Episode 157: FIFPro and Women's Football Across The World, and Gender Equality With Ysaora Thibus
This week, Jessica, Brenda, Lindsay, and Shireen first discuss the NWHL draft [2:54]. Then, they dive into FIFPro and the state of women's football across the world [6:26]. After that, Lindsay interviews two-time Olympian fencer Ysaora Thibus [15:05].
Of course, you’ll hear the Burn Pile [28:17], the Bad Ass Woman of the Week segment, starring Sammy Davis [39:09], and what is good in our worlds [41:00].
Links
(PDF) FIFPro’s COVID-19 Implications for Professional Women’s Football: https://www.fifpro.org/media/zp3izxhc/fifpro-wf-covid19-new.pdf
TLDR: Equality essential to football's 'new normal', says Fifpro: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/womens-sport/2020/04/30/equality-essential-footballs-new-normal-says-fifpro/
FIFPRO report highlights need for greater support of players to grow women’s game: https://theathletic.com/1787011/2020/04/30/fifpro-report-highlights-need-for-greater-support-of-players-to-grow-womens-game/
Judge rules against womens players in equal pay suit vs. U.S. Soccer Federation: https://theathletic.com/1789788/2020/05/01/judge-rules-against-womens-players-in-equal-pay-suit-vs-u-s-soccer-federation/
Inside the labor movements within women's soccer: https://archive.thinkprogress.org/this-womens-world-cup-is-reaching-new-heights-thanks-to-collective-actions-from-female-footballers-3490de3d154f/
How the recommendations in FIFPRO’s pandemic report apply to the NWSL: https://theathletic.com/1754914/2020/04/17/how-the-recommendations-in-fifpros-pandemic-report-apply-to-the-nwsl/
Fifa says Covid-19 won’t affect $1bn investment in women’s football: https://www.sportbusiness.com/news/fifa-says-covid-19-wont-affect-1bn-investment-in-womens-football/
Is Women’s football in Latin America jeopardized by responses to Coronavirus? https://farenet.org/news/women-in-football-term-slug/is-womens-football-in-latin-america-jeopardized-by-responses-to-coronavirus/
Arsenal Women’s captain Kim Little feels players will be left in vulnerable positions due to the coronavirus pandemic: https://www.islingtongazette.co.uk/sport/football/arsenal/arsenal-women-s-little-concerned-for-game-1-6617039
Many women's football clubs are short of backroom staff, Fifpro survey says: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/apr/29/many-womens-football-clubs-are-short-of-backroom-staff-fifpro-survey-says
The WTA must protect its power in any merger with ATP: https://www.powerplays.news/p/the-wta-must-protect-its-power
Haiti FA president accused of sexually abusing young female footballers: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/apr/30/haiti-fa-president-accused-of-sexually-abusing-young-female-footballers#img-1
IONESCU JOINS ELITE COMPANY AS JAMES E. SULLIVAN AWARD CO-WINNER: https://goducks.com/news/2020/4/29/womens-basketball-ionescu-joins-elite-company-as-james-e-sullivan-award-co-winner.aspx
Obituary: Former hockey chief Annabel Pennefather, a trailblazer for women in sport, dies at 71: https://www.straitstimes.com/sport/obituary-former-hockey-chief-annabel-pennefather-a-trailblazer-for-women-in-sport-dies-at-72
Carlton's Madison Prespakis named AFLW best-and-fairest for 2020: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-28/madison-presipakis-named-aflw-best-and-fairest-winner/12194720
Boston Pride trade up to No. 1 pick to select Boston University’s Sammy Davis in NWHL Draft: https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/sports/20200428/boston-pride-trade-up-to-no-1-pick-to-select-boston-universitys-sammy-davis-in-nwhl-draft
Transcript
Shireen: Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of Burn It All Down: it’s the feminist sports podcast you need. During this COVID-19 pandemic, we at Burn It All Down are sending our love and solidarity with those who are on the front lines of every sector, those who cannot stay home, those working from home, those staying in, caretakers, parents, animal lovers, folks in every community, those providing support systems online and wherever you can, and also to those missing sports, or feeling isolated or trapped. We hope this show gives you something to think of, to laugh about, and, well, burn.
I’m Shireen Ahmed, freelance sports writer and sports activist in Toronto, leading the toxic femininity charge today, and on this week’s panel we have Jessica Luther, weightlifter extraordinaire, my fav PhD candidate/croissant-maker and co-author of the forthcoming book Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back, she’s in Austin; Dr. Brenda Elsey, new cat-mom to the beautiful fur baby Leo, undeniable genius and associate professor of history at Hofstra University in Long Island; and the indomitable and brilliant Lindsay Gibbs, with the most beautiful laugh and the mightiest pen, sports reporter and creator of the Power Plays newsletter – sign up at powerplays.news. She’s in DC.
Before we start, I would like our patrons for their generous support and remind our new flamethrowers about our Patreon campaign. You pledge a certain amount monthly, as low as $2 and as high as you want, to become an official patron of the podcast. In exchange for your monthly contribution you get access to special rewards. With the price of a latte a month you can get access to extra segments of the podcast, a monthly vlog, an opportunity to record on the burn pile – only available to those in our Patreon community. So far we’ve been able to solidify funding for proper editing and transcripts, our social media guru Shelby, and our new producer Kinsey. Burn It All Down is a labor of love and we all believe in this podcast. We are so grateful for your support and that our flamethrowing family is growing.
We have a kickass show for you this week! Lindsay interviews French fencer Ysaora Thibus about how she and her boyfriend, US fencer Race Imboden, are coping in quarantine, Imboden’s protest at last year’s Pan Am Games when he took a knee on the podium, and her fight for gender equality in fencing. But to start off, the NWHL draft! Lindsay, what are some thoughts?
Lindsay: Yeah, well, first of all, it was really cool to see how they pulled it off. The NWHL’s a little bit different because of the way the league works and the realities of being a pro women’s hockey player right now, which is not giant salaries and phenomenal accommodations. They kind of work with the players to make sure the players are willing to go and live in the cities that the teams want them to. So all the draft picks are selected beforehand and the players get a say in where they go. The draft isn’t something that’s happening live as the public is seeing it, but the reveal: they’ve figured out how to make the draft reveal into an event, and this year they did it by hosting it on Twitter, and they had people from across the sports world, from John Buccigross at SportsCenter to tons of WNBA players to NWSL players, just a lot of people from the sports and especially the women’s sports community announcing the draft picks on Twitter and unveiling it that way. It was really amazing to see.
Shireen: Jess?
Jessica: Yeah, that’s very cool. I didn’t understand all of that about the NWHL until right now, but I definitely saw so much about it happening on Twitter. Obviously I don’t follow hockey, anyone who follows this podcasts knows that, so I want to point everyone to a post at The Ice Garden, SB Nation’s women’s hockey site, it’s titled: This quiz will tell you which NWHL team to cheer for. [laughter] So if you’re trying to figure it out…This was made for me. It’s 10 questions, I did it; I got the Buffalo Beauts, by the way.
Shireen: Oh!
Jessica: Anyway, that’s at Ice Garden, this quiz will tell you which NWHL team to cheer for. So if you’re like me and you’re just floating out here trying to figure it out, there’s a direction.
Shireen: My only problem with this, and I of course am gonna say this, is that I was extremely disappointed…I realize this is not a burn pile, it’s like a kindling pile, maybe. Very recently the NWHL seems to be working a lot with a Barstool podcast that was hosted by Erica Nardini, and that's not okay, because…[sighs] Barstool, as everyone knows who’s listened to this show, has been extremely, extremely problematic. I mean, when Kelly Babstock was announced to go to the Toronto NWHL team, that was revealed on this podcast. So now there’s all this thing about “we’re doing a deep dive into women’s hockey.” I’m sorry, very recently Erica Nardini didn’t know anything about women’s hockey. So suddenly that stuff…It’s just very problematic to me, it’s a space that has attacked women specifically that’s now holding hands with women’s hockey? I find that very uncomfortable, and I don’t like it. It worries me. Women’s sports can do just fine without collaborating with Barstool in any way. But just from us, to congratulate all the players, looking forward to a really cool season without collaborating with misogynistic, racist, homophobic outlets. But that’s just me.
Moving on. Jessica, can you take us through this next segment, please?
Jessica: Sure. So, FIFPro, the global players union for professional footballers, it’s put out two reports in the last few weeks about the state of women’s football throughout the world. The first one in mid-April specifically looked at the impact of COVID-19 on the women’s game – and FIFPro doesn’t mess around at all. I’m just going to quote an entire paragraph right now: “The current situation is likely to present an almost existential threat to the women’s game if no specific considerations are given to protect the women’s football industry. Due to its less established professional leagues, low salaries, narrower scope of opportunities, uneven sponsorship deals and less corporate investment, the fragility of the women’s football eco-system is exposed by the current situation. The lack of written contracts, the short-term duration of employment contracts, the lack of health insurance and medical coverage, and the absence of basic worker protections and worker’s rights leaves many female players—some of whom were already teetering on the margins—at great risk of losing their livelihoods.” Whew. Okay.
So then last week FIFPro published their report Raising Our Game about women’s global soccer. They had planned this and it actually got delayed because of COVID, they were gonna put it out earlier this year and they realized as everything was unfolding that they needed to delay it a little bit. FIFPro characterizes this report as “a forward-thinking report about women’s professional football which puts players at the heart of the planned development and rebuilding of the sport after the coronavirus pandemic.” So they’re looking at the economic evolution of the game covering match day attendance, TV audiences, sponsorship; they detail player conditions at the club and national team levels. The whole thing is quotable, it’s very long. It’d be impossible for me to recap the entire thing here, I’m just gonna go over the key finding and recommendations that they had, there’s four of them.
