The Past and Future of Gender in Sport

We often take gender for granted as a “natural” division in sports and life. But did you know the first decisions to divide sports into “male” and “female” categories were in many ways the result of women beating men in mixed gender competitions? In this episode, Jody chats with Veronica Ivy, a trans world cycling champion, about the pitfalls of dividing sports by gender. Then he hears from Laura Pappano, a journalist and researcher about the fascinating (and modern) history of gender segregation in sports. Finally, Jody returns to his Ultimate Frisbee roots as he and Raha Mozaffari, a two-time National Champion in the Mixed Division, talk about what we could learn from sports if we stopped using gender as the primary way to categorize athletes -- and explored all the other ways we could create games that are safe, fair, and competitive. Transcripts for Good Sport are available at go.ted.com/GStranscripts