In this episode...
What if sports were designed around athlete wellbeing instead of profit? In this eye-opening conversation, Dr. Diane Williams shares the buried history of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), an organization that flourished in the 1970s and early 1980s with a radical vision for collegiate athletics centered on education and student development.
Dr. Williams, a professor of kinesiology at McDaniel College and former NCAA All-American athlete, reveals how this women-led organization created a completely different approach to sports governance than the male-dominated NCAA. With her interdisciplinary background in American Studies, Sports Studies, and Gender Studies, she unpacks how the AIAW's educational philosophy prioritized athlete wellbeing while still fostering high-level competition.
The conversation delves into why this history matters today, as athletes across all levels struggle with mental health challenges, restrictive gender norms, and exploitative systems. Dr. Williams shares powerful insights about creating more inclusive, body-positive athletic spaces that welcome diverse bodies and abilities. From her experience as "Lady Hulk" in roller derby to her work with current students questioning athletic norms, she offers a blueprint for reimagining sports culture.
Most compelling is the story of how the AIAW ended – not because its model failed, but because it threatened existing power structures. As Dr. Williams explains, "It wasn't just the organization that disappeared but an entire alternative vision for what athletics could be." This forgotten chapter in sports history offers valuable lessons for anyone interested in creating healthier approaches to physical activity, competition, and embodiment.
Whether you're an athlete, coach, parent, or simply someone interested in how we might build more humane and inclusive systems, this conversation will transform how you think about sports culture and its possibilities.
Learn more & connect with Dr. Williams at: https://www.mcdaniel.edu/about-us/profiles/diane-l-williams-phd
Full Transcript
Lisa Danylchuk: 0:08
Welcome back to the how we Can Heal podcast. Today, our guest is Dr Diane Williams. Diane holds a doctorate in American Studies and Sports Studies, in addition to a certificate in Gender, women's and Sexuality Studies from the University of Iowa. She also has a master's in social justice education from UMass Amherst and a master's in exercise and sports studies from Smith College. She's currently a professor of kinesiology at McDaniel College in Maryland, where she teaches sport in American society.Lisa Danylchuk: 0:40
Women in sport, sport coaching and management and kinesiology. Women in sport, sport coaching and management and kinesiology. A six-time NCAA Division III All-American in shot put and discus, she's been a coach and an athlete herself, earning the name Lady Hulk during her eight-year skating roller derby as well. She often writes and teaches about the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, an organization that existed in the 1970s and 80s and centered the well-being of women student-athletes in a unique way, which we'll talk about today. We'll also talk about the importance of inclusivity and mental health in sports culture and the need for deep reflection on dynamics and power structures in athletics. I've been lucky to know Diane my whole life and see her brilliance up close and personal, so I'm excited to share it with you today. Please join me in welcoming Diane to the show. Dr Diane Williams, welcome to the how we Can Heal podcast. How are you today?Dr. Diane Williams: 1:42
I'm good. Thank you, I'm so excited to be here and to talk to you.Lisa Danylchuk: 1:46
For folks listening Diane and I met when we were zero years old. I used to live probably like a hundred yards from your house when I was born. We moved pretty quickly. But then preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle school, high school, all of it right. I have memories of doing show and tell in preschool and you sitting in the little corner by the door. I remember it. It wasn't that long, it was a while ago. It wasn't that long ago. So thank you for being here. You have such an extraordinary career yourself. We've kept in touch over the years, but I'm really curious to learn from you today and to share that with our audience. So yay.Dr. Diane Williams: 2:30
Yay, well, I mean, yes, all of that. I was just telling my classes because we read part of the yoga for trauma book you wrote, so they're familiar with you. I was telling them that I was doing this and telling them like, again, I told you I go way back with Lisa, but what we've, what we've both talked about, is that we took, you know, like since calculus in high school, when we spent a lot of time together. We haven't necessarily spent a ton of time together, but we have had these interesting careers that have have come back together in different ways and that echo each other in different ways that aren't necessarily apparent on the surface.Dr. Diane Williams: 3:09
right, and that's part of what I love about just getting every time I get to see you and talk to you.Lisa Danylchuk: 3:16
I feel like our careers are so interrelated and if I had extra life space I would want to study what you're studying right, but it's like you pick and choose. We all only have so much and you have to choose a major in college and I mean for you, you just keep going back and getting more degrees. Maybe you're done with that. For now I'm not going to say forever. Let's share with folks listening. What are some central themes in your studies, your work, your teaching?Dr. Diane Williams: 3:48
So I currently am an assistant professor of kinesiology, which used to be called physical education back in the day, and it's this interdisciplinary study of the body and movement, and so a lot of my colleagues are scientists and they do exercise, physiology and anatomy and biomechanics.Dr. Diane Williams: 4:09
And then there's the other side of the discipline and of my department, which is humanities based and social science based, and so we have a sports psychology professor and we have me, and I study the history and sociology of sport and physical activity, focused mostly in the United States, and so I come out of a really interdisciplinary background. I was an American Studies major as an undergrad, did American Studies as my doctoral work, with gender studies, women's and gender studies in there, but also looking at sport and physical activity, and I wanted to coach all along and I have coached on and off for 20 years now. I was an athlete in high school and college, so that sport thing has been a part of my life for a long time. But at some point I decided I didn't want to coach anymore Well, maybe different levels I keep coming back to it but I didn't want to be a collegiate coach, but I wanted to do something related to sport and physical activity. And so now I am in this position that I always wanted to be in, which is that I get to work with students who are kinesiology majors Sometimes they're not, and they just came to take women in sport because it sounded interesting, but they're usually there because they're interested in the body and movement. I get to introduce them to thinking about the history and how identities are a part of that history and how sports are inclusive and exclusive and how all kinds of different aspects of studying sport and the body that are beyond the body as a machine and the body as muscles Because really the body is all of that and the experiences we have I don't have to tell you this right and the impact we have on other people and the impact they have on us, and the ideas we have about ability, who can be included in certain spaces and who can't, and the histories that go with that.Dr. Diane Williams: 6:00
And so I get this opportunity to take students that are already interested in sports, say, or they're interested in the body, and we just study all of these different things related to this but that have, that are connected to science, but that aren't the science side of it.Dr. Diane Williams: 6:14
In that work, I think the learning happens more deeply when we personally connect to it, and I have this opportunity where everybody has a body so like and a lot of them if it's a sport class they probably have some experience with sport and sport culture themselves or their families.Dr. Diane Williams: 6:32
We do a lot of reading, theory, reading, academic work and then thinking about how it relates to our lives and thinking about how it informs, how this helps us think through our own experiences in sport and sport culture or with bodies or with our own body and doing this integration so it becomes more personal. But also this is where the sort of the psych side of it right. It also gives them a chance to self-reflect and think through meanings they already make around bodies and sport. All of that before they go out. And our personal trainers working with other people or our professors or our researchers right. They have this different engagement with their own interests and their own background and their own assumptions and ideas that might make them ideally more open, more inclusive, more thoughtful and cognizant of the histories and the context that they're working within.Lisa Danylchuk: 7:23
Yes, there's so much in there and I was thinking as you were talking and just having this memory of Saturday. I was running a trail half marathon, so hiking and running, and I had this memory of some meme I saw recently.Lisa Danylchuk: 7:39
And in it there's an interview with a group of women going jogging and I want to say it's the early seventies and it's literally a news interview. The anchor is like we've got this group of women, they like to get together and they run two miles every Tuesday. Right, Wow, what do you do this? And he puts the mic. She's like I just really feel like it gives me space and I love to be with other, with the, this group of women, and I just feel better after. Okay, you heard it straight from her. You know like it's this wild thing that this group of women are running and it made me think of you and knowing we were talking this stuff isn't that long ago, right, and even thinking about for myself and I've interviewed a few trail runners on this podcast now how that community has evolved in my about a decade being involved in it, how it's evolved along gender lines.Lisa Danylchuk: 8:40
I've had conversations here on this podcast about body image and the messages we get and fueling and your relationship to your body and your relationship to a sense of empowerment internally and power and presence being seen. So there's just so many layers to your work. When we fold trauma into that, it's another layer. Hopefully any of us who have a body, anyone listening with a body. Hopefully we are curious about these things so that we're not just living based on, I'll just say, unhealthy dynamics or oppressive dynamics or history that's exploitive and that can go across so many different layers, right? So I love the depth and breadth of this work. It can apply to so many different things. I'm curious what you're seeing your students come with. I'm not so connected. I used to teach more in academic settings. I'm not so connected there anymore. What are the questions, the things that people are really chewing on as they're going through your classes, that you see the gears start to shift internally?Dr. Diane Williams: 9:56
Specifically thinking about the sport classes I teach. I teach sport in American society, a coaching and sport management class, and I also teach women in sport. I've been teaching all those for a couple of years now. There is a profound acceptance of norms because we've only seen one major athletic governance organization for intercollegiate sport, for example, the NCAA right, and so merely the idea that there one are more than one at this moment and two historically have been other organizations that organized and had different philosophies of sport and why we might play in college or in high school or at lower levels. That in itself is a part of why I do the work I do is to simply like there's an acceptance that what it is is what it. Why I do the work I do is to simply like there's an acceptance that what it is is what it always has been and will be right, which we get. That's how, that's how society rolls, that's also how the folks that have a lot of power and privilege would really like it to be, so that there is no threat to that power and privilege. Right, and with that comes this rhetoric of women in sport have come so far, and isn't this so great? And let's celebrate and, trust me, I'm all for celebrating when things deserve celebration and I am all for being real about how far and what are the caveats there? We still talk about sport and women's sport. So we haven't come that far. The norm is still male, women are still noted Right. Until that's different, we're far from equality, right, and all of the things that follow from that opportunity, resources, support for students in athletics and broader opportunities.Dr. Diane Williams: 11:38
So one of the things that's the biggest thing I do is get people in the room and get them to start thinking how do we even study sport? People study sport. Yeah, let's start there Then gently starting to think about what are things you've seen and experienced in sport? What did you like, what did you not like? Then we start thinking about how we get socialized into dominant sport culture. What's fun, particularly in a lot of these classes, is that everybody in the room has a story, even if it's that they don't like sport culture. They have a story. It's that dominant, and so I can get folks talking pretty quickly. As long as we've got a kind of a good space set up where they feel like they can share and people will comment and they'll have interesting conversations, we get going.Lisa Danylchuk: 12:20
