The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports

by Michael Waters, Jennifer Pickens (Narrator)

🎧Listening Length = 9 hrs and 31 mins

The story of the early trans athletes and Olympic bureaucrats who lit the flame for today’s culture wars.

In December 1935, Zdeněk Koubek, one of the most famous sprinters in European women’s sports, declared he was now living as a man. Around the same time, the celebrated British field athlete Mark Weston, also assigned female at birth, announced that he, too, was a man. Periodicals and radio programs across the world carried the news; both became global celebrities. A few decades later, they were all but forgotten. And in the wake of their transitions, what could have been a push toward equality became instead, through a confluence of bureaucracy, war, and sheer happenstance, the exact opposite: the now all-too-familiar panic around trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming athletes.

In The Other Olympians, Michael Waters uncovers, for the first time, the gripping true stories of Koubek, Weston, and other pioneering trans and intersex athletes from their era. With dogged research and cinematic flair, Waters also tracks how International Olympic Committee members ignored Nazi Germany’s atrocities in order to pull off the Berlin Games, a partnership that ultimately influenced the IOC’s nearly century-long obsession with surveilling and cataloging gender.

Immersive and revelatory, The Other Olympians is a groundbreaking, hidden-in-the-archives marvel, an inspiring call for equality, and an essential contribution toward understanding the contemporary culture wars over gender in sports.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Sports, Queer, LGBT, Politics, Audiobook

Audible Audio

First published June 4, 2024

Reviews

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written history that takes the reader through the personal lives and systemic fuckery of how the “question of gender” invaded the sports world alongside (and in tandem with) the rise of fascism in Europe and America. Both histories are written carefully and vividly and the narratives are organized to give the reader a true insight into the life and times of the pre- and post-war world of sports.

[Traci Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A super well written and researched history book about sports history I knew nothing about. Waters writes a very clear and compelling narrative about a complicated topic and includes so many facets. If you like sports, Nazi history, queer history, or stories for "hidden" figures this books does all of that and more.

[Nev · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS WAS SO FASCINATING! The Other Olympians details the stories of several athletes who publicly transitioned in the 1930s, calls for sex testing in women’s sports, and how that was tied into the Nazi Party and the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. It’s always so interesting to go back and see true stories of queer/trans individuals in history, it just makes it so clear that this is something that has always been around no matter what certain people try to say. It’s also so frustrating to see how current ideas about needing to ban trans women from women’s sports can be traced back to misinformation, fascism, and the Nazi Party.

Seriously, this book is so eye opening. I had never heard of the stories of these athletes who transitioned on the world stage. The trans men featured in the book all transitioned after competing as female athletes. This caused a stir about keeping men out of women’s sports, but none of these men wanted to go back to competing against women.

The author covers all the different conversations people were having about wanting to start sex testing for women's sports. He details how there was actually a lot of public support for the men after they transitioned, and a lot of the detractors or the people who were the most adamant about implementing sex testing came from the Nazi Party or were sympathizers. There’s a lot of discussion in the book about how sex isn’t a binary category and how these men trying to set up the rules couldn’t even really describe who they were trying to keep out of women’s sports.

I definitely recommend this book for people who are interested in LGBTQ+ history. It makes so much sense to see how the history of sex testing in women’s sports was tied to fascism, especially when thinking about who is continuing that messed up cause in the present. I ended up listening to the whole book in one day because it was just so engrossing.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an advance copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

man. i don’t even care about sports like that and yet this slapped so supremely. if you’re gonna read a book of queer history this month, make it this one. thoughtful, well-researched, and wonderfully clear about the first transgender athletes and the origins of sex testing in sports. (surprise surprise, it’s the fucking nazis!) zdeněk koubek i would like to formally offer my hand in marriage. avery brundage i am going to dig you up so i can kill you again. this book is tremendous but it also made me so angry, and so sad.

[laurel [the suspected bibliophile] · Rating 5 out of 5]

Did the scrutiny over Imane Khelif's supposed masculinity piss you off?

Did your blood boil over Caster Semenya's exclusion and stigmatization over her intersexuality?

Did you ever wonder...why the hell are women in sports scrutinized so heavily? Why is their femininity brought up time and time again? Why are women with muscles called men and why the hell are trans women excluded from women's sports when biology is weird and trans women are women?

If you ever sat down in the dark of night and asked yourself these questions, then this is a really good starting point.

At the core is, of course, white supremacy, and laying in the root of the matter is...drumroll please *NAZIS*

YES, this book is all about Nazis.

