The Trans Sporter Room Ep152 -- Trans Star Power: Leo Baker and Molly Cameron

This week's Trans Sporter Room with Karleigh Webb features two mavericks who set their own mark.
Skateboarder Leo Baker: Art Above All.
Heading into 2020, Leo Baker was one of the top skateboarders in the world. A 6-time X Games medalist, Baker was selected to the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team for Tokyo.
That was before the COVID crisis hit and postponed the games. But a few weeks before, Baker made a different decision.
For years, they had pushed up the ranks of the sport from the sidewalks and sky parks to the biggest stages while also dealing with a lot of dysphoria and questioning.
In February 2020, Baker decided the being themselves was greater than gold. They came out as transmasculine and non-binary, left Team USA and began pursuing their life.
That story is now the subject of a documentary called Stay On Board: The Leo Baker Story.
Baker beams up to talk about his path, the decision, and why skateboarding in the wild is greater than skating in grandest stage in sport.

Cyclist Molly Cameron: Riot Grrls, Gravel and Gravitas
Molly Cameron has been riding and racing since the late 90s. Before that she was a musician bashing through the punk/riot grrl scene of the era.
It was also the era that she found herself as she also found the love for being on a bicycle and being fast on the road, on the gravel or in a cyclocross of many type of terrain.
She was competing as a transgender woman in the days prior to the Stockholm Statement, the "tipping point", and long before the tenuous turmoil is the present day. Her travels through sport are a tale of doing whatever in love with and respect for their sport.
In her 40s, she continues to race but has also found a place to speak out for inclusion in her sport and among her industry. In 2021, with a major world championship coming to a place in the USA that has passed one of the over 200 pieces of anti-trans, anti-lgbtq legislation that has cut-and-pasted across the political landscape, Cameron has been a leader in getting the cycling industry to get up to speed as an activist and used competition as a mean to support and build space beyond the "cycling as a toy specifically for the white and well-to-do.
That push lead to the formation of Respect Inclusion Diversity and Equality (RIDE), an organization Cameron help found as a educational sounding board about gears manufacturers, bike manufacturers and those who ride.
Also this week: A special anniversary at the intersection of sport and inclusion in an MMA cage. History was made September 10, 2021, but why is Alana McLaughlin still stuck at a record 1-0-0 and why this plays into the anti-trans emboldened to get more riled up to push the hysteria up and force lgbtq to folks down.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices