Lauren Fleshmen: NPR Interview

I always thought when she was at Stanford she was a great interview. I'll always remember a Q&A she did with RW where she said something along the lines of "If it's the week before NCAAs, there's nothing wrong with saying no to dessert."

She just seemed smart and willing to talk about things honestly. Yes anorexia is a problem for women but that doesn't mean you can't do certain things at certain times of the year.

Does she still come across that way?

I ask that as I haven't listened to 44 minute interview mentioned by the OP but did read the article and I can't tell what she's saying about trans athletes (if I had to guess, I guess he's ok with trans women competing in the female category with major restrictions?).

I mean the book appears to be about how men and women are different biologically.
And how we need to coach them differently as a result.

She makes a big deal about how traumatic it was to get her period and to lose to a boy in a race for the first time as he got faster after puberty. These are things no trans woman will ever have to overcome.

So it seems to me if she's being honest, her response of how we should treat trans women - who have male bodies - in elite sport is obvious. But in the year 2022, it's not socially acceptable in many circles to have that obvious opinion, particularly when you are being interviewed by NPR.

I really want to know what she means by this:

I too am all for inclusivity. I'm all for having trans people on teams. A trans woman can be on the men's team as elite sport should be about #sexnotgender. The males on the team will have to be a little uncomfortable as will the trans woman.

We shouldn't be so narrowminded and think we can only compete against people of the same gender as us. Don't be a bigot. To say that one's gender is why female world records are approximately 10% slower than men's world records is extremely insulting to biological females. It has nothing to do with gender and 100% to do with biology.

She'd be a great podcast guest. I'll make a promise to Weldon and Jonathan to spend less than 5 minutes on the trans issue.

I like Lauren Fleshman (as a track fan) and so I listened to the whole interview (44 minutes) after dinner with my wife. We actually agree with a lot (most?) of what Lauren said. The problem, as usual, is that there are no real viable solutions to the problems that she correctly outlined.

1. As girls develop, a lot of the changes that they go through are not ideal for being better at sports. Praising the girls who are doing well creates a culture of "narrow definitions" around success in sport. What about girls who are going through difficult changes in their body composition?

2. Coaches can neither "bring up" the issue of menstruation and body composition nor can they ignore it. Talking to athletes about it would be totally out of place for most of the coaches I know. But ignoring it is not an option either.

3. Women need their own definitions of athletic success but they also like and deserve competitions. But women with more feminine bodies do worse in sports (as measured in speed, strength, etc.) when compared to women with more masculine bodies. Lauren is spot on with that (duh) but what does she suggest we do?

4. Trans-women in women's sport is both an issue of different body types (and the unfairness that goes with that) and social-emotional value of inclusion. There is no easy answer but we need to simultaneously "hold onto" both of those realities. She is pro inclusion though she used to be against it.

5. Female athletes should not be sexualized as a marketing tool by their sponsors, but women who choose to promote themselves with their looks are free to do so. So who gets the clicks and the contracts?

6. Athletic contracts punish women because they lose out whenever they have a baby. My wife pointed out (correctly) that this imbalance is not limited to pro athletes! It is indeed unfair that when we decided to have kids as a couple, she is the one (not me!) who took the hit in terms of pay and seniority.

But on none of these issues did Terry Gross (who I really respect) nor Lauren Fleshman (who I think is great) come up with a single answer. I don't know what you want us to do about any of these issues beyond just say, "yes, those problems are real!"

I don't know how to fix any of this.

Here’s the actual transcript as it pertains to the issue of trans inclusion:

“GROSS: I also want to ask a question about trans athletes. You know, if you're saying that, you know, men's bodies develop in different ways that favor, like, you know, strength and endurance and that women's bodies, as they prepare for the possibility of motherhood, don't function in the same way as male bodies - so given that, if somebody is a trans woman and developed for years as a male and maybe went through puberty as a male and then becomes a trans woman, did they have certain advantages, physically, hormonally, that will give them advantages in the sport that they've chosen?

FLESHMAN: That's a really good question. And it's obviously a very contentious, complicated issue that we're wrestling with in culture right now. And I have evolved my perspective a lot on this subject from a place of defensiveness of what I viewed as women's sports from a sex-based perspective to being very pro-inclusion of trans athletes in every aspect of life, including sports. But that took a little bit of a journey because I am so familiar with sex-based differences in sport. I've lived it. I've watched it. They exist - that to have some trans rights activists in this space denying that those exist or of - not - kind of being afraid of looking at that science or looking to debunk it created a lot of resistance in me, and I see it in a lot of the athletes that I have raced against over time. Or it's a thing that - we have to acknowledge that sex-based difference exists and hold that in one hand and hold in the other hand that inclusion is extremely important and that our definition of fairness is so narrow.
If we're only looking at fairness as, you know, who's competing in the Olympic Games and who has experienced what kind of puberty and whatever - you can do that if you want to. You can spend all your time focused on that. But fairness is about a lot more than that. And we can hold the sex-based differences and still be for inclusion. And I think that's actually critical to the inclusion of trans people is not denying the science that we know, not denying the lived experiences of female-bodied people but just deciding that even given some of those things, we still choose to compete together to be an inclusive space and experience all the benefits of having trans people on our teams, in our lives and competing alongside us.“

Yes Rojo, you’ll need to interview her to understand if she puts any limits on being inclusive in this regard. Without speaking to her, I think it’s unfair to insinuate that her statements don’t reflect her real feelings or were made because she’s “afraid” of speaking her mind on NPR or elsewhere. We should take what she says at face value, that she’s well aware of the biological differences between males and females, but at least in certain settings at least, “inclusion” trumps “fairness.” She’s not the only elite female athlete who feels this way, eg Candace Parker and others.