Anywho, roll back the time...to a time when things weren't as simple as we pretend they were. It was the 1920s, and the Olympics was still figuring its shit out with regards to prestige, regulations and...more regulations. And, of course, the womenfolk. Ew, girls wanted to compete too. Yeah, there was a hefty dose of sexism.

As a response to the general exclusion of women at the Olympics, particularly in women's track and field, Alice Milliat created the Women's World Games, hosted four times between 1922 and 1934. She eventually kinda agreed to roll the Women's World Games into the Olympics, and was ousted from her position by Nazis who were gearing up for the Berlin 1936 games (who didn't really want women but also wanted to establish their white supremacy in all things but also were at a quandary because their version of femininity was dainty and wholesome and tough but in the way stereotypical Greek women were wholesome and tough—it was all geared towards motherhood).

Coupled with the sports politics going on, two very prominent athletes announced they were trans men. Zdeněk Koubek, the most famous Czech athlete, and British athlete Mark Weston, to be exact.

Their announcements sent the sports world into a tizzy.

Why were men competing in women's sports? What did this mean for world records?

Of course, Weston had already retired when he made his announcement and Koubek had no desire to compete in women's sports anymore since he wasn't a woman, but he was kept out of men's sports.

Fast forward to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which were...well. Filled with Nazis and fascism. And among the Nazis was a dude who was like, "no men in women's sports—we gotta test the women to make sure they're not men." Which. Okay. Already dubious for several reasons. The first being, why aren't they testing the men? The second being that sex and gender (conflated in 1930s as one thing) was already well known to be a nebulous and hard to define thing even without a firm grasp knowledge of chromosomes and biology.

If today's biologists have a hard time definitively defining what a woman is and is not, how the fuck are some sports dudes in the 1930s? Maybe like, listen to the individual person to tell you what their gender is, but fuck that would be way too much common sense. Nope. The 1930s sports dudes are gonna look at genitalia. And labias are, you know, famously uniform in appearance (...this is sarcasm).

Alongside Jesse Owens was Helen Herring Stephens, a six foot tall absolute beast of a woman who's womanhood was immediately questioned. Stephens won the 100m—and was immediately under scrutiny because she wasn't a stereotypical dainty waif. She was tall and had biceps, egad. The reason for the heavy scrutiny in women's track and field was because these sports had a greater participation among working class women, which often introduced a wider spectrum of gender expression.

As you can imagine, the rulings were real fucked up, and impacted cis women alongside trans women and intersex women—and the sex test requirements remain in place today. While it's generally acknowledged that certain physical traits are better for certain sports (tall people for basketball, fast twitch muscles vs slow twitch, etc), women who compete in women's sports are subjected to even more scrutiny, from character to appearance to testosterone levels—which adversely impact queer women and women of color, specifically Black women.

Wrapped up in this discussion of sports and Olympics is also the history of 1920s and 1930s Germany and the brutal crushing of "non-desirables" (read: the Holocaust). It's also a story of LGBTQ+ people, particularly trans people, in Germany, the rest of Europe and the United States, a history of women in sports, and a history of Nazis being rehabilitated and continuing on their merry, stinking white supremacist lives post-Hitler. It's a fascinating look at how history bobbles and weaves through time, how things mirror and refract, and how often nostalgia and looking back flatten nuance and depth.

Anywho, if you're interested in women's sports history and are particularly interested in trans men in sports in the 1920s and 1930s and how media (and the Nazis, don't forget them!) conflated the two subjects into a false moral panic, this is a really, really good book to read.

[Ruxandra Grrr · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating account of how time is, actually, a flat circle, and the bullshit culture wars and gender policing we're dealing with today actually began almost a century ago. It feels really sad how we've learned almost nothing. It's braiding stories of trans, non-binary people, and also women whose bodies did not conform to societal expectations, (or, as Waters cites likes. Because yeah, this is actually about what some people, mostly men, like about a woman and so would want that to fit their definition of what a woman is), with the sinister story of the Nazi Olympic Games in 1936 and the complicity and bigotry of a pissant American in charge of the American Olympic stuff, whose name I just don't feel like mentioning here, cause he sucks.

I've never been a sports person, though I did learn to love yoga at some point. I was absolutely mocked in school for the way I ran, so I never found pleasure in it. But I can understand deeply the pleasure of getting your body to do a thing through movement, wind in your hair and all that. I found the stories of transmasc guys Zdeněk Koubek and Mark Weston very poignant and well-rounded. I particularly liked Michael Waters' commentary on how both of these guys thought homosexuality was 'inferior' and all they wanted was to assimilate into heterosexual lives and marriages. Fair enough, life was even more terrible for queer people at the time.