I would love to be in your class even just to talk about my experiences in trail running. What I love and that's like trail running to me has become like the most inclusive non-performance or body shape focused or yoga I mean that's that's its own thing too. Like there's plenty of body shape focus there, there can be competition there, and so for me it's been a process to try to find something where I can be very engaged in my body and athletic and even exploring the ends of my range of motion or my speed or climbing something, but in a place that feels psychologically healthy, like trail running and yoga. I've been able to find that, but it's not even like it's a hundred percent in either of those communities.Lisa Danylchuk: 13:06
And I think for me going into like basketball like if I was on a women's basketball team, I think some of the cultural things around it just wouldn't jive with me and it would make it too hard for me to eat, like I think that's why I didn't go in those directions. I was like Ooh, wow, that's just not. It's just not going to be healthy for me to have some of these dynamics. So I would love to sign me up. I will fly over and take your class at McDaniel and be a student. Let's talk about this and they'll be like man. She's really eager.Dr. Diane Williams: 13:37
No, they'd love it. The thing is also sport is such a big part of their lives. They do have questions, they do have ideas, they do have things. Sometimes I ask them, like what do you know about sports? And then, like, what do you think you know? Hopefully, eventually, the more we get into this and the more we think about all these different aspects of sport and sport culture, the more you start going oh wow, there's a lot I don't know, and like, how fun, what an opportunity, and why Do we have to do it this way? No, of course not, but we're gonna, unless something major happens.Dr. Diane Williams: 14:10
We spend a fair amount of time talking critically about sport right, which, as I tell them, is not like I'm being critical and picky. It's. I'm thinking about power, I'm thinking about inclusion. I do critical thinking about it, asking questions. There's lots of negative that can come from that right and, at the same time, part of what is helpful about having a really positive background in sport myself and in coaching is that I love it also. I loved playing. I'm no good as a fan because I just want to be out there playing. It's fun, and so they also have often real positive stories that we can also build on. We can talk about how sport often particularly for men, but also for women is perpetuating like this kind of distancing from your body, overcoming or ignoring pain signals and glorifying that in ways that are, like, deeply disturbing when you actually sit with it.Lisa Danylchuk: 15:01
Oh yeah.Dr. Diane Williams: 15:01
We can talk about these kinds of things, right, and then I can say like, tell me about a moment with someone in sport, culture or coach, athletic trainer that challenged that. And these awesome stories come out all the time. Of my high school football coach who, who sat with me, sat down next to me when I was like in pain and let me know it was OK and it was OK to have all the feelings and it was OK, you know, and and just, there's always these really awesome stories too. We can learn from the crappy ones, but we can learn from the really awesome opportunities and see those awesome opportunities if we have a future in coaching, if we have a future working with young people in athletics or whatever.Lisa Danylchuk: 15:37
What do you see as some of the dominant narratives in sport culture? What are some of the emerging narratives you see that are not problematic right, that are maybe an evolution Less?Dr. Diane Williams: 15:52
problematic or less problematic, one of the things that keeps coming up in classes. Students of all genders and different ethnic and racial backgrounds are very interested in and supportive of talking much more about mental health and sports. Talking much more about athletes' health and well-being themselves, their teammates, all of it. And looking to some of the more elite athletes for the last couple years maybe a decade plus that have been much more open about their own challenges and humanizing themselves in different ways. Simone Biles was dealing with the twisties, or something that sounded horrifyingly terrible and people. Anyone saying you should push through when, literally, your body has lost a sense of up and down and you're in the air sounds like you need to take a break right.Dr. Diane Williams: 16:41
And so recognizing the students very much overall, are excited about that and see that as real, positive, and I think that is a reflection of this moment and becoming more aware of mental health realities. And that's not always like a diagnosable thing. Sports have a different kind of stress. Sometimes that manifests in ways that isn't necessarily clinical at all, but we can work with it and we can actually train with it. We train it giving people skills to develop their abilities to work with their own emotional regulation and in performance moments, right when, like we give them the skills to like perfect their free throw, and then we're like, just be tough, how, tell me how and I'll do it.Lisa Danylchuk: 17:28
And you be a little more specific about that.Dr. Diane Williams: 17:31
I'm crying and I want to cry.Lisa Danylchuk: 17:34
How about let's learn how to focus, let's learn when we need to take a moment and take a breath and collect ourselves, and when some space or freedom would be helpful and when some discipline or focus would be helpful. How?Dr. Diane Williams: 17:47
to even do those things right, start small right. That is definitely an exciting, really important shift because our sort of dominant sport culture is set up. It's so male dominated, it's so capitalist influenced, productivity focused, dehumanizing these things that just like, oh, what gets glorified is so destructive, often in the interest of winning games.Lisa Danylchuk: 18:14
Yeah.Dr. Diane Williams: 18:15
And there's so much money on the line.Lisa Danylchuk: 18:17
Tell us about the AIAW, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, and why it's important.Dr. Diane Williams: 18:23
I'm going to come at this from a different direction that connects to what you were talking about earlier.Dr. Diane Williams: 18:27
You were talking about the fact that, like all that stuff about dominant sport culture wasn't very appealing to you, and so you like weren't like, yeah, I'm going to go out for the basketball team, like I'll go do my own thing, and so, likewise, in an interesting way, you know that I grew up dancing we both did in a really supportive Parks and Rec program that was led by a physical educator who was trained and did dance programs in the public schools in the area. Mary Joyce did all kinds of amazing work and she had this physical education background that was like had a belief in the value of physical activity and bodily awareness for lifelong health and wellness and also as a part of your educational experience there's a whole history of physical education that really is about that and so I grew up not really playing sports but being physically active, loving dancing, loving feeling my body and like the coordination and doing a routine with people and you're all in sync and it's like very exciting and all of that.Lisa Danylchuk: 19:26