So #1: women’s football is proving its value. I feel like they listen to our podcast! So they say that while women’s football has long been viewed as a cost to the industry it’s actually an asset and great value and it can actually steer the industry in a positive and sustainable direction…I like that word, sustainable. #2: the industry is growing – there’s greater commercial interest in women’s football, attendance-wise, viewerships, sponsorship. #3: professionalization is underway – more women’s leagues and clubs at the domestic level are forming and professionalizing, others are re-forming, competitions are taking new shape. And #4: global standards for player conditions are necessary. “Adverse labor conditions still plague the game. Action is needed to establish, implement and enforce global industry standards for working conditions in women’s football in both labor contracts and international competitions to protect the players and enable the just, decent and stable growth of the industry.”
Okay. So that’s a lot, and it’s good, so good that we have FIFPro out here ringing the alarm, especially at this critical moment. There’s also the Fare network, an organization that combats inequality in football, and for which our own Dr. Brenda Elsey works. They put out a report about the particular issues facing women's football in Latin America. In case you missed it, two weeks ago Brenda interviewed Vanessa Córdoba in episode 155 about some of this. Also, I’ll just say this before throwing it to Brenda, that we’re all very proud to know and be associated with her and her work. Brenda, can you talk to us about what's going on with women’s football in Latin America specifically?
Brenda: Aw, thank you. Yes. [laughs] Whew. First off, everything that FIFPro says is doubly true of Latin America if not more so. Over the past five years there’s been pretty exciting progress, and you saw that at the Women’s World Cup – actually, you saw that at the Women’s World Cup in 2015 in Canada too when you had Colombia…So, there was a sense that in Latin America the dynamic feminist movement had kind of re-energized new sectors and re-energized others to really rally behind women’s football. It became a kind of cause célèbre in Argentina, for example. You know, the professionalization of the women’s league, and there was a lot of public pressure. New leagues have started in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, and then attempts in Chile and Paraguay and Peru. So all of these are really exciting, and the federation had come in and said, hey, to compete in the club competition for the men, you have to have a women’s club team. And that was really important, and of course they’re just gonna give them their shitty shirts and say, “We have a women’s club team.” But it created a rule where people could start to pressure those clubs, you know, to support really developing women’s football.
So there was a lot of progress, but not enough for any of the cuts that have come so far to really actually save any money. The FIFPro report is great on a global level, and at the regional level what Fare is noticing is patent gender discrimination, meaning the cuts that they’re making, not only are they not equitable in terms of what they’re doing with the men but they’re real misogyny because these austerity measures are not going to save what they say they’re going to save. They’re not necessarily…I can give you a couple of examples of the ways in which it’s done, because I don’t want to drone on and on, but for example let’s take the Colombia situation: most of the teams have five players contracted only. So only five have professional contracts on their team.
Shireen: Oh my god.
Brenda: And those contracts only last two months at a time because they only pay them for the tournaments at the beginning and the tournaments at the end of the season…I’m putting quote marks high in the air for “season.” [laughs] If they could schedule enough real matches. And those contracts cost them about $200 per player per month. Okay? Okay. I’m just gonna let people do that math. It’s nothing. Bogotá is a very expensive city! They basically told the women players, the Colombian league, Dimayor: you are done, we’re not renewing your contracts, but we’ll keep the men who make hundreds of thousands of dollars – into the millions of dollars a year – we’ll keep them at 50%. Basically if you kept the men at 49% you’d be investing more in women’s football than you ever have!
Shireen: [sad laughter] Oh my god.
Brenda: It’s not about austerity, really. This is about doing what you would’ve done anyway, which is try to annihilate women’s football and put it under this guise of “it’s a COVID problem.” So that’s just one thing.
Shireen: Jess, do you have a question?
Jessica: Yeah. Just to be very clear Brenda, this is straight-up misogyny? Are they using COVID as just the cover for doing the thing they really want to do, just cut women’s soccer?
Brenda: Yeah, that’s absolutely what I would argue.
Jessica: Okay.
Brenda: Because I’d just ask anybody to do the math. There’s no club, no team in South America where every player is under contract. So understand that. But the players that are under contract, it could be the difference between whether they pay their rent or whether they eat or not for that month, and that’s not true of the men’s players. So no matter how little it is, it’s still important, and that’s the point that Vanessa Córdoba in that episode was making. So anyway, I’m just gonna leave it there. I guess the one silver lining: two new instances came out after the report came out at Fare, one in the case of Ecuador where basically clubs just decided we’re not playing in the tournament and that’s how they do it – there’s all these ways in which this is done, right? They say, well, we’re just not gonna participate in it. And then the second one is the Argentine federation who said, yeah, no, we’e just not gonna continue subsidizing contracts. When they said that they were subsidizing the clubs, because the clubs would refuse to do it. When they said that, the backlash was so strong that actually the president of the federation backpedalled and said, actually, we are. So the one silver lining seems to be that they really are subject to public scrutiny and pressure, and they really do move when it happens.