At the same time, it's shocking how much the history of organized sports is entwined with eugenics and the policing of gender and moral panics. There are descriptions of how Nazi sports authorities tried to physically ubermensch their athletes (literally to make them superior, physically, blechh) and I can trace a line (or see a whole complex journey) from that to the endlessly optimizing that bodies are encouraged to do today, in order to perform 'health'.

The current moral panic that we have about sports is ridiculous. These people didn't know what they were doing as they created the framework for sporting competitions that has been fully naturalized today and is being taken for granted. It's all a scaffolding of shitty moral issues nobody should care about, political machinations, gender segregation and anti-scientific opinions. If you ask me, we should unpack, but after that we should burn the whole suitcase also. It's widely known that uber-successful athletes like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps have particularities to their bodies that make them extra good at what they do. Should they be eliminated as outliers? No, because they don't have womanly or womanly-adjacent bodies to be policed, examined through invasive texting. I think there's a much better way to do sports competitions, way out of this box that has been built only on who some people wanted to exclude. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Been meaning to do a little pilgrimage and find the plaque for Magnus Hirschfeld that's here in Berlin and pay my respects. I'm very happy I requested the local library to bring this, and that I was the first one to snatch it up! Very recommend!

[Abigail · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is SO good. as a reluctant reader of non fiction, I found this so readable and engaging. easily the most I’ve ever cared about the Olympics!

[claire]

thank you fsg for the arc!!

the other olympians traces the history of trans and intersex athletes. while focusing specifically on events leading up to and encompassing the berlin olympics in 1936, michael waters manages to expertly weave together the history of sex testing in sports with the modern implications of doing so.

full disclosure: i do not care about the olympics. all of it is a bit too patriotic for my liking (lol). but seeing a nonbinary athlete win the 1500m at the olympic trials this year absolutely moved me. so reading this book at this specific moment in time just really worked. at this point in time, this book holds tremendous value and isn't afraid to point out the absolute evil at the core of sex testing policies.

i did find the structure of the beginning of this book kind of hard to follow, although i understand why. there was simply a lot to set up and a lot of historical figures to introduce. i wish this information was delivered more smoothly, but i was able to find my footing as the book progressed.

this quote in particular spoke to me (technically quoting from an arc, nobody yell at me):

"sex testing, from the start, was never about an actual threat to women's sports. it was always about the perception of a threat; the ambient sense of panic around femininity, masculinity, and gender transition; the feeling that something fundamental was shifting in the relationship between gender and sports and that the only way to stop it was to forcibly examine the bodies of anyone deemed suspect. it was policy rooted not in real harm, but in abstract fear."

out now from fsg!! educate yourselves!! and trans rights are human rights!! <3

[sohini]

GENDER BENDING OLYMPIANS TELL HITLER TO GET FUCKED!

This book could not have come at a more timely moment, and I'm so glad it did! It's hard to believe that the origins of sex testing athletes are so forgotten. But as is clear globally, in many different ways right now, the world more than failed to reckon with Nazism and its legacy—over and over, 20th century-style fascism, biological essentialism, anti-semitism and heteropatriarchy are misremembered. This book explores with precision the ways in which a lack of reckoning allowed these evils to live on, shifting in form but not defeated. Nazi or Nazi-sympathetic IOC officials who set in motion sex testing were never held responsible for their Nazism (@ Mr. Brundage, eat shit!), and thus the origins of the sex testing regime receded, the practice was pushed along by a few effective spurts of misinformation, and sex testing was allowed to become "the way things are done."

In addition to its timeliness, I appreciate the deeply committed research that made this book possible. Waters pulls from an enormous archive, bringing to life the actions, desires, struggles and hypocrisy of Olympic athletes and their tormenters. If his goal is to unflatten this moment in queer history—to add depth to figures who transgressed boundaries of gender and sexuality long before Love is Love—he succeeds completely.

[Andreas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, well written and very well researched - the story of several trans athletes as well as a history of the early olympics (specifically through the lens of gender). Definitely one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sport’s clams to fairness, to equality of opportunity, to the merits and reward of ‘natural talent’ are powerful myths that shape our vision of one of the most potent cultural forces of the modern era, and one of the most significant of contemporary entertainment industries. A key factor in this seeming equity and fairness is sports’ sex distinction – the intense and close to universal separation of men’s and women’s sport. It’s long struck me that one of the great ironies of this distinction was the claim that it is about fairness for women athletes and their safety – and to be fair there are cases where that claim carries weight.

