With the Paris Olympics set to begin on Friday, PBS’s Amanpour and Company devoted their entire show to the games on Thursday, including a wild history lesson on the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, where The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness and the Making of Modern Sports author Michael Waters tried to tie Nazism with opposition to transgender ideology.
As part of his history lesson, Waters touched on the Czech runner, Zdenek Koubek. Koubek was a champion female runner who would later identify as a man. It should be noted that Koubek was intersex, not transgender.
However, as CNN International’s Hari Sreenivasan claimed, not everyone was thrilled with the idea, “There's an interesting character you write about, kind of—it's sort of behind this interest in figuring out how to test athletes. His name is Wilhelm Knoll. Tell us a little bit about him. Who is he? Who was he?”
After recalling the publicity around Koubek, Waters recalled, “While the public is just kind of curious about, like, okay, it's literally, like, how is it possible to move between these categories? Like what are the medical advances that, that sort of allow this, you do see this small group of sports officials who have a very different reaction. And the most prominent among them is Wilhelm Knoll, who in January 1936, writes this op-ed, essentially accusing Koubek of being a fraud and deceitful in some way.”
Waters further claimed, “Knoll seemed to take issue with the fact that Koubek had been in women's sports at all. And Knoll, just for some background context, you know, he was a quite influential sports doctor in 1936. He was the head of this group of sports doctors who advised, you know, the IOC, the Track and Field Federation. This is a very early era of sports science. And so, he, just by nature of having that position, had a lot of cachet.”
However, he “was also a registered Nazi at the time and he was really an ardent believer. You know, he taught at a university and he wore the brown shirt uniform to classes. And he, you know, like, separately from Koubek, he had all of these writings about how he wanted to eliminate Jewish athletes, athletes of color from sports in general. So, he just kind of has a tendency because of his belief in eugenics to push out athletes. And he saw Koubek and this possibility of transition as some kind of threat. And you know, something that needs to be weeded out.”
The controversy around transgenderism and sports today relates to men competing in women’s sports, not the other way around. Women have been football kickers, competed in male golf tournaments, and played on male baseball teams, so that’s not the sports problem.
However, Waters still tried to tie opposition to the “possibility of transition” to Nazism, and that is simply ridiculous. Men are men and women are women, the existence of intersex individuals do not change that.
Here is a transcript for the July 25 show:
PBS Amanpour and Company
7/25/2024
HARI SREENIVASAN: There's an interesting character you write about, kind of -- it's sort of behind this interest in figuring out how to test athletes. His name is Wilhelm Knoll. Tell us a little bit about him. Who is he? Who was he?
MICHAEL WATERS: Yeah, so, so Koubek transitioned -- like announced that he was transitioning gender at the end of 1935. And like I said, you know, it becomes a global news story that is written about, you know, really with this sense of curiosity about the possibilities of transition.
And so, while the public is just kind of curious about, like, okay, it's literally, like, how is it possible to move between these categories? Like what are the medical advances that, that sort of allow this, you do see this small group of sports officials who have a very different reaction. And the most prominent among them is Wilhelm Knoll, who in January 1936, writes this op-ed, essentially accusing Koubek of being a fraud and deceitful in some way.
And Knoll seemed to take issue with the fact that Koubek had been in women's sports at all. And Knoll, just for some background context, you know, he was a quite influential sports doctor in 1936. He was the head of this group of sports doctors who advised, you know, the IOC, the Track and Field Federation. This is a very early era of sports science. And so, he, just by nature of having that position, had a lot of cachet.
He was also a registered Nazi at the time and he was really an ardent believer. You know, he taught at a university and he wore the brown shirt uniform to classes. And he, you know, like, separately from Koubek, he had all of these writings about how he wanted to eliminate Jewish athletes, athletes of color from sports in general. So, he just kind of has a tendency because of his belief in eugenics to push out athletes. And he saw Koubek and this possibility of transition as some kind of threat. And you know, something that needs to be weeded out.