I feel like you and I performed to C&C Music Factory Janet Jackson in little white t-shirts that got you cut up the edge so there's fringe and seeds on the end so that when you jump and turn it twirls. I remember that. I remember that routine, I got it.Dr. Diane Williams: 19:43
Right. And so there was so much joy, there was so much community focus in that program. It wasn't about being the best, it was about being the best you can be and learning. I took that into sport as a first year in high school. I was like sports look like fun. I don't know, Maybe I'll go try out and I did and like it worked, partly because I had what we call in kinesiology physical literacy, Like I had a an ability to move and pick up routines and have balance, and I could that translated into then learning sports specific stuff, right, Volleyball, basketball, track. And so then I got into sport world, which was not something you know, you know my family. That wasn't necessarily like where I was headed ever, and now it's like what I do professionally. So there's a bridge there which is that I've.Dr. Diane Williams: 20:29
As I was in sport world, I was like I don't think I do this the same way everybody else does, Like this is really fun. It's like we're not here to have fun. Yeah, oh, we're not, we're here for pain. It doesn't sound fun, Like this is, this is joyful, this is a challenge and it's no-transcript sport. I'm coaching and stuff, and I'm still just like I just don't, I don't do this, this isn't the most important thing in all of our lives. Like this is an important thing in our lives and also like how we care for each other is really important and care for our bodies, and that we care about things other than just sport. You know, in college I was running the rape and sexual assault network, putting on events there and also competing on the national scene and a student, like a pretty serious student, really enjoying learning stuff, Learning stuff.Lisa Danylchuk: 21:45
Learning stuff is fun. I'm a big fan.Dr. Diane Williams: 21:47
Right, right, I start hearing about this organization as I am in the coaching and in my master's program for coaching. So one thing I notice is people talk about oh yeah, there was this other organization that led women's sport, but like it doesn't exist anymore and they had different ideas. And I'm like huh, did they? Oh, hold on, one cool story before that and then I'll get to the AIW. I promise the coolest story.Dr. Diane Williams: 22:20
The first time I heard about the AIW was actually from my collegiate throws coach, fletcher Brooks, who is amazing and still coaching and just incredible, very silly and it's wonderful. And we're watching my teammates cool down and they are across the track trying to get down one of the NCAA posters to bring home. They're not sneaky, but nobody cares. The NCAA sends this stuff. You hang it up, it disappears, it's fine. Yeah, so Fletcher looks across and it's like, yeah, like the NCAA has been that great for women athletics, women's athletics, and I was like what now? What? What do mean?Dr. Diane Williams: 22:52
And I'm a burgeoning feminist scholar and taking my women's studies classes and I'm like huh and he's like the NCAA has not treated women in sports very well. He had been educated at Springfield in part by women who had been a part of the AIW and he had knowledge of this much longer legacy of women's physical education and sports. So he starts telling me a little bit, just a tiny bit, about this like well, there's this whole other organization that used to exist and the AIW. I don't know if he said the name, but the part of what's significant is they had a whole different philosophy of sport and physical activity and it was educationally rooted and it was financially reasonable and it was about something else that you would do in college. That's a part of your educational experience and your overall growth and development as a human. We're going to have high level competition and organized teams, but we're not going to exploit athletes and we're not going to oh my God, what.Lisa Danylchuk: 23:43
And we're going to.Dr. Diane Williams: 23:44
we're going to value their humanity and we're going to have a different approach to doing this, and one sport isn't going to knows about this massive organization and the work they did, and not like in a. We deserve all this credit. Necessarily they do, but more in like it's part of sport history. It's part of collegiate sport history, let alone US sport history. So, anyways, I get through a couple grad programs and have gotten interested enough. I read their purpose statement, I think from the first couple of pages of the constitution that they wrote, and it's a manifesto. It's so gorgeous. It is like sport sport for the. We believe in cultivating intercollegiate sport for women, for the overall wellbeing of the student athlete. All decisions should be made with that in mind. I'm like, well, that seems different. Yeah, and to your point earlier.Lisa Danylchuk: 24:59
It's not exploitive. No, we're not making money off of you. This is about enrichment, right Embodied enrichment, and education and, from what I've read that you've shared, it's focusing on the academics, focusing on the whole experience, focusing like it's not just this hey, play for our team so we win and make money.Dr. Diane Williams: 25:21
Yes, yes, focusing on student athletes well-being and educational experience doesn't preclude working hard, challenging people. Educational experience doesn't preclude working hard, challenging people, excelling and competing at a high level Like those things can all go together. In so many cases they did. I decided I didn't want to coach under the NCAA. I loved coaching. I loved working with athletes.Dr. Diane Williams: 25:42
I loved teaching young women in particular how to throw a shot put. It wasn't about the shot put you know, like it's about oh no, you're powerful. Let me let me show you how to throw a shot put. It wasn't about the shot put you know, it's about oh no, you're powerful. Let me let me show you how to get into a ready position and then, like, use those legs and use your butt and take this tiny little heavy metal object and chuck it out there and it's really silly and it's really joyful and it can be really empowering in these delightful ways. And I was like there's something here I love, but like I don't love the way that this performance ethic and it only matters if you win, and like, if you're not on a team that makes money but really that just means spends a lot of money that then you have to recoup.Dr. Diane Williams: 26:20