But I could never understand the rationale for separate women’s competitions in sports such as pool, or darts – which led me as a younger scholar exploring the meaning of sport that perhaps the differentiation on the basis of sex is not to protect women, but to protect men’s claims to universal dominance…. As I looked more and more at histories of sport it became obvious that men had gone out of their way to actively and forcefully exclude women from the organisation of and participation in sport – and when finally forced to admit them did all they could to assert women’s inferiority. I recall as a teenager wondering about the ‘women’s tees’ on my local golf course (over the back fence from home – I was never a golfer). It was explained, of course, that they were allow women to play shorter games because they could not hit as far – until it occurred to me that in some cases the women’s tee made the freeway merely 20 metres less than the men’s, and that the distance suggested a symbolic not physiological weakness.

The gendering of sport has never gone way – but with the rise of especially successful women’s commercial sports in the last 25 years or so the denigration of women’s sport became less taken for granted, while remaining pervasive; there seemed to be a kind of ‘separate but equal’ liberalism about it. In the last 10 years or so there has been a revival of an assertion of sex differentiation, linked in part to enhanced testing techniques identifying intersex athletes and the contemporary reactionary moral panic about trans athletes. This despite sex testing being around for 75 years or more, and as this impressive, engaging, and essential study by Michael Waters shows, grounded in defensive masculinity, white supremacy, and fascist politics.

Waters weaves together several strands of a subtle but potent argument from across the 1930s. At its heart are several athletes who very publicly transitioned in the 1930s – British shot putter Mark Weston, Polish javelin specialist Witold Smętek, Belgian cyclist Willy de Bruyn, and most substantively Czech sprinter Zdenek Koubek (Waters labels them all with their transitioned names, all four were female to male and transitioned after their athletic careers were over). These tales of transition are powerful, moving, and much less controversial it seems than we might, with our contemporary liberal self-assuredness, presume. They also allow Waters to position this understanding in the wider 1930s discussions of sex and gender while also demonstrating the power and extent of the rejection by reactionary and right-wing forces, then as now, of notions of gender fluidity and sex transition.

This shifting status of sexology provides one the contextual framings of the book and a significant element of the decisions by sporting organisations to vigorously enforce a crudely defined sex binary, but it is in some ways the least potent of those framings. More significant are the machinations with in sports governing bodies – notably the International Amateur Athletic Association (IAAF, now World Athletics) and the International Olympic Committee – to enforce their control over women’s sport. This was given impetus during the European inter-war period by the formation of the Women’s World Games under the control of the Fédération Sportive Féminine Interantionale (FISI). This threat to the IAAF & the IOC was a challenge to the authority of their leadership but was more a threat to the image of sport as a masculine realm and to the masculinity of its participants; the organisation’s effort to seize control of women’s sport were intended to discipline it and ultimately repress it. If repression was not an option, and the extent of repression was great, women’s sport would be so narrowly defined as to defend the masculine.

Waters, further, shows how this drive to control found a powerful ally fascist German sport and the organisers of the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin. Here fascist ideology aligned with the reactionary politics of sports leaders in the IAAF and IOC, with the added power of the endorsement of the state and enforcement via state power. That is to say, the crude binaries of the reactionary ideologies of the time were implemented in sport by the fascist medics overseeing sport at the 1936 Olympics, in effect implementing a system we still have despite technological advances.

The Other Olympians is a fabulously written book, engaging and rigorous, scholarly with a trade orientation so designed for a ‘general’ audience that tells a story that is both historically powerful and insightful, and potently contemporary. It was also, for me, a book packed full of ‘of course’ (or more accurately d’oh) moments as Waters made connections between things I knew of but had either not connected or not seen the implications of for this story of sex delimitation. It is superb and a major contribution to our understanding of sport in the 1930s, key contemporary issues in sports governance and organisation, current political struggles over sport, sex, and gender, and our contemporary understandings of sex, gender, and wellbeing. I cannot recommend it too highly.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

Overall I did like this, but it had quite a few distracting shortcomings.

I really enjoyed learning about Zdeněk Koubek and Mark Weston. It was really cool to see that the general public was fairly accepting of these trans athletes, and were just curious more than anything, even though they might have used language considered offensive today. Waters wrote in the author's note that this book is "a story of queer possibilities," showing that history isn't always linear, and not every time and place in the past was terrible to be queer. I think he really succeeded in this, showing the various reactions to trans athletes (mostly positive, though a few negative ones as well). And that is the major success of this book.

