all elite athletes are kinda trans-coded tbh

freaks, unite

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I had planned on having so much more Olympic content for you all, so I’m pretty bummed that a combination of closing on a house/planning a move (yay!) and covid hitting our family (boo!) during the Games has meant an inability for me to capitalize on them the way I had hoped to.

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A story that I’ve been pitching since last year was finally published yesterday at SELF.

Michael Pruett/Atsushi Tomura/Rudy Gonzalez/NCAA Photos/Getty Images (via SELF.com)

I spoke to three elite trans women athletes—disc golfer Natalie Ryan; hurdler CeCé Telfer; and BMX rider Chelsea Wolfe—about the impact that being banned from their sport has had on their mental health and well-being:

“Getting rid of the very few of us who are out there is absolutely just taking away the next generation’s ability to see themselves in these positions and want to push themselves to get to that level too,” Chelsea Wolfe, a professional BMX rider, tells SELF. “The repercussions are going to be felt for generations.”

With so much focus on imagined, future situations, the experiences of real people are missed. Here are three of their stories.

A lot of material was left on the cutting room floor for this one and I will be sharing it starting next week. It includes an interview with a fourth athlete, cyclist Austin Killips, who didn’t make the final story, as well as more from my interview with Wolfe, and an interview with my editor on the story, SELF’s editor-in-chief, Rachel Miller. You won’t want to miss any of that.

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I have been asked a lot what I think about the absolute shitshow that is the conversation around Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. I have been writing about this rhetoric and its harms for the better part of five years and I don’t have much to add anymore. Scroll down for a reading list of some of the best writing I’ve seen about the situation.

What I want to talk about today is something I’ve hesitated to put into print because, frankly, cis people are probably going to hate it. A lot of the