Merida English Library

Permalink

Other Olympians, The : Fascism, Queerness, And The Making Of Modern Sports

Waters, Michael , 1997- , author.

Resource Type: Books
Edition: First edition.
Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-337) and index. In December 1935, Zdenk 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.

Subjects:

1. Koubek, Zdenéek, -- 1913-1986.; 2. Weston, Mark, -- 1905-; 3. De Bruyn, Willy.; 4. Smñetek, Witold, -- 1910-1983.; 5. Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei.; 6. Olympic Games -- (11th : -- 1936 :; 7. Olympic athletes -- Europe.; 8. Transgender athletes -- Europe.; 9. Intersex athletes -- Europe.; 10. Fascism and sports.; 11. Sexism in political culture -- Europe.; 12. Antisemitism -- Europe -- History -- 20th century.; 13. Biographies.;

Our Contacts