I also really enjoyed learning more about the history of the Olympics, especially Alice Milliat and the Women's World Games pre-Olympics. She did so much for female athletes in the face of so much backlash, with very little recognition. She was so inspiring. It was also great to see her support Koubek post-transition—no TERFs here. And while it was absolutely infuriating, I'm glad I know now about the bigoted history of the IOC. Avery Brundage was a fucking awful person and he does not deserve to rest in peace. It did make me question the entire concept of an Olympics though, if it has such terrible roots as this, full of Nazis and eugenicists and that ilk. Have we really moved past that legacy today? I don't think so.

However, where the book lost me is in its extreme repetitiveness. Waters constantly mentioned that the men in the IOC making decisions "didn't seem to think or care about [insert author's argument's here]." I understand the author felt the need to rebut these people's awful views, but it got so tiring. I GET IT, they were bigots, you don't need to explain that every time you describe one of their awful decisions! There was even one quote of Brundage's where he said women athletes were ugly and probably mostly men anyway that was repeated verbatim twice and referenced multiple times. Again, I get it, he was terrible. Please stop repeating things! I also think the author only really had one argument—that sex testing had fascist roots that reverberate today. And that was repeated over and over again. Again.... I get it.

The book was organized chronologically, which normally I do like, but it bounced around all the various historical figures so much that it was hard to keep track of people's life stories. The author discussed many other trans athletes living around the same time as Koubek and Weston, and while I liked learning about them as well, there were so many of them that were mentioned so sporadically that I would forget them in between mentions and need a refresh every time.

And while I do think for the most part that this book was very well sourced, there were quite a few scenes of pure dialogue between historical figures with no cited sources. How is the author coming up with these intricate scenes, complete with descriptions of the people's emotions at the time? That's a major pet peeve of mine in non-fiction. And there was also the fact that Koubek's writings seemed very unreliable, which Waters mentioned repeatedly in the footnotes... that are not read in the audiobook. So an audio-only reader would get a completely different impression of Koubek's story, thinking everything he said was accurate and that is just not the case (really wish non-fiction audiobooks would read out footnotes).

Also, considering this book had a major focus on Nazis, I think Waters' analysis of the antisemitism of the time was pretty lacking. He pretty much glossed over the actual Holocaust. While he did mention the discrimination happening towards Jews in the 1930s, I think he should have emphasized that it literally ended in a genocide. It seems like he assumes his readers would know that already, and while I would hope everyone reading this would know that, in a book whose main argument is that sex testing is bad because of its origin with the Nazis, their atrocities should be clearly outlined. And to be honest, I think he also overemphasized the Nazi's homophobia in comparison to their antisemitism, as if they were two separate things. When in reality, they were linked—the Nazis considered homosexuality to be a "Jewish perversion." They didn't just happen to hate both queer people and Jewish people—they hated queer people specifically because they blamed Jews for their existence.

Most of this review is devoted to my criticisms, but I still overall enjoyed this and am really glad it exists. The author had a great idea, but this book would have been a lot stronger if it was more tightly edited and sourced.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the start of the Olympics, panic about masculine women always focused on track-and-field sports. In the context of the Olympics, track and field attracted the highest shares of working-class women and women of color, who were deemed less feminine than their rich, white counterparts. Gender surveillance, in other words, felt most imperative in track and field because of the demographic composition of its athletes.

I went out of my way to get a copy of this at my workplace, which should tell you something about my bias. To be fair, the nearest public library with a copy is 35 miles away, so acquiring this during Pride Month of all times would have been easy had a patron requested it. Had a patron requested it, mind you. In any case, here's an exceedingly accessible history of gender transition surrounding Hitler's Olympics, focused on those athletes most primarily impacted by the chokehold of hate that reduces communities to breeding stock and sportsmanship to eugenics. For that's what this obsession over "protecting (white cishet perisex) women is about from late 1930s Germany to mid 2020s United States: eugenics. Focus on how an individual "cheats" through their very existence and suddenly every bigotry under the sun, from antisemtism and racism to classism and xenophobia can be excused (accusations of the unnatural from the drug use the sexuality the "antisocial behavior" and the hyperfocus on athletics sure proves a convenient brush with which nations paint across each other).It's a story that Waters argues started from the most flimsy of reasons that simply lurched into the 21st century through sheer status quo inertia, for if there's anything a settler/imperial state likes, it's a reason to individually humiliate in a way that tips over the domino that leads to both lucrative contract and "nation building" exercise (just look at Abu Ghraib for a sidelong example of such).

