Our Pioneers

Last night on ESPN they had a program about Renee Richards and her struggle to play women’s professional tennis.

ESPN doc looks at reluctant transgender hero in 'Renee' [Review]
LA Times
By Mary McNamara
October 4, 2011 |

Those shocked by the inclusion of Chaz Bono on this season’s “Dancing With the Stars” would do well to check out the ESPN documentary "Renée" -- there is nothing new under the sun, not even transgender individuals taking center stage in a national competition of athletic prowess.
[...]
After surgery, and a nasty divorce, Raskind, now Renée Richards, left her son and a thriving New York practice for the West Coast and began playing tennis again, quickly winning an amateur competition. The revelation of Richards' past caused a public uproar, with some female players refusing to meet "a man" on the court and tennis watchers worrying that gender reassignment would be the next step in performance enhancement. The United States Tennis Assn. banned Richards from play, and she became a cause celebre, fighting the ban until it was declared illegal by the New York State Supreme Court.

Richards went on to play in the U.S. Open and on the women’s pro tennis circuit for years, and despite the fears of many at the time, transgender women tennis players did not become epidemic. Indeed, if the outrage over Bono’s participation in "Dancing With the Stars" is any indication, Richards is all but forgotten.
Not, fortunately, by “Renée” director Eric Drath. A former journalist turned sports agent, he tells not so much her story as the story of those around her: the loving but irascible sister who still thinks the surgery was a mistake; the college friends who stuck with Richards throughout her life (including several who told her not to start playing competitive tennis as a woman because her big left-handed serve was so unique that any tennis fan would know it was Raskind’s); the women, including Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King, who faced Richards across the net; Richards’ surgeon and, finally, her very troubled son.

I cannot imagine what it was like to be a pioneer back in the seventies, it is hard enough now.

I remember back when she was all over the news. Newsweek and Time both had cover stories about her; I hid them and read them over and over again. I remember that they mentioned about the “sex change” in Casablanca, Morocco, that was the first time that I ever heard about the “operation”.

I want to thank her for her trailblazing, she laid the ground work that thousands of trans-people have followed.