There's so much about the NCAA I found distasteful and so I was like done, and then I decided to go to grad school and study this. So I ended up at Iowa, which had this amazing legacy of leadership within this organization, and in fact, three of the professors who were still in the area two of them had been presidents of the AIAW and one was one of the executive directors for a short time, and they were they all had their papers there, so I was able to start in the archives there and also interview them, and then that also led to other interviews and other archival work. The AIAW was created by women who were trained physical educators. They all came with a commitment to the value and power and joy that physical activity can bring and not seeing it as something that women can't do can bring, and not seeing it as something that women can't do Right, and in fact, seeing it as like oh no, it's great Everybody should do it however they want to.Dr. Diane Williams: 27:16
And so there was lots of momentum Students in the late 60s, early 70s. Women students were like we would like to play, the guys have had sports forever. We had intramurals and there was like other kinds of competition going on, but no organized teams and no organized schedules and championships anything like that. And so there were physical educators who decided, okay, we don't want to recreate what the NCAA is doing and we think we can do it better and we think we can do it different and we're going to do it for women. The NCAA is not interested anyway. So like great, go do your thing, we'll be over here doing ours.Dr. Diane Williams: 27:51
And so there was a couple of years of organizing and a pilot organization that wasn't an official membership organization. They were putting out standards and ideas for creating intercollegiate women's sport. And then by 1971, the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women made their first call like we're starting this, join in. And we had like 273 schools join in right away as charter members in that first year. And from then it just grew and it was women-led and it was women-run for women, which has a sort of gender essentialist notion that might be kind of like. Couldn't it be for everybody, yes, but also the men already had something on the NCAA side. They didn't want anything to do with what the women were doing anyways, and there was a different sensibility that informed the work the AIW was doing.Dr. Diane Williams: 28:42
That was from the experience of having been told your whole life you couldn't participate, and so there was a sense of we also need to teach people about sport.Dr. Diane Williams: 28:52
And so, like coaches for the late in the late sixties, there were workshops for women high school, elementary school and college professors and teachers to go learn how to play volleyball so that then they could go back and coach it. And then they were under the like each one teach one. So you go to the national workshop, you learn how to play volleyball, you go home, you put on a conference locally so you can teach people how to play volleyball, and then we start coaching kids and we get girls into volleyball or whatever it is. There was an embedded educational mentality right there, right these again, all physical educators trying to develop high level sport, but so many women had been told they couldn't play. There were some opportunities for women to play in industrial leagues throughout the earlier part of the 1900s, but this was a kind of all of a sudden a pretty widespread thing that was happening, like through schools and in a different way. And so then, at the college level, the AIW started. They held their first championships in 72.Lisa Danylchuk: 29:48
They held their first championships in 72. So what would be your hope for moving forward? Right, the AIW doesn't exist anymore. There's something to be learned from that, for sure. There's lessons to take away. What would be your hope, moving forward, of how athletics could change? That is a very, very big question. Let's just dream storm.Dr. Diane Williams: 30:19
I always quote Dr Jennifer Gomez. I heard that one. That was good. You have this almighty power to say how it's going to go. How's it going to go? So one of the things that I run into when this type of question comes up is that there is a small part of me that just recoils at how exclusive collegiate sport is, period.Dr. Diane Williams: 30:41
And sport is period, and so my interest now is I want more of all of it. We can have high level competitive sport that's lovely, but I want more of all the rest of the kinds of ways we can participate in sport, so that more people of different abilities and different interests can find something that would be fun for them to do. It doesn't have to be about winning, but it can be. It doesn't have to be about pushing boundaries, but it can be. It might just be about community and like giggling and going for a walk together, climbing on a playground and doing different stuff there, and that's not sport per se. But I guess this is where my interest lies. I want more of all of it, more of a mentality that we can learn and grow as we age. We don't have to just see ourselves as increasingly deficient.Lisa Danylchuk: 31:25
Yeah, so what would be your hope for how we think about bodies and gender-affirming athletics. That's when I think of you. I think of body-positive, gender-affirming athletics, thanks. So what does that look like? What does it look like to have body positive, gender affirming athletics? I mean, it starts with people not telling you to tuck your butt in when that's just your butt.Dr. Diane Williams: 31:58
Like yeah, that's just, and that's just my butt. Booties are really important in athletics.Lisa Danylchuk: 32:04
I use my gluteus to jump high.Dr. Diane Williams: 32:06
It's super important. Yeah, it comes from a different set of values. It comes from motivations that are that are rooted in those things. Right, I can go at this from two examples that offered ideas of how this could look. So one of them is in my late twenties I was in this coaching grad program but I decided I wasn't going to coach. I needed to like survive the next year and a half of the program and I started playing roller Derby in Western mass. And so here I was, again that physical literacy thing kicked in and I was like I don't know what I'm doing, but I used to like to roller skate a lot. We also did that together. So you know, sure I'm going to go learn how to play this thing.Dr. Diane Williams: 32:49
And I was in Western Massachusetts, which had at that point one of the only co-ed leagues, and we practiced together. We played separately because there was no structure to play together. It was led by folks who wanted to create a different kind of sports space, and they might not have used that language because, like, not all of them were sports scholars, right, in fact, none of them, which one of them was she wrote a book on it, and a couple of us were, you know dorky academics, it's Western mass. But you know, we also had everybody else there, some of who had played sports, some of who had never played sports but thought this looked fun because it was kind of alternative and it was kind of punk and it was kind of grungy. And then we had to create out of that. How do we? How do we do this then? This is a sport where, like it's a full contact sport. So if we're practicing in a drill, like your hand is on the hip of your teammate and you're creating a wall and you're moving each other of your teammate and you're creating a wall and you're moving each other, how do we do this?Dr. Diane Williams: 33:42