To hear Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the Nazi paramilitary group the SS, tell it, the Nazi hostility toward the queer communities stemmed out of a preoccupation with the national birth rate. In the Nazi eugenics state, anyone who underwent a sex-change surgery, or who slept predominantly with people of the same sex, was one fewer reproducer.

For all my praise, though, I will say that the author could've gone harder (just look how many times Karl Ritter von Halt gets full-name-introductioned throughout the narrative, as if the reader weren't capable of remembering more than a half dozen key historical players). Such a critique is well presented here, and it makes me wish Waters had included a selected bibliography so I would have a clearer idea of where to go from here. In any case, though, this is a wide eyed view of what was, how it was torn down, and how the NYT and other transphobic screeds are just mewlers and pukers shuddering before the onslaught that is reality. For I write this in the hours after attending my local pride parade and the hours before I go to the after party, and if a trans man dealing with cancer can find hope enough to get back out there these days, so can you. And if you need a boost of courage from a book like this checked out from your local library, as someone who manages the purchase suggestions for mine, it never hurts to ask. Who never know whose day you will make, or whose existence you will revitalize.

Dr. Morris Fishbein, the long-serving editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association penned [...] "No doubt in various places in the United States today there are little girls growing up who will eventually turn out to be predominately male [...W]hat they need most at this time is proper understanding by their parents, [...] doctors [,] and the community in general.

1936, folks.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing history! At times I thought, am I reading about the 1930s or now? Lots of lessons and takeaways. Trans people have always existed!

I believe it's in Waters' afterword where he easily breaks down the problems with limiting sports to men and women only. I'd love for all our lawmakers to read this, but especially democrats who just get it wrong (looking at you, Newsom).

[Ella · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really super torn about this one. On the one hand, I super respect what it’s doing, its political aims in problematising past understandings of sex and gender and the history of sex testing in athletics (particularly women’s athletics). On the other hand, for all the stated aims of complicating the picture, it sometimes feels Waters tells too simplistic a story. It feels like a good vs evil that elides almost anything that doesn’t fit the narrative of repressive sports gender testing. This is perhaps not surprising when one is writing about the Nazis, because Nazis. But there’s a more interesting story buried within the facts here— neither Weston nor Koubek attended the 1936 Olympics as spectators, but another gender-nonconforming athlete, one who had been banned from women’s sports for her out and out queerness, had a double mastectomy allegedly to fit in racing cars, and was prosecuted under French crossdressing laws, did. It was Violette Morris, and she was a guest of the Nazis and would later work for the Gestapo in occupied France. She’s not mentioned once in this book, even though she fits well into patterns of fear around gender-nonconforming, trans, and queer athletes that Waters explores, even though she could bring in a fascinating look at how fascist movements will use even the people they hate as useful puppets. There’s also very little mention of left wing homophobia in pre-Nazi Germany, nor detailed exploration of, as other reviewers have noted, the role of antisemitism in Nazi homophobia and transphobia (particularly the attacks on Hirschfeld). There’s also not much on the ways in which German fascism, athleticism, and early German gay rights movements and progressive movements come from some of the same wellsprings (youth movements emphasising getting outside and forming strong bonds). All of this could have helped complicate this story, making an already compelling pop history even more compelling. And that’s just not there.

Also lacking is good citation in some of the Koubek chapters. I get the archival limitations, but it’s distracting as all hell and ignited my inner pop history snob.

On the whole, this is a worthwhile read. But it’s a frustrating one. I’m glad it exists. But I wish it was longer, better organised, and more in-depth.

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

quite torn about this one! overall, it's well-written and it portrays an incredibly interesting and relevant topic in a compelling way, and i would generally very much recommend it as a solid nonfiction (especially with the current olympic Events re: boxing as a backdrop). HOWEVER there were small things that took me out a bit. waters has a tendency of a typically american generalization or vagueness that can read as a mistake to a more critical reader - ex. he mentions czechs as "not having history or national identity" pre: czechoslovakia, which is lowkey insane (and i wrote my bachelor thesis on czech identity in the 1880s, so...), or states that something happened "in 1938, around the time hitler invaded poland". no king, it's not "around the time" - thats a different year! moreover, there some inconsistencies/mistakes with the spelling of the more difficult names, and unfortunately for mr waters, these are the names i have expertise in - polish and dutch. im also quite sure he declinates the name of koubek's wife wrongly as well. all in all, i imagine small mishaps like this could be a result of rushed editing to finish in time before olympics - and in general, i'm glad i could read it right now, but it still bugged me a bit

