Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Triathlon Ep 17

Don't be asking people of color. Don't be asking women. Go do the research yourself and do the inner work. Because once that starts to click with you, then I think it will become clearer about the ways in which you can change what you do, what your group does, what your race does. You have to start there. And that's hard for white people, especially, because white people want to go to the solutions immediately. They don't want to do the work. Let's get it done. ABCD. What's the answer? How do we get there quickest? And this stuff isn't quick. Um, you are unlearning a lot of information and that can be hard and you might want to curl up under a desk and stop doing it.

Welcome to the Find Your Edge podcast. Get ready to dive into all things training, nutrition, recovery, and more. Whether you're a new or experienced endurance athlete, a weekend warrior, or someone who just wants to improve your health and fitness, this podcast is for you. I'm Chris Newport, founder, head coach, registered dietitian, exercise physiologist, and certified personal trainer with the Endurance Edge and the Fueling Edge. With more than 20 years experience in the fitness industry, 18 years in multi-sport, and over 10 years as a sports nutritionist, I'm speaking with athletes and experts about key actionable steps you can take to reach and sustain peak performance and health. Let's do it.

All right.

Welcome back to the Find Your Edge podcast. This is Christina Fiumara Newport, your host. And I am here today with Lisa to talk all about diversity and inclusion. So I met you, or perhaps saw you right at the Endurance Exchange conference back in January 2021, which is basically the USA Triathlon sort of summit or yearly conference talking all about diversity inclusion. And I just feel like I am so. Eager to talk about this topic and to really learn more. And at the same time, I feel completely uneducated. So first, introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about how you got into this, and, uh, and then we'll go from there.

Great. Well, thanks for having me, Chris. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about this issue, which is near and dear to my heart. So yeah, my name is Lisa Rinkerfield. I am a USAT certified coach. And then I also co-founded the Outspoken Women in Triathlon Summit with Dr. Sarah Gross a few years ago, which is a summit that is intended to elevate the conversation about gender in triathlon because women experience a lot of marginalization. And so we want to talk about that and then find solutions to address that problem. And then my quote unquote day job is I am a consultant. I do research and evaluation primarily for nonprofits, but work with sports organizations all also around diversity, equity, and inclusion. So that's just been something that has evolved over time. Like my academic background is political science and policy, and then I transitioned into higher education and that was where I really got my training in diversity, equity, and inclusion and did a lot of work on college campuses around this issue. And that experience plus my PhD kind of, and then my interest in triathlon all converged. And I saw an opening and an opportunity to take some of that learning and experience that I've had and put it into the sport that I love.

All right, awesome. So you've been in this field for a while. How do you define diversity and inclusion? Is this— is this, you know, I know that you mentioned gender equity, but tell us more about what all that involves.

Sure. You know, diversity is a term that has been around for some time now, and I think that what it means to me is really demographic diversity. So who is in your organization? Who is in your sport? Who is in your business, right? So in terms of race, gender, age, nationality, religion, ability, kind of thinking about all those social markers of identity. So it's demographic numerically, who do you have? And so that's for a while, you know, we focused on diversity. You know, who do you have in your organization? Why aren't there any people of color in your organization? Why are there so few women? But we neglected to look at kind of the other piece, which is the inclusion piece, the belonging piece around, well, it's one thing to bring more people in, but if you don't shift the culture of the organization, of the club, of the race or whatever, then those people you bring in are not going to stay, right? So it's not enough to just have initiatives that encourage women to start triathlon and participate in triathlon if triathlon itself is fundamentally sexist, kind of on a base level, right? If fundamentally it treats women differently, then the women that try it are going to try it once, get turned off, and leave, right? So when I think about inclusion, I think about it being that second piece of the equation. And there's more than two pieces to this, obviously, but in that sense, it's how can we create a culture where people feel included, where their voices are heard, everyone's voice is of equal weight, that we're actually doing something around kind of those implicit pieces in our environment that can sometimes make people feel like they don't belong, that we're identifying those and fixing those.

