Episode 83: Progress for Whom? With Britni de la Cretaz

In this episode, Johanna and Nathan interview one of our favorite critical sports journalists,  Britni de la Cretaz, about their tireless work spotlighting trans and non-binary athletes and critiquing sporting discrimination. They have written for a phenomenal array of outlets, including the New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Vogue, the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, and many more, and have a co-authored book with Lyndsey D’Arcangelo coming out in November 2021: HAIL MARY: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League.

Britni begins by sharing how they got into sports journalism. They pinpoint why mainstream sports media remains loathe to hire and include critical analyses of sport like their work and why hustle culture absolutely is exhausting for them and other freelance journalists. We transition to Britni’s Vice analysis in “Why Can’t WNBA Broadcasters get the Players’ Names Right?” Britni walks us through various tools available to broadcasters, racism, as well as the role played by the decentralization of the league’s coverage on the mispronunciation of Black, Brown and international basketball players in the WNBA. The work that broadcasters’ pronunciation forces onto the players is of crucial importance. Our discussion of Britni’s superb work on nonbinary athletes such as Layshia Clarendon and others in Sports Illustrated last summer continues this theme by highlighting how the questions that Clarendon and other nonbinary players have to ask themselves just to keep playing constitutes additional labor that we often forget about. The WNBA’s collective efforts to support her in an inclusive announcement about him provide ideas for how leagues can support nonbinary athletes’ humanity first and foremost.

The conversation explores what can make sport unsafe for trans and nonbinary people (such as cishet white feminists who argue for segregating cis athletes from trans and nonbinary ones), and to what extent sport can be reformed or recreated to make it safe for them. Britni also takes us through their Bitch Media piece about the NBA’s hiring and preference for male coaches with known assault and/or predatory qualities like Jason Kidd and Chauncey Billups over Becky Hammond. The possibilities and limits of representation for women – namely white and white-passing women - in sport organizations, broadcasting, and teams continue to prevent altruistic inclusion, as they analyzed in ‘progress for whom?’

Britni’s work explores the intersection of sports, gender, culture, and queerness. Their website is here where you can (and should!) subscribe to Britni’s newsletter. You can follow them on Twitter here @britnidlc.

 

For a transcription of this episode, please click here. (Updated semi-regularly Credit @punkademic)

Research Assistance for The End of Sport provided by Abigail Bomba.

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