Just under 40 years before the Maltese Parliament discussed the case of Joanne Cassar, and whether at law she could marry a man, the US Tennis Association had to confront the case of Renee Richards, born as Richard Raskind, who wanted to participate in the women’s section of the 1976 US Open. Despite the differences between the decades and what was at stake, a comparison is useful.
To base the rules on marginal cases is to hyper-inflate their importance for the consequences
Raskind was born in 1934 to an upper-middle class family and displayed all the characteristics of a high-achieving alpha male. He was a talented tennis junior at the East Coast and national level. Six feet two inches tall as an adult, he attended Yale, captained the tennis team aged 20 and graduated from the University of Rochester medical school. He joined the US Navy and reached the rank of Lt. Commander while also becoming a distinguished eye surgeon.
Although not a tennis professional, he reached the over-35 national tennis (men’s) final in 1972.
He was distinguished enough for the Raskind serve to be recognisable – something a friend correctly predicted would give away his true identity when Raskind – or rather Renee (‘reborn’ in French) Richards, as she became after a surgically successful transition in 1975 – decided to compete in women’s tennis.
By this time, Richards had changed not just her name but also her address, moving to the West Coast. Her first appearances in secondary women’s tournaments brought gasps of surprise as she seemed to appear from nowhere. But there was something familiar about the figure and the style and eventually a journalist found out.
The case became a cause celebre. In 1976, she was accepted to participate in the women’s Tennis Week Open – the director was an old friend – but this prompted the withdrawal of 25 players in protest at what they called her unfair physical advantages, stemming from her birth as a man and which surgery did not eradicate.
The directors of the US Open anticipated Richards’ next move by introducing a new chromosome test for all participants. They had a 1968 precedent for this: the International Olympic Committee had introduced such a test in response to a Polish sprinter’s performance in the 1964 Games. But Richards refused to submit to the test.
She sued the US Tennis Association, won and, in 1977, participated in the US Open armed with a court order and open support from the tennis great Billie Jean King. She lost in the first round to the no. 3 seed and Wimbledon champion Virginia Wade (6-1, 6-4) – probably her most famous photo, as a tennis player, is taken from this game.
In fact, despite all the talk about Richards’ unfair physical advantages, her short career on the professional circuit was not that distinguished. Her highest ranking was 20. She probably achieved more distinction as Martina Navratilova’s coach (guiding her to two Wimbledon titles).
One reason was age. She was in her mid-40s when she contested her first US Open. What probably held her back more, however, was the same factor that many people thought to be her great advantage. Being a transsexual, she wanted to prove she was a woman.
So, instead of following the rational strategy of relying on her natural advantages of height and power (which is what similarly endowed born women tennis stars do), she felt psychologically compelled, according to one of her former coaches, to play a more ‘feminine’ baseline game, nullifying a great part of her physical advantage in the process.
What’s the point of going into this old case in 2013? The differences seem obvious.
The rules of tennis can be changed but, surely, what makes marriage so attractive is its aura of an unchanging core. Tennis is a game, marriage redefines most people’s reality. Tennis is antagonistic, marriage is (at least when it’s contracted) consensual.
However, the distance from the old case enables us to see some things more clearly than we would just by looking at the Cassar case, which is perhaps too close.
First, one of the major objections to making any allowances for Richards was that to do so would ‘open the floodgates’. But, as Mary Carillo (another prominent 1970s player) retorted: “Why? Are you expecting this will be the start of a trend? Where men have gender assignment surgery so they can win the US Open?”
Of course, that didn’t happen. Such cases will continue to occur because it’s a statistical truth of the nature of human sexuality. But to base the rules on such marginal cases is to hyper-inflate their importance for the consequences.
Second, it is the instinct of a bureaucratic organisation concerned with precedent – whether it’s the US Tennis Association or a State – to search for the truth, the essence of the matter, and find a way of testing and measuring it.
But this misses the central issue. Of course truth is important. Of course it takes more than surgery to become a man or woman. It would even be retrograde to reduce womanhood to the nature of breasts and genitals.
However, this kind of existential truth cannot be resolved by politicians and bureaucrats. It’s for philosophers, religions and ordinary people navigating the fuzzy logic of life and love.
Bureaucrats have only two categories: male and female. And, as Mario de Marco pointed out in Parliament, to deny Cassar the right to marry a man had the implication of stating that she could officially marry a woman (because Cassar never lost her birth right of marriage).
Just as it would have been ridiculous for Richards to compete in the men’s US Open, it would have been absurd for Cassar to marry a woman... while the same State ruled out gay marriage. The politicians may say they will permit Cassar to marry a man out of their love of liberty. Actually, they had no choice without consequences that made them look ridiculous.
ranierfsadni@europe.com