In a way that our society is so weird about bodies and there are so many reasons to be cognizant of boundaries and to be very conscious of how you're engaging each other. And then there's a gender component and there's power, right. And yet we somehow managed to do it and it wasn't flawless, because nothing's going to be, but we had a pretty strict code of conduct and we had, right up front, we were like, don't make this weird. I don't remember quite how they said it, but that might've been it. We want to do this. We have a no tolerance policy for harassment, like you need to be aware of yourself and how you're treating others, and from there we could do it and it worked.Dr. Diane Williams: 34:19
And we had this again, not without its issues, but overall really positive, very different kind of sports space. There were still moments where the ideas of society snuck in and the women would hold back or assume the men were better or the men might assume a sort of role, but we also undermined it constantly and, if nothing else, you just had this experience of like I developed into one of the stronger blockers not like the strongest some folks, but a well-respected blocker on both teams, right, and worked with people really well from both teams in practice, and then we would play separately, like I said. But so that was like this beautiful invitation to oh God, thank you. Just imagine what this could look like if we weren't so like weirdly caught up in these norms and these assumptions. I historically have been stronger than plenty of guys I know, and yet I still get told women are weaker and I'm like, seriously, really, come on.Lisa Danylchuk: 35:15
I find myself thinking, too, about non-binary folks, anyone who's doesn't identify as male or female, or isn't right like yes, all of it, all of the in between it, and I think about you mentioned earlier inclusion and exclusion in sports and thinking about how we bring people together, how we exclude people in a harmful way, and when you talk about even gender inclusive practice and I think gender inclusive games could be interesting too. It's so powerful to think about people playing sports instead of, or people engaging in athletics, and in terms of learning, in terms of physicality, there's a time and a place. In terms of therapy, there's a time and a place to make things exclusive so that people feel safe or protected or there's some sense of a scope there. But if we were to open up sports more, athletics more, maybe we could be more inclusive. Like, I just find myself thinking of people I know who, if certain information were found out about them, wouldn't be able to play on their team, you know, and why, yeah, I mean yeah, exactly when we set it all up as a binary.Dr. Diane Williams: 36:43
That's it. That's so ridiculous, and not even how people are period. So like softening that, changing, like this is where, like I don't know what to do on the national, international level and I don't really care to fix it. Honestly, I think a lot of it's really broken. I want to see more opportunities for anybody to play things that they're interested in playing, more participation, not less.Lisa Danylchuk: 37:04
Yeah, I feel like that's something really generative. There's how it is and there's fighting how it is, which can be exhausting, and trying to figure out how to fix something that feels inherently inadequate or unequal or harmful, and it's worth it to think about that. But we can also build something different, and what I'm gathering from everything you're saying is let's be more aware of the positive things in history. Let's just be curious about that and open to maybe digging a little to find it. From there Can we create places, especially for young people, but for all people, I mean, we know, for young people. It impacts them across the whole. That impacts culture and those people could end up owning teams later.Dr. Diane Williams: 37:52
Right.Lisa Danylchuk: 37:53
Yeah, so can we start? Can we create spaces for young people, for all people, to access their bodies and their power in unique and inclusive ways together, right, Right, yeah, yeah.Dr. Diane Williams: 38:10
And whether that looks like a sport per se or whether it looks like like I'm just starting to be part of a West Coast swing dance community out here that years ago did away with the sort of gendering of swing and they have leaders and followers and people of different genders do whatever they want and wear a little button to indicate if they're a leader or a follow, and they have again a strict code of conduct a really big investment in positive community building and they practice it. A really big investment in positive community building and they practice it. And then, literally, you get to go be in a space where your boundaries are going to be respected. If you don't want to dance, you just say no and like there's an ethic of okay, then you move on and you ask someone else to dance. It's fine, that happens, right, you don't have to explain yourself, but there's just this like positive social interaction that's happening and it's a physical activity and it's with people of all different genders and like the world doesn't end and in fact, you feel better when you leave, right, and you can't undo those kinds of positive experiences of being on a team with just all your friends, and all your friends are different genders and hopefully, depending on where you live, different races and they're from different parts of the community or whatever, and you get to have that experience and you don't unhave that experience then after that and you know that you can be teammates and work hard and play hard with other people who look like you and who don't look like you. Right, that's where these really beautiful opportunities exist. Part of what's so powerful about sport and physical activity is, again, that embodied experience of it, that it's not just intellectual, it's not just us thinking about ideas Like we actually get to go, do a thing and be in a space that is liberatory in some ways.Dr. Diane Williams: 39:43
I was going to say to your point of like, do we change the system or create our own? That's part of, of course. What draws me to the AIAW's history is because I see it, I really read it as that radical idea of like no, the system's broken, we're not going to try and adapt into it, we're going to do something new. And in fact it's a very different philosophy than what undergirds, like Title IX, which is the norm, is here and women or the underrepresented groups should be brought up to the norm, as opposed to saying actually the norm is ridiculous. There's no reason that football should get the power and resources that it has had since 1900. But it still does. So what's fair and what's reasonable? And how do we create equitable opportunities for everybody? That might involve scaling some things back. Instead we go. How do we fit women into a system that was not designed for them? Not necessarily because they're women, just because it was not designed for them?Dr. Diane Williams: 40:39