Shireen: Next up, Lindsay’s interview with French fencer Ysaora Thibus.
Lindsay: Hi friends, Lindsay here. I’m so excited to be joined by Ysaora Thibus. She is a two-time Olympian in fencing, she’s done the London Olympics and Rio Olympics, and we will see her at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. She is a 14-time French champion, she’s won multiple team and individual medals in world championships including an individual silver in 2018. Thank you so much for being here. I guess the most obvious place to start, normally, if we are not in this bizarro world, you’d be gearing up for Tokyo, but of course that has been postponed a year. Where are you right now, are you quarantined? How has the coronavirus and the move of the Olympics impacted you?
Ysaora: I am usually training in between Italy, Paris and Los Angeles, so I knew already in Italy that it was quarantined for a while; Paris started to be quarantined as well, so I decided to stay in LA because my boyfriend is American.
Lindsay: A lot of people here in the United States, although we have listeners all over the world, know that your boyfriend is Race Imboden who took a knee on the podium at the Pan Am Games last year. He is a fencer as well, representing the United States. We also had Gwen Berry, who raised her fist at those same Pan Am Games, she has been on Burn It All Down before. But I wanted to ask you about that, because obviously that moment got so much coverage. Were you aware he was gonna be taking a knee, did you have conversations with him prior to that?
Ysaora: Actually he didn’t tell me before the competition, like, I’m going to do that. He was actually focused on the competition and he won, in team [fencing]. I know that happened just before the medal ceremony, he asked a guy if it was okay for them and then I was like…Okay, idiot! [laughs] I was not actually shocked, I wasn’t surprised he did it because I know him, but I was like, oh, he actually did it. For sure we didn’t expect all these things, like all the media and everything, so it kind of…And I wasn’t there, I’m with France so I wasn’t at the Pan Am Games, so my first reaction was like, oh, I wish I could be with him going through this, because it was tough. He had hate messages and also a lot of positive messages, but it was really extreme in both ways, and really intense. But I was proud of him. The the main thing was I was proud of him.
Lindsay: Yeah. I think that it was so inspiring to see during this time to see athletes use their literal platform [laughs] to send a message. You said that you were surprised by the amount of attention – was there anything in particular about the attention that he received from that or the media or social media that surprised you or stuck out to you?
Ysaora: For sure. The social media…I mean, Twitter was more rough because it’s always the platform that everyone can say everything they want to say, [laughs] but also on Instagram actually people wanted to follow him and support him and be like, oh, thank you so much for what you’ve just done, give us a voice. He’s been touched by a lot of messages, and people were really grateful, so that was like, my god, amazing, realizing that people really listened. Also there’s been consequences, because the Olympic Committee say that he will be on probation for a year, so if he did it again he would not be allowed to go to the next Olympic Games. So it was kind of a stressful situation because, I mean, it’s our life: fencing and going to competitions, and going to the Olympic Games. So probation was difficult for him because he didn’t understand why. His was such a positive message and why was it being seen like that by the Olympic Committee, you know?
Lindsay: Yeah, I agree with him there. And then of course the IOC came out earlier this year, they said that whenever this next Olympics will be that there won’t be political protests, they’re being banned. What did you think of that decision?
Ysaora: I think we felt a little bit of anger toward that because at the same time they were saying for Tommie Smith and John Carlos, when they raised their fist they were saying it was a positive thing to do, but then at the same time saying, oh, but you cannot do it again. So it was hypocritical to us, to go through this decision, and it’s frustrating because we’re not just athletes, we want to say how we feel about the world. Some things are going wrong, we’re not just like…I don’t know, just there to entertain people. We go to challenges, we see the world and travel a lot, we see when things are not going in the right way. So that was just really frustrating in that sense, and we felt like we didn’t have a choice. They were taking away our abilities to make decisions and to use our voice, so it’s frustrating.
Lindsay: Absolutely, I can’t even imagine how hard that must be. Now of course, for you, what message do you wanna send, politically? What do you hope to use your platform to say, whether that be on the stand or through social media or just in general, what message do you wanna send?
Ysaora: I want to speak up about like, yeah, gender inequities, women and men in the same field, they should be treated the same way for the same amount of work. We work a lot as female athletes and I think we deserve the same recognition and the same respect. So this is what I’m trying to talk about.
Lindsay: What is – and I’m actually pretty ignorant on this subject – what is the state of gender equality in the fencing community? Do you still see biases there within your own sport?
Ysaora: You know, it’s not like a sport that we see often in media, it’s not in the light a lot of the time, so for that whether for men or women it’s actually not pretty good. [laughs]
Lindsay: [laughs] They just ignore everybody.