[asti lanc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michael Waters put together a fascinating outline of history that intersects sports, trans identities, and world affairs in a way that showcases how intricately linked the relationship between transphobia and fascism truly is (which is not to say that transphobia only comes out of fascism). Waters tells the stories of multiple trans, intersex, and queer athletes that aren’t just rife with tragedy, but surprisingly some acceptance in 1930s Europe. I think many of us, even with queer and trans identities, have thought of the modern day as the most progressive as far as acceptance for our communities go; however, Waters reminds us that without the Nazi regime, who knows where our understanding and acceptance of trans identities could be in this moment? highly suggest for an eerie account of similar transphobic issues we see today, but occurring over 80 years ago.

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I needed to read this. everyone needs to read this. This shit has happened before!!!!! it is nice to reflect on the similarities of policing gender in the 1920s-30s vs. now...they're unbearably similar. There will never be a legitimate way to police gender and sex with so much variability in people's chemistry. Reading this book helped me to put context into what is happening now, be less frightened and more driven to keep pushing through.

I listened both as audiobook and the physical hardcover book. reads/listens very easily, and is nicely organized.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super well researched and manages to weave a dozen+ narratives together seamlessly. Covers a lot of ground quickly (footnotes make up a lot of the page count).

If you hate nazis and transphobes, this is the book for you.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this extremely informative, and especially relevant today with all the debates about trans women in sports. However, I did find it to be a bit dry and hard to get through at points. I loved the author’s note at the end, and I wish Waters would have included a bit more of his own commentary throughout.

[Casey Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is incredibly well researched and written. I feel like I learned a lot but was always engaged in the narrative. Also very timely with the Olympics. Would highly recommend this read! I think one of those books that if everyone read the world would be a better place.

[Diane]

Interesting book that discusses athletics in the 1930s and the Olympic Games during that time. More importantly discusses the science behind how blurred the lines are between male and female.

[Christie · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the 1930s, two high profile female athletes underwent gender affirming surgery and began living as men. These revelations rocked the sports world and the bureaucrats who oversaw international sports federations. The Nazis, hosting the next Olympics in 1936, got involved and pushed their own agenda around sex, gender, and queerness. Michael Waters explores the history of this defining time for sports and how it has led to where we are now.

I did not know anything about Zdeněk Koubek or Mark Weston before reading this book and it was eye-opening to learn about their transitions in the 1930s and how the public responded to it (much more positively than I expected). There were so many things in this book that resemble today's world which made me so angry and so sad that 90 years on we haven't progressed all that much (and seem to be regressing). The book was well-written and well-researched. It was highly readable for a nonfiction work. I highly recommend it for those interested in sports history and transgender studies.

I rarely do this, but I am including a few passages from the book below that I felt really spoke to current events. History definitely seems to repeat itself sometimes.

"Only a few years prior, people at the margins of gender and sexuality were celebrities in Berlin; in America, the drag queen Julian Eltinge starred in several early Hollywood films, the French artist Claude Cahun, in their book Disavowels, wrote in 1930 that 'neuter is the only gender that always suits me. It was a time of unimaginable queer potential. By the end of 1933, however, that sense of possibility was eroding. The global hub of sex research had collapsed, and the country scheduled to host the forthcoming Olympics was now equating gender expression with criminality. It foreshadowed a dark future in sports."

"[He was] taking a concept of sex that even medical professionals had not resolved, and enshrining it into institutional policy. He was codifying the idea that 'male' and 'female' were distinct biological categories, ones that not only could be but should be identified and measured. Even as doctors around him were struggling to define methods to clearly distinguish men from women, Brundage was reinforcing the misconception that sex distinctions were natural."

"That sports executives fixated on a pair of trans men who did not even want to continue in women's sports to justify a rule that would later be wielded disproportionately against trans women is one of the many ironies of sex testing's origins and history. Sex testing, from the start, was never about an actual threat to women's sports. It was always about the perception of a threat; the ambient sense of panic around femininity, masculinity, and gender transition; the feeling that something fundamental was shifting in the relationship between gender and sports and that the only way to stop it was to forcibly examine the bodies of anyone deemed suspect."

CW: antisemitism, hate group (Nazis), homophobia, medical procedures, misgendering, transmisogyny, war

[Bethany Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just finished this book and I can’t help but be completely enraged, upset, and frustrated.

“Today, even in an era of intense governmental backlash to queer and particularly trans people, it is easy to imagine that the distant past was a worse time to be queer—that, for all our faults, we’ve achieved social progress. Maybe that’s true. But queer history is not, and has never been, so simple.”