It wasn't designed for most men either Not that many men get to play, and so that's part of what I love about the AIW is it's a reminder that we can do things differently. Yeah, it takes time and energy, and sometimes your organization ends. After 10 years. Does it still count? Yeah, because it did exist. It was the biggest athletic governance organization for a time, and the only one offering women's championships. Was that threatening? Yeah, but it happened.Lisa Danylchuk: 41:07
I know you have a dissertation about this. Why did it end?Dr. Diane Williams: 41:12
It depends on who you ask. I have definitely talked to women who were presidents who said well, we were too powerful and we were doing too good of a job, and so the NCAA put us out of business. It's a combination of things, but one of them is that the AIW started pre-Title IX, and Title IX was actually never intended to be for sports. It was an educationally focused amendment about admission into different academic programs like dentistry and other things like that. It had some pay equity, other things related to education, but not about sports. Actually, I don't think it would have passed, honestly, if it was about sports, but that's a side note. So, right away, though, all these women physical educators who are looking to create more resources because women's sport came out of having the creativity where you have no resources and you're like well, I guess we'll use the same uniforms for every single team because we don't have money to buy more. So they thought if we can get this to apply to sports, we can make a legal case for more resources, and so they did, and that's part of both the AIAW, and women's physical education was a really big part of helping to push that sports should be a part of what is covered under Title IX. The NCAA was not on board at all and fought it tooth and nail. So the thing is, sport is a really messy thing to try and figure out. What does equity even look like when things cost different for different teams? There aren't really women's teams yet. So what do we, what do you even want girls, right? And so throughout the entire seventies, as the AIAW was creating women's intercollegiate sport, all of these women physical educators who were not politically savvy had to then become politically savvy and they were testifying in Congress that they were doing all this work right and they were connecting with other women's groups, legal groups and educational groups to build broader networks and see the connections. Sport was not a part of the explicitly feminist movement at that point and these folks were like no, this can be a part of it, both in the educational context and beyond it. But let us explain how this works under the AIAW, not what the NCAA is doing.Dr. Diane Williams: 43:18
Congress interprets Title IX like here are the criteria for the athletic program following Title IX guidelines Passed in 72, it's not interpreted until 79 at the end of the year, that January in 80, the NCAA very quickly and breaking some of their own rules to do it pass Division II and III women's championships at their national convention without engaging the AIEW, which already had extensive championships at that point, just as a power move. They were concerned that their membership the colleges and universities that were part of the NCAA at that point could get sued for not providing equitable opportunities. And then they smartly leveraged this notion of separate is not equal, which is not intended to be about gender. It's a race-based historical argument, but it gets applied this way and we start saying well, if you have two different governing organizations, that could be a problem for your institution. Don't you feel better going with the NCAA? We've got money and power on our side.Dr. Diane Williams: 44:22
It was chaotic. I'm not sure what all the schools could do. Aiw had only been around for like 10 years, NCAA had been around for 75. And there's like this massive political campaign going on both directions and ultimately lots of attempts made by the AIAW to say can't we come together and pick the best of what we're both doing and create something better? And the NCAA had no individual. People might have had respect, certainly, for people that were involved, but they had no respect for the organization. And this was the NCAA's territory with collegiate athletics, and so it was a we're going to take over and destroy as opposed to try and collaborate, and that's what happened.Dr. Diane Williams: 45:02
So the following year, the NCAA passed division one championships and actually a lot of football coaches were very opposed to it at the high level football coaches because they were worried about losing resources, cause, of course, if you have to add things, where's the money going to come from? We always frame it as asum game, right? Yeah, other ways of thinking about it, but that's how it was set up. And so it was a very narrow vote and the NCAA passed women's championships, and then for the next year, both organizations offered championships and the NCAA matched theirs weekend to weekend to the AIWs. And so every school then had to make a choice, and the NCAA incentivized theirs. They said if your men are already a part of our organization, you don't have to pay for dues. The AIAW ran on dues. They had just gotten some media contracts, they were just building some financial stability beyond that, and the NCAA went right for the money and the ways that you could undermine. So philosophically, schools might have wanted to stay with the AIW, but financially it was the early 80s Again, sort of time of recession and a scaling back of social programs for equity and justice.Dr. Diane Williams: 46:09
This fell into that prioritizing women and they got put out of business, essentially, and women lost their jobs. Women quit. They had poured their heart and souls into this for years and plenty of women would be put out of a job and a man would be hired into that coaching position or that athletic departments merged and the women's athletics director would become the assistant athletic director and the men's athletic director would be the athletic director. That happened almost at every school across the country. And all of a sudden, this whole history that, like there was a whole governance organization led by women, there were athletic departments almost exclusively led by women at every institution, like 970 institutions at its peak. Those women, for lots of reasons, had to go take care of themselves or were asked to leave. Some stuck around, but there was this huge exodus and lot.Lisa Danylchuk: 46:59