Ysaora: But I would say inside the sport, you know, it’s the same as every other sport. People think that women fencers are less fast, less entertaining, they’re just considered as less, you know? For example, we could be at practice and all the attention is for the men, which is okay, it’s not like we need attention, it’s not about that, it’s just that…There’s gonna be a bout, so, in fencing you have two people fencing and a referee. The girls are gonna watch because we don’t have something to do, for example, and we’re gonna be like, “Oh, I think the attack is from the right for this guy,” you know? They’re gonna look at us and be like, “But you’re a woman, how do you know?” Things like that. It’s just the daily things sometimes that women athletes are still considered as less than men. Also, you see less women in federations, our federations still don’t have a lot of women. Worldwide it’s like, of course it’s the same thing – it’s more prestigious to win as a man than to win as a woman.
I think we have a lot of work to do about that, and also I’m not taking just for fencing, I’m talking for every sport. I think that sports is kind of a reflection of the society, you know? If you don’t see a lot of women in sports it means in society you don’t see a lot of women, same for everything. I feel really mad when things are like that. You know, for the US soccer team, when they asked for the same money as men when they were like, world champions, and they said no! It’s just like, how can you still use the same old argument to justify that you don’t want to pay men and women the same when we actually proved that we can make results, we can be the best, you know? In France the French Federation for example has organized two world cups, it’s like two male world cups and one woman world cup in France. They put no money in that, I think because they said that no one’s coming. But no one’s coming because nobody is investing the money to give us the chance to prove that we can also attract people, because actually we won this competition the last season, and I’ve medalled at this competition a bunch of times. We’ve proved that as a team we can perform, and…I don’t know, it’s the same thing. Financially, in the media we don’t have so much attention, financially it’s not the same between the men and the women, so I think that creates inequality.
Lindsay: So you’re saying there’s not equal pay within fencing federations?
Ysaora: It’s complicated to say that in facing because we’re not a professional sport, so we don’t have salaries anyways in fencing. I’m living off my sponsors. I’m the best female fencer in France so I have sponsors. They don’t give a salary, but I feel like, for example, the competition events, they don’t even invest in the same way in men fencers than in female fencers. And international federations are just the same.
Lindsay: Yeah. It’s the same story, right, across so many sports, and it’s so frustrating. I guess I kind of want to end where most people would’ve begun the interview, but how did you get into fencing? I’d love to know how you came to participate in this sport and thrive in the sport.
Ysaora: So I’m from a small island in the French Caribbean called Guadalupe. I started fencing when I was 7 years old – I actually didn’t think of the sport, I was doing classical dance, ballet, and so I was happy doing that since I was 4 years old, and my mom thought about the sport for my little brother and it happened that I was there with them the first time that they went to the fencing gym. I remember going inside the gym and being like, oh my god, what is this sport? [laughs] I’d never seen something like that before because I was not watching the Olympics, and fencing is not on TV, so I was like, what is that! And I loved it and I was like, I need to try this sport. We started with my little brother at the same time and I loved it and he just didn’t like it, so he was done after a few times. Me, I loved the sport, I loved the competition, and I’ve just been doing that since then.
Lindsay: What do you love so much about it?
Ysaora: I was doing classical dance, and I felt like everything was choreography and you have to do things, while in fencing I felt like I was free and the only goal was actually to touch your opponent, but the rest you just do you own choreography all the time. You just make it how you want it to look like. I think I kept the aesthetic of dancing in my fencing – I like my fencing to look good, but at the same time I feel free, you know? You can do fighting, you can be loud, you can should You have fun, you know? I think it changes as I grow up in my career of course, but it’s a game. The main thing about fencing is that it’s a game. It’s like playing chess, and at the same time biking. [laughter] So, it’s like a mental game and a physical game at the same time. You don’t put your brain on the side, you always use your brain. And at the same time it’s super difficult because it’s 3x 3 minutes, so it’s really really intense. I just love everything about this sport.
Lindsay: That’s awesome. Well, we hope that we’ll be able to get to see you compete sooner rather than later. Thank you so much for joining us on Burn It All Down, and take care.
Shireen: On to the burn pile. Brenda, can you go first?
Brenda: Sure. I want to burn – this is very on-brand for me – capitalist pigs. [laughter] I’m gonna start with John J Fisher – it’s a roast! – who is the majority owner of the Oakland As. People may not know John J Fisher, and of course I’m burning John J Fisher metaphorically, and of course he is not a pig, literally. So, the Oakland As were the very last team in Major League Baseball to commit to paying full time employees through the end of May. They announced this the day before May started, which was the very last day that they could. So, way to do the least! I don’t know that a person like John J Fisher, who is the son of the founders of Gap, long-standing Republican donor who is worth $2.4 billion, would possibly understand what it’s like to wait to hear if you’re employed next month or not. I imagine he has absolutely no fucking clue. And so anyway, he also owns the MLS team the San Jose Earthquakes and Scotland’s Glasgow Celtics. So he has his hands in sports, and that grosses me out in general. But I looked up his philanthropic positions, which are, like, zero. His biggest donations go to charter schools. I, after doing this research, will not be purchasing any more clothing at the Gap, or Banana Republic, or anything else, barf. I want to burn his petty petty petty petty petty petty pettiness at not telling employees and not giving them months of security when he was born into incredible wealth and privilege and is worth $2.4 billion. Burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: Lindsay?