I encourage every person to pick up this book and read it. See the similarities between the 30s and now, and our ridiculous “conclusions” regarding gender and sexual identity.

This book was meticulously researched and put together. And it’s easy to follow for someone who may not be well versed in this subject matter. A couple of quotes that will stick me with are highlighted below.

“And why was the IOC focused on these slight variations in chromosomes or sex assignment at birth, given that all athletes had different body types that could give them advantages in some sports and disadvantages in others? No one was limiting how tall a basketball player could be.”

“What made—and still makes—sex testing especially cruel was that its victims were forced to live in silence and shame. The public saw failing a sex test as proof that someone wasn’t “truly” a woman. It was a ludicrous conclusion, considering that many subcategories of women—cis, trans, intersex, and any intersections thereof—would soon fail tests.”

“It is not a coincidence that modern sex testing originates at the Berlin Olympics of 1936, when the Nazis had deep influence within the sporting world. As we have seen, a small cadre of officials, including a Nazi sports doctor and a number of Nazi sympathizers, first came up with the idea of medical exams to determine sex.”

Please read this book.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was fastastic! i’m never gonna be able to describe it better than the blurb so you should just read that- but it’s basically about several queer/trans/intersex athletes who competed, or tried to compete in and were barred from, women’s track and field in the early-mid 20th century, AND olympic/elite sports competition governance history (with a special focus on the 1936 berlin olympics), and how the olympics came to be what they are, AND a history over the panic and concern over making sure that women athletes are “real women”, AND the way fascism and nazis had hand in it all. i learned a lot and it made me incredibly sad, because i fucking hate nazis and also because so many of the arguments and points that came up in this book (which covered about 1910-1970s/ish) are once again being raised today against queer, trans, and intersex athletes. the information was easy to follow in audiobook form, the chapters were structured really well (i just HAD to keep reading), and it was all so well researched, with acknowledgment to the fact that some things about the people and events discussed are impossible to know today. shoutout to the jockular podcast for READING MY EMAIL ON THE AIR (i wrote in to ask about books!) and recommending this among others. i obvs had to read it immediately.

[Forest Urken · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was utterly compelling! Such concise, factual, and fascinating work. The author is a journalist and his writing is reflective of that, in it that he keeps you engaged by moving forward through the facts well and leaves open ended questions to help the reader understand.
I was struck throughout the book by the eerily similar beginnings of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and the current far-right leadership style. It definitely made me think a bit.
But I was also surprised by the public’s openness at acceptance of Zoubek and Weston. I think the current public perception could take some notes.
Ultimately this is very important book to read to gain some perspective on modern sports and men vs women debate. Highly recommend!

[Deedi Brown (DeediReads) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trans rights are women’s rights.

This is an incredibly researched, empathetically rendered, deeply poignant look at the ways the oppression of women and the oppression of trans people arose together at the advent of women’s sports and the 1936 Olympics that took place in Nazi Germany. It’s eerily relevant to this exact moment, between the rise of fascism here in the US and the recent announcement that women Olympians will now need to submit to genetic testing to confirm their gender. I learned so much, and I am about to shove this book into everyone’s hands. ( I also listened to the vast majority of it on audio, and I think it worked great.)

I won’t lie, I often felt disheartened while reading this book — if a nationwide movement to have the US boycott the 1936 Olympics BECAUSE NAZIS WERE MURDERING JEWISH PEOPLE was no match for one clever and determined antisemitic white man administrator, what will we do today? If these men continue to insist on policing women and trans people’s bodies for the show of it, and their momentum is this great, how will we stop it?

But at the end of the day, this is the truth: Gender testing didn’t work back then, and it isn’t going to work now. And this book does a great job of showing why that is.

[Cameron Kreger · Rating 5 out of 5]

it’s interesting how much of the same topics of discussion from this book are still discussed today. the story as a whole is incredibly interesting and gives a lot of insight into the corruption, discrimination, and history of this era of sports and olympics in regards to sex, gender, and politics as a whole. highly recommend this

[Hari Patel · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 star - I came to this after the expulsion of trans athletes from sports following the UK ruling on what constitutes a woman. It filled in gaps of my knowledge on the history of sex testing in sport and the 1936 Olympics but I feel like it was missing detail and social commentary with regards to the implications on the present day, which would have been incredibly inciteful and valuable.

I would 100% recommend reading as an introduction to a topic that is so polarising and filled with misinformation in the present day.

[Eliza Ducnuigeen · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read.