how many athletes during would say, like, you know,
56:02
Speaker 3: when they're like, what does this win? Meet you at
56:04
Speaker 3: the end, they would be like, watch a Paralympics.
56:06
Speaker 1: Right, yes, and was one of those mm hmmmm hmm.
56:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we'll check back in on that.
56:12
Speaker 3: Let us know if there's any anything you're excited about,
56:15
Speaker 3: we should definitely check out. But yeah, in the meantime,
56:18
Speaker 3: send all of those thoughts our way, suggestions our way.
56:23
Speaker 3: You can email U at stuff the mom Stuff at
56:24
Speaker 3: iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on Twitter at
56:26
Speaker 3: mom Stuff Podcasts, or on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff
56:29
Speaker 3: I've Never Told You.
56:30
Speaker 2: We're also on YouTube.
56:31
Speaker 3: We have a tea public store, and we have a
56:33
Speaker 3: book that has a whole chapter about women's sports.
56:35
Speaker 2: Check that out. You can get wherever you get your books.
56:38
Speaker 3: Thinks is always hear a super producer cos Senior Executive
56:40
Speaker 3: producer My and your contributor Jolly, thank you and they
56:43
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56:45
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