Lindsay: Yeah, so a couple of weeks ago Roger Federer tweeted out of the blue, “Just wondering…” [laughter]
Jessica: Uh oh.
Lindsay: “Am I the only one thinking that now is the time for men’s and women’s tennis to be united and come together as one?” In subsequent tweets he added that he was picturing a merger between the WTA and ATP – not on the court of course, but a merger between the two governing bodies. He noted that two separate tours are too confusing for the fans, at that the move is long overdue. He said, “These are tough times in every sport, and we can come out of this with two weakened bodies or one stronger body.” To add to this, Rafa Nadal, who has not historically been a champion of women’s tennis [laughter] tweeted, “Hey @rogerfederer as you know per our discussions I completely agree that it would be great to get out of this world crisis with the union of men's and women's tennis in one only organisation. 👍🏻🎾” In general I am a big fan of labor solidarity and have always thought that if men’s and women’s tennis united as one, and did it properly, the sport could be much better overall. It could help everyone. But what I have a problem with and what I would like to burn is men out of nowhere during this time of crisis being the ones leading this discussion. The men’s tour should not be the leaders of this discussion, because historically they have fought against the women’s tour getting anything near equality on every single turn.
I want to give a shoutout to Reem Abulleil who’s a reporter who we’ve had on Burn It All Down, who did some reporting on squash and the merger between squash, and she found out that when men’s and women’s squash united that it did make more money for everyone. Everyone got more money. But the men were still mad, because in order to bring the women up to equality they got more of the more than the men did. So even though the men still ended up with more because of the merger, they were upset because the women got more. And Andy Murray went on CNN this week and said the same thing is happening in men’s tennis. He said when there's been prize money increases in the sport where, let’s say, the first round’s loser’s check has gone from $8,000 to $10,000 and the women go from $6,000 to $10,000, the men were unhappy. “And I would tell them, would you rather there was no increase at all? And they would say to me, yes, actually.” So…[laughs] I would like to throw on the incinerator fragile male egos which are holding everyone back and this desire to be…You will be worse off yourself as long as you are better off than someone else. It is fucking bonkers, and you see it across society. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal should not be leading this conversation, they should be standing beside the WTA amplifying their voices and moving together as one. The WTA should not do this unless there are protections up and down that damn contract. So let's throw fragile male egos on the incinerator. Burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: I’m going to go next; I just want to offer a trigger warning for everybody listening. My burn pile is about sexualized violence against football players in Haiti. I do really want to commend this exclusive for Guardian Football by Ed Aarons, Romain Molina and Alex Cizmic. They’ve spent a lot of time on this, and this story is quite disturbing. We’ve talked about sexualized violence on this show before, in football, and what this is is that there’s claims of abuse by Yves Jean-Bart who is Haiti’s FA president, so the governing body of football in Haiti. The accusations are against him. Of course he’s denied everything, and Yves Jean-Bart is known as “Dadou,” he’s the president of Fédération Haïtienne De Football since 2000, so twenty years. The accusations involve that he coerced several players at the Centre Technique National in Croix-des-Bouquets. Croix-des-Bouquets is outside Port-au-Prince in Haiti. His alleged incidents take place over the last five years including impregnating one of the players, forcing her to have an abortion. He coerces them into performing sex acts, it’s really, really upsetting, and the power structure here, the dynamic is so dangerous. What he does is he uses a woman to put pressure on girls. He finds someone attractive, he’ll send that woman to say, “If you don’t do this, you’ll be thrown out of the Centre, you’re done with football.”
So it’s really a very harrowing read, it’s very difficult to get through, especially if you look at a place like Haiti that’s still…There’s money there, there's a lot of money there and that’s not reflected in the Centre wherein these young players are staying. There’s only air conditioning – not even yet in one particular place. The structures they’re living in are what some would describe as squalor, where they live on the same menu of rice and beans and chicken every day whereas the executives of these FAs have large dinner parties. It’s just really disgusting. They’re waiting for FIFA to come in – there was a FIFA observer who came in who didn’t see anything wrong. Of course not, because the bar is so low, right? So as in everything we stand in solidarity with these players, we believe survivors. It’s so upsetting, and it’s not the first time we’ve seen this type of abuse, it’s not the last time we're gonna see it. I want to take that all and throw it on the burn pile. Burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: Jess?