So you mentioned how to keep people in the sport. So can you give us some examples? Because I feel like some— I've, I've heard the term microaggressions, and these might be things that we might be doing that perhaps we're not realizing or recognizing that we're doing. Am I on the right track there in terms of like, you know, what can we be more conscious about and what can we do to keep diversity in whether it be triathlon or running, you know, obviously those are our sports, but yeah, even, even just, you know, with our run group that we have on the weekends or our friend group or whatever.

Yeah. I think, you know, this is an issue that spans multiple sports, right? So it isn't just a triathlon issue and cycling has a very large problem with that. And actually Dr. Shawna Payne-Golden and I also do a podcast called Unfazed. And we recently had a conversation. It hasn't aired yet as of the time of this recording. About an issue that arose in cycling. So that'll be coming out in a couple of weeks related to how do you engage on social media, right? As a white person. So when you say we, Chris, are you referring to white people? Like who is in your we?

Oh gosh. Yeah. And I know that I was telling you before this, I was like, I'm so nervous. I just don't want to say the wrong thing, but that's the reason why we're sitting here.

Right. Yep.

So Uh, let's say I go with, I'll give you an example of a couple of weeks ago. I went with a couple of clients and they happened to be two white men and we went for a trail run. So, uh, and I saw a whole lot of other white people out there. So how, how can we shift that? How can we make, in that example, the trails more diverse, go with other women or have other people of color out there, whether it be hiking or running. Maybe I just don't know what we is.

Maybe we just mean— Yeah, and that's okay. It's okay to also name whiteness, right? We often think about, when we think about race, because white is the dominant race, it's the one that holds all the privileges in society, that we tend to think that white is raceless, which isn't true because whiteness is a race, but it's the one that is the most invisible that we don't think about. So I think sometimes we hesitate to name it, to call it out, right? Because it feels weird to do that because as white people, We haven't been taught to do that. You know, when we grow up, when I grew up, I should talk from my own experience, you know, conversations about race in the sense of my whiteness being a race never happened, right? Like, never thought about it. But for folks of color, they're always thinking about their racial identity because that's how the world reads them and how people respond to them. And it also speaks to their safety in certain environments, right? So with running as your example, you know, we've got multiple things happening there. So as women of all racial identities, there are risks around running in terms of our personal safety. I'll caveat that with, in terms of violence against women, most of that is perpetrated by people that we know, right? So the likelihood of a stranger out on a trail attacking you is slim, but it does happen, right? And certainly that affects my decisions about where I'm going to run. And oftentimes men don't think about that at all, right? At least straight white men don't. And then for folks of color, so women of color in particular, you have the piece around sexism. So you have the fear of violence, but you also have the racism piece. So you also have women of color making decisions about where they run, whether that's daytime or nighttime, whether they run alone or in a group, which neighborhoods they're gonna run through, right? I mean, think about Ahmaud Arbery. African American man was running through a Georgia neighborhood one year ago, just over one year ago, you know, and he was murdered for doing that. So it's an ever-present thought for folks of color, in particular women of color who are running alone. Right? What does that mean? So, you know, in that sense, what quote-unquote "we" can do is in a running group, we can understand that. Right? We can understand that it's not as simple to just say, "Let's run here." Right? Because if you have a diverse group of people in your running group, then "here" air quotes, isn't going to be safe for everyone, right? And so having us being thoughtful about that, I think, can be really helpful. Trail running is interesting because there's also a massive issue there around engagement of women and engagement of people of color. And then you also can fold in the environmental piece because you also have the land that we run on, right, was stolen in many cases. And so a lot of trails out in the wilderness are often on land that never belonged to white people, to the English people that came over and colonized the US. And so then you've got all of that history there that I think that many of us don't think about regardless of our identities, right? We don't think