Renee

Over the last few years ESPN has made some very strong documentaries. The 30 for 30 series was very well received and deservedly so.

This fall they have begun again with a six week series of docs. Last week they ran a feature on Renee Richards. Richards born male, and named Richard Raskind had felt conflicted on her gender identity her whole life. In high school Raskind was popular and dated a girl in a serious relationship. He goes to college, still conflicted, he goes on to become a well respected optometrist but is still conflicted.

It is hard for those of us who have not felt such confusion to know how he felt. In the late sixties he almost had the surgery but after dressing as a woman and taking female hormones he backed off and eventually actually married and fathered a son. Still by the mid seventies he followed through and Renee Richards was born.

Proclaiming a desire to be private she moved to California but soon made an interesting choice for a person wanting to be private. She started entering tournaments on the Western tour. Friends told her tennis players as strong as her did not drop out of the sky and that questions would be asked . They were right, a couple of easy calls and an investigative reporter uncovered the truth.

If you grew up in the seventies you knew about this story. The ESPN version is extremely well done. We see interviews with people, friends and family, that beleived in what she did and supported her and those that while caring about her felt her decision was wrong and bordering on selfishness. Her son was affected and has been his whole life by her decision.

The interviews with Richards are done well, she speaks plainly and does not hold back. Even she admits that perhaps she should not have been allowed to play tennis against women but at the time she felt differently. Certainly if she had not played she would most likely have never become a public figure. In Richards case it seems clear that their was a certain amount of needing and wanting to prove to the world what she had done. Despite her need for privacy it becomes apparent that this is so and now looking back as a seventy five year old woman she admits that might well be the case.

One can think what they want about someone who changes genders. One must also recognize however that folks who do this are tortured. No one would willingly and in carefree way choose this path. It is not for me to judge how they feel. For Richard Raskind to do what he did at the time was a brave and defiant act. It was also to those in his life selfish. Sometimes I guess one can be both.