Jessica: Yeah, so this week I want to burn how slow institutions are at dealing with major issues that deeply affect the day to day lives of young athletes. So, this week USA Gymnastics suspended coach Maggie Haney for 8 years for verbal abuse and mistreatment of athletes. Laurie Hernandez, the gold-winning Laurie Hernandez, her mother first filed a complaint against Haney to the USAG nearly four years ago. So while the outcome is good, four years went by. The NCAA also had two longstanding issues come to the fore this week. The NCAA looks like they’re gonna loosen their requirements about name, image and likeness for collegiate athletes – we’ll see, I wouldn’t hold my breath on it. But even if that is what’s gonna happen, Jay Bilas, he had a tweet this week that really got to the heart of how I’m feeling about a lot of things in sports right now. “A committee was formed SIX MONTHS AGO. It finally has “recommendations.” Now, several months of review. Governments passed laws faster than the NCAA makes suggestions. Ridiculous. Let the athletes have full economic rights JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.”
And then, late on Friday – I mean, late on Friday – the NCAA announced that it was going to expand its sexual violence policy. It’s fine. It puts the burden on students to disclose and the punishment for not doing so falls squarely on the students’ shoulders only. There are some things schools must do but there’s no indication what happens if they don’t do it, similar to the previous policy in place. This announcement came a day after seven women sued the NCAA for failing to protect them from sexual assault by male athletes. The lawsuit accuses the organization of negligence, fraud, and breach of contract. I’ve been reporting on the NCAA’s lack of care around gendered violence since 2014. My book on college football and sexual violence is now 3½ years old, and what we’ve got is another way for schools to brush off responsibility to students and no teeth when it comes to what athletic departments have to do. All of that together has me wanting to burn how damn long it takes for these organizations to even kind of move in the right direction, so burn.
All: Burn.
Shireen: After all that burning, we will uplift some amazing people this week. First of all: rest in power to Annabel Pennefather, a leader in sports in Singapore. She was a member of the national field hockey team from 1964 to 1980, which she captained for over a decade. She then moved into sports administration, holding high-level positions including as Singapore’s first female chef de mission, serving at the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and the Olympic Games in 2004. She was also Singapore Hockey Federation’s first female president, from 2004 to 2012.
She’s baaaack! Sabrina Ionescu is once again in the badass women of the week segment, this time because she was a co-winner of the James E. Sullivan award, which goes to the United States’ most outstanding amateur athlete. She’s the first ever Oregon player to win the award and only the fifth women’s basketball player ever.
Maddy Prespakis, a teenage Aussie rules football sensation, won the AFL’s Best and Fairest award, which goes to the league’s most dominant player. She’s the first ever teenager to win this award, and she was also named an onballer in the All-Australian team. Congrats to you. Can I get a drumroll please?
[drumroll]
[laughs] I was just gonna let y’all go on for a little while there. Congratulations to Sammy Davis for being selected number one overall in the NWHL draft. The Boston University alum was picked by the Boston Pride.
What’s good? Jessica.
Jessica: Oh gosh. I don’t know, it was a harder week this week. But still, I’ve been reading Courtney Milan – she’s a romance author, and she has a series…It’s a little bit old, it’s the Turner series, it’s these three brothers with the last name Turner. The middle book is about a hero who’s a virgin, which is pretty rare in romance, it’s called Unclaimed and it is beautiful and wonderful and it made me cry in the best way at the end. So I highly recommend that, that was very good for me this week. I participated in a panel earlier this week about women’s sports for the UT Sports Communication…I can never remember the right title. It’s on YouTube now. Shelby, our graphics person, at the last minute did me a solid and created a cool Burn It All Down graphic to go behind me as I was talking and then, bless Aaron, he was in the middle of work and my computer wouldn’t let me do the Zoom background, and he scrambled so I could use his computer to do it – that’s why you see his name on there. So he had to use my computer to do a Zoom meeting while I was doing that, but he came through for me. That was just really fun. I washed my hair and put on makeup [laughs] which has been a while. So that was nice. I just wanna give a little shoutout to Ralph because he is the best dog ever, he’s so adorable. I’m just really enjoying his snuggles. His hair is super long right now, he’s a shaggy dog. He need a haircut, we’re trying to figure that out. But Ralph is just the best.
Shireen: Amazing. Bren?
Brenda: [caught off guard noise?] [laughter] I’m usually…When I get called on, I’m usually thinking about what the other person just said still, my quarantine brain is slow!
Lindsay: It’s like on lag, yeah.
Brenda: Yeah! [Lindsay laughs] Exactly…And then I started laughing at the fact that I do that every time, I’m like…I’m sorry, Shireen. I should have a more elegant intro. But really, we adopted a 2 year old rescue cat as Shireen mentioned in the beginning, originally was named Fluffy Muffin and then spontaneously, I swear, te lo juro, I swear over two days my children decided it was better named as Messi, um, Leo.
Shireen: Leo…!
Brenda: I know. I know. I promise you, it wasn’t me. But it’s super gentle and he’s really happy–
Jessica: Just years, years of conditioning. [laughter] I mean, c’mon. It is you.
Lindsay: Yeah!
Jessica: They didn’t come up with “Leo” outta nowhere, but I see what you’re saying. Go ahead, sorry.
