A Brief Note On Gender And Diversity Interview With Victoria Mealer-Flowers

This gender and diversity interview was conducted with Victoria Mealer-Flowers, the Student-Athlete Development Sr. Manager for Community Engagement and DEI Programs at Brown University Athletics. A range of topics were discussed pertaining to gender and diversity in sport, including racism, LGBTQ+ athletes, ableism, religion and privilege. Mealer-Flowers’s overarching stance on the state of diversity, equity and inclusion in sport is that the pertinent issues have evolved, rather than changed. Rather than having administrators trying to introduce and impose DEI topics and conversations with student-athletes and teams, it is the student-athletes who are taking charge and pursuing social activism of their own volition. Mealer-Flowers attributes

Mealer-Flowers is quick to point out that privilege pertains not just to socioeconomic and financial status, but also location and proximity access. It is fact that participating in some sports costs more money than other sports. For example, to play basketball, all you need is a basketball, a pair of sneakers, and something to use as a scoring hoop or basket. Conversely, to play ice hockey, you need the necessary padding, routinely-maintained ice skates, a helmet, hockey pucks and a hockey stick. The necessary equipment for hockey is of course in addition to access to an ice rink where the sport is played. Another example is golf, where you not only need a variety of different golf clubs to properly compete, but also membership access to a golf course or country club to

The headline of last year’s swimming and diving season was Lia Thomas, a record-breaking, transgender female swimmer who was permitted to compete on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swimming and diving team since she had completed the necessary hormone treatments as dictated by the NCAA and governing sport bodies. Mealer-Flowers noted how the majority people who had strong opinions on Thomas’s participation were not regular fans who follow the sport. Rather, they were average people who had issue with a transgender woman competing and succeeding over other women. To compare, Mealer-Flowers brought up Yale’s Iszac Henig, who is a transgender man who competed on the 2022-23 men’s swimming and diving team and the 2021-22 women’s swimming and diving team. While there was an outcry of outrage on social media and meet day protests regarding Thomas’s eligibility, Henig competing on the men’s team is gotten considerably less media coverage and scrutiny. Based on the differing public reactions to these two transgender swimmers, Mealer-Flowers comes to the tentative conclusion that there is only public backlash if the transgender athletes achieves success over other athletes, which gets us closer to the root of the