The history is lost and it is buried and we don't talk about it yeah, well, I'm glad you're keeping it alive and so much of it in my mind sounds like it's about power. Right, it's about gender dynamics and power and, just just like your work is so interdisciplinary, this is so intertwined in so many different social systems and the ways that we think, and it's the federal government in the US and it's universities and the NCAA that operates somewhere in between, all of those like, not subject to anybody's power, but involved in students' lives.Lisa Danylchuk: 47:40
These are things that I don't think a lot of people think about. Like you go into, oh, I'm going to play basketball, Okay, I'm going to go from this level to that level, I'm going to show up at the competition, I'm going to do my best. Like we don't have a lot of encouragement or space to think about the dynamics or the culture or the power. So that's where I think places like your classroom are so important, because people have space for that and encouragement to reflect on the history and to see what's going on and to ask themselves do I want to be a part of this and how? How do I want to be a part of this and what choices am I going to make within that to try to make it healthy for me, to advocate for it being healthy across the board.Lisa Danylchuk: 48:30
But especially when you're talking about athletics, there's so many other things for people to pay attention to. Right, I mean, you could just get completely consumed with what's the best training plan and how should I fuel my body and how do I optimize my sleep and what gadgets do I want to use. You could get so consumed in that that you never even unless it slaps you in the face, unless there's some big point of conflict. Never even think about some of the larger systems. I'm so glad you're doing this work and encouraging other people to do it as well. You've written some amazing articles. I know you're working on a book. Do a link to your professor page McDaniel.Dr. Diane Williams: 49:11
It has nothing on it but I will say it does have your cat's name on it, which is an article.Lisa Danylchuk: 49:18
There is an article I'm going to pull it up right now, hobbies. She played roller derby for eight years, skating as Lady Hulk. During her first semester teaching at McDaniel, she adopted an adorable kitten named Margo. She's a six time NCAA, division three, all American in shot, put four times and discus twice. Nicely done, people of the podcast, because I refuse to say, ladies and gentlemen, at this stage, hell, yes. People of the podcast, dr Diane Williams, you are the best. Thank you so much for sharing. I mean, I feel like this is tip of the iceberg. There's so many more directions we could go, but thank you for the work that you do, for thinking and encouraging people to reflect in a body positive and inclusive and gender affirming way. I'm grateful that you're a wonderful human out there, that you're an educator and I just love staying connected. And we didn't even really talk about how trauma folds into all of this. I mean, it fits in my mind so clearly when we start talking about power and oppression.Dr. Diane Williams: 50:24
And how it ended. That's the part that I want to talk to. We can talk another time. I think that's a big part of the end and the legacy. That is also like something that still needs to be mended in some way and reckoned with in some way. There's a wound there with being shut down.Lisa Danylchuk: 50:42
How do we attend to that wound? And the impacts. You mentioned people's jobs, right, the impacts and the trickle down of that, and that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you. It's like, well, how do we pull from all the amazing wisdom and effort?Lisa Danylchuk: 50:58
and learning and carry that forward, and we might be in a time period where we're planting seeds more than harvesting flowers, but that's an important stage, right? None of us would eat if nobody planted seeds. So I feel like we can take what you've studied, what you've learned, and really plant that in some rich soil and bring it to light over time in a way that, hopefully, is just more inclusive and body positive and helpful for young people. You know people in their nineties who want to dance, yeah, yeah.Dr. Diane Williams: 51:36
Yeah, and it fills in this gap. That helps explain something that just gets normalized right. And so, yeah, there's. There's much more to discuss and I will be looking forward to discussing it with you as we go forward, and I just appreciate the chance to share about my favorite topic in the whole wide world.Lisa Danylchuk: 51:56
I love it. Thank you so much, Diane. It's been so good to talk to you.Dr. Diane Williams: 52:00
So good to talk to you. I love all the work you're doing. I'm so proud of you and excited for all your and your big award for your podcast.Lisa Danylchuk: 52:08
You're so awesome the award winning how we can heal podcast. It's official I know, I love.Lisa Danylchuk: 52:15
I love doing this. I love having these conversations. We were just saying the other day we wouldn't sit down and have this conversation if it weren't for this podcast, even between us. So thank you for listening everyone. I really appreciate listeners chiming in, asking questions, sharing comments, recommending guests. We have such a long list of guests. People reach out all the time hey, I'd love to come on and talk about this, or I recommend this person, and I have a long list of people that I've wanted to interview. So there's more to come, definitely.Dr. Diane Williams: 52:46
Excellent. Well, I'm so honored to get to be a part of it, so thank you for including me. Thank you.Lisa Danylchuk: 52:56
Thanks so much for listening. Don't forget to go to howwecanhealcom to sign up for email updates. You'll also find additional trainings, tons of helpful resources and the full transcript of each and every show. If you love the show, please leave us a review on Apple, spotify, audible or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe and keep sharing the shows you love the most with all your friends.Lisa Danylchuk: 53:21
Visit howwecanhealcom backslash podcast to share your thoughts and ideas for the show. I always love hearing from you. Before we wrap up for today, I want to be clear that this podcast isn't offering prescriptions. It's not advice, nor is it any kind of mental health treatment or diagnosis. Your decisions are in your hands and I encourage you to consult with any health care professionals you may need to support you through your unique path of healing. Also, everyone's opinion here is their own and opinions can change. Guests share their thoughts, not that of the hosts or sponsors. I'd like to thank our guests today, everyone who helped support this podcast directly and indirectly, especially Alex. Thanks for taking care of the babe and the fur babies while I record. Last but never least, I'd like to give a special shout out to my big brother, matt, who passed away in 2002. He wrote this music and it makes my heart so happy to share it with you here. Thank you.
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