Brenda: I mean, I would like to think it’s not my total brainwash job and it’s like “Leo (the Lion)” or something, but fair point. I really can’t argue with that. But either way, I’m happy that they’re happy and that the cat is happy and super gentle and yeah, so that’s been wonderful. I’ve spent hours and hours petting the cat and trying to strategize how to make his room – he will get an entire room, little room dedicated to him, but I’m trying to figure out how to make it the best place.
Shireen: Do you think that we should all send our pets’ photos to you, you know, his…Fur cousins?
Brenda: I’d like them to have a Zoom meeting. If we could get Ralph–
Lindsay: Oh, yes!
Jessica: Aww. [laughter] We’re doing it now! We’re doing it now.
Brenda: Oh, yay! We could get Ralph and Mo and Tara, and they can all get together and sort of just take a look at each other, you know?
Jessica: And Scooby!
Shireen: And Amira’s Scooby, for sure.
Brenda: Yes, Scooby!
Shireen: Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Linz?
Lindsay: Yeah. Also a tough week, I think, to come up with things. It’s just like…I don’t know. Honestly, mentally it helped when it moved from April to May because April just…I got to the point where I’m like, April’s not really happening! [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah, yeah.
Lindsay: Like, April doesn’t exist! It really felt like it didn’t exist. So now May, it’s like, okay, I need to make May worth it. I’m feeling re-engaged with work, I’m feeling a little bit motivated on things, so that’s good. I dyed my hair blue, which feels like a very cliche, quarantine thing to do. But you know what?
Jessica: That’s alright.
Lindsay: Whatever. What else am I gonna do? [laughing]
Jessica: I’ve made three banana bread loaves, so…[laughter]
Lindsay: We’re all the cliches! I did go…I didn’t really wanna do much delivery, I’ve tried not to order things, but this week I did get in a little treat-myself mode, because I was having trouble sleeping, so I bought new sheets and a new mattress pad–
Shireen: Oh, nice.
Lindsay: –and a little self-massager. I bought a Kindle! I treated myself to a Kindle, I’ve always just used the Kindle app.
Jessica: Yesss.
Lindsay: I loooove the Kindle. So I’m very excited about that.
Jessica: It’s my favorite, yay.
Lindsay: So you know what, it felt good. I know we should be not buying things but it felt good to get a box full of cool things that make my life better. [laughs]
Shireen: Awesome. I’m gonna go. It’s the month of Ramadan for listeners that don't know, and I’ve been fasting, it's going really well. I’ve been doing some online iftars, which is when you break the fast. I’m not having caffeine withdrawal like I thought but I need to stop drinking coffee when we break our fast, which is like 8:30, because then I’m up til 2, which happened last night, which can also lead to great conversations with Amira at 4am which is what happened this morning, but still. I need to stop. I have started growing plants, I think it’s called. I have plants? [laughter] I have a basil…
Lindsay: What else would it be called?! [laughing]
Shireen: I just over-water chronically and I’m not successful…I mean, I raised children and a cat, so everybody can relax! But I’m not good, I have a black thumb. But I’m really hopeful for this basil. I know it needs a lot of water; if y’all wanna send me tips, I’m totally open. I did actually go…I was at the grocery store for my weekly run and I got lavender because I got very excited. I’m not thinking that I’m gonna start making soap or anything, I just really like lavender and I miss…Oh my god, I feel like I’m gonna cry. I miss soccer so much and I miss the smell of grass. I miss the smell of fresh-cut grass with a mixture of like skunk and weed wafting in the background of the soccer pitches I play on…Whew, I was gonna cry there. I feel like when I smell these things they make it easier for me, especially when I spend so much time indoors. So there’s that. I also want to wish everyone a belated May Day. Thank you to Aaron Lakoff of The Rebel Beat, he’s a friend of the show. He had me on an absolutely kickass episode where my song selection was Immortal Technique. We don’t just respect and stand in solidarity with workers on the first of May, we’re always in solidarity with you. Just wanted to say that. And that’s about it. And Eid is coming up, so if you need to do some Eid shopping: subscriptions to Power Plays and Burn It All Down Patreon are always excellent gifts to give people, so I just wanted to remind everybody of that.
Lindsay: Thank you Shireen.
Shireen: That’s it this week for Burn It All Down. Although we are done for now, you can always burn all day and night with our fabulous array of merchandise including mugs, pillows, tees, hoodies and bags. What better way to crush toxic patriarchy in sports and sports media but by getting someone you love a pillow with our logo on it? Our store is teespring.com/stores/burn-it-all-down. Burn It All Down lives on SoundCloud but can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play and TuneIn. We appreciate your reviews and feedback, so please subscribe and rate and let us know what we did well and how we can improve. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod and on Twitter @burnitdownpod. You can email us at burnitalldownpod@gmail.com and check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com where you will find previous episodes, transcripts and a link to our Patreon. We would appreciate you subscribing, sharing and rating our show, which helps us do the work we love to do and keep burning things that need to be burned. We wish you safety and health and whatever joys you can muster during this chaotic and unprecedented time, and as Brenda says: burn on, and not out.