Julie Kliegman, "Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis’s Trans Pioneer" (Har...

Summary

In this interview, sports journalist Julie Kliegman discusses Finding Renée Richards, her biography of the tennis player and transgender pioneer. Richards sued in 1977 for the right to compete in the U.S. Open women’s draw and won. Kliegman says she began researching Richards to better understand the history behind contemporary disputes over transgender athletes.

The conversation traces Richards’s life before and after transition. As Richard Raskind, she was an athletic, charismatic child who became a highly competitive tennis player and later a respected ophthalmologist. She privately explored wearing women’s clothing from a young age, but her transition unfolded over many years, with starts and stops, difficulty accessing medical care, and periods of trying to live as a man. Kliegman rejects the idea that childhood abuse straightforwardly caused Richards’s identity, while acknowledging that those experiences may have shaped her life.

Kliegman also describes a choice she made while preparing the book: Richards asked to be called Richard, Dick, or Raskind when discussing her pre-transition life. Though that differed from the naming conventions Kliegman generally follows for transgender people, she honored Richards’s preference, emphasizing that trans people are individuals with different ways of understanding and describing themselves.

After transitioning and moving to California, Richards returned to competitive tennis. Her entry into the women’s U.S. Open drew public attention and prompted her to explain that she was a woman, not someone pretending to be one. Kliegman says Richards’s successful legal challenge depended partly on circumstances specific to her: she had support from Billie Jean King, was in her forties, and was not seen as a likely threat to the tour’s top players. Richards reached No. 20 in singles and was a strong doubles player, though Kliegman doubts she would necessarily have become the world’s best player had she transitioned earlier.

A major tension in the book is that Richards, despite her role in opening professional tennis to a transgender athlete, now opposes trans women competing in women’s sports, with an exception for some athletes who have not undergone male puberty. Kliegman says Richards took this position seriously enough to present it to a WTA gender-eligibility working group. The discussion considers how Richards’s views differ from those of other trans people and how her longtime friend Martina Navratilova has supported Richards personally while expressing broader opposition to trans women’s participation. Kliegman criticizes language that casts trans athletes as cheaters and argues that Richards’s acceptance by some people may not extend to transgender people more generally.

The interview also addresses public arguments over fairness in women’s sports, including comments by WNBA player Sophie Cunningham. Kliegman says she cannot know Cunningham’s motives but cautions that opposition to trans participation can have broader consequences, even when framed as a fairness concern. She notes that no trans woman has played in the WNBA and questions why the issue is being debated in that context.

Kliegman portrays Richards as proud of her tennis career and its significance, but wary of having her identity and legacy reduced to a symbol or a list of trans pioneers. She says the book aims to represent Richards fairly, including where they disagree. Kliegman closes by challenging common misconceptions: that transition is deceptive or predatory, that all trans people are alike, or that trans people are fundamentally different from anyone else.

Presenters and Contributors

• Paul Knepper — Host and interviewer
• Julie Kliegman — Guest and author of Finding Renée Richards