Anyway, Lauren certainly knows all about the sex differences, and really a major focus of hers is the damage done to biological females, both physical and psychological injury, because of the denial by athletes themselves, coaches and society in general of those differences in an effort to maximize female athletic performance. I think her main point is that starving, purposefully or inadvertently working to reduce your breasts or hips or avoid your period in pursuit of athletic accomplishment is a form of abuse and misogyny, especially when encouraged by coaches and trainers and agents, etc.

You bring up so many great points and dilemmas. We all generally respect autonomy but are against coercion. If a female athlete decides on her own to drive herself into RED-S in the pursuit of a gold medal, what’s is the proper response? Ignore her and see how it goes? Cheer her on? Warn her that there may be a short term win, but at a grave long term cost? Prevent her from competing until she’s “healthy?” It’s easier to condemn obvious outside pressure and coercion and of course sexualization, but it’s so much harder to know what to do when some or much of what’s going on is from self drive and motivation. We love stoics and ascetics until it goes over some sort of uncertain line.

Great post. FANTASTIC.

The reality in life is we can't have it all. We can't fix it.

We tell kids you can have it all, but that's not really true. We have real bodies that go through puberty, get old, break down, etc. There is only so much time in the day - it must be shared between fitness, work, family, social life, school etc. Do you think Elon Musk would have time to train 100mpw?

My good friend from Princeton - a mom of 4 - told me she doesn't know of a single female classmate from Princeton who had kids that works 100% full-time. Every mom is working something like at much 75-80% so they have time for kids. Are they and your wife suffering a 'loss'? It could easily be argued and probably should be argued it's a 'gain'. It depends on your definition of success.

That's correct. Her success is greater than mine since it embraces multiple areas of achievement. She is like twice the person I am because she did the career thing AND raised a gaggle of awesome kids!

Her point (and Lauren's) is that the external validation of money and seniority and so on only accrues to those people who are able to be at work (or on the track) without interruption, year after year. There is no allowance for female puberty or pregnancy which are real (if temporary) set-backs for women in that regard. Women just have to "accept" that.

But as I said, I am not sure a solution exists for that problem.

It's all very well for her to have this opinion now that she has finished competing. However, her willingness to cede fair competition to the altar of inclusion is unfair in that she's speaking for everyone else as well.

I'm old enough to have grown up in a time of coed sports teams (play with the boys or don't play), limited access to gyms and playing fields when girls' teams did exist, ancient poorly fitting uniforms, etc. As a girl, I was part of the fight for access to sports, and being able to play on girls teams changed the game for me. I don't know what the "solution" is but benefit to a tiny number of trans athletes inflicts significant harm on a much larger body of girls and women.

Accommodations such as letting trans athletes practice with their chosen gender are fine. But ultimately, the good of the many should take precedence of the good of the few.

As for puberty, I went from 95 pounds to 115 pounds and my mile time went from around six minutes to closer to 7 minutes from freshman to sophomore year. I clawed it back down again and broke 6 for the first time junior year, but sophomore year was brutal. I had no idea what was going on. My parents were telling me I was overtraining (I was running maybe 25 mpw.) My coaches said nothing at all - and I would have been mortified if they'd talked about menstruation. I *knew* that weight had something to do with it and started weighing myself daily. In the end, I grew into my new body without developing an eating disorder. But I remember the extreme frustration of becoming "slow" and not getting a believable explanation from anyone.

Agree with you and I have always liked LF as a competitor, even the "balls" gaffe, as she was smart and independent and seemed to move in a more functional way than fellow Stanford alum Gabe Jennings. She was the epitome of Stanford's undergrad mission. However, as she transitioned out of the proverbial arena, she's become a more strident critic as she's also aligned with Oiselle/Sally Bergeson. I know she likes to target Nike. Also USATF? Has she ever criticized Vin Lananna? Is she aligning with organizations and entities larger than herself to effect positive change to that which she criticizes? Or is she fine with the status of being a lone crier in the wilderness?

Fair enough. And my pain point is that saying a transwoman is a woman is also misogyny. A transwoman is a transwoman.

A transwoman doesn't have to reduce their breasts or hips to be great at sports - they were born that way. Anyways, enough trans talk, it looks like an interesting book. I hope to read it and then have her on the podcast.

Here is a link for anyone that wants the book:

Why don’t you try to book Lauren for an interview on the podcast or in print? I hope she wouldn’t refuse because of some prejudgment of LRC. She’s got a book to sell, so now is the time. She’s mentioned she has thought a lot about this issue. You can press her, politely, on the inconsistency of her view or explore its limits. I’m not being adversarial. Here is a former athlete who competed at the highest levels in the sport. She’s an athlete that has given a lot of thought to the special burdens of the sport on female athletes. Let’s get her full perspective on all of these issues. When it comes to athletics you and JG are far better equipped to interview her than Terry Gross.

Sorry, I see you intend to read the book and invite her. Read it this week and invite her now, that’s what I’m saying. JG can be assigned to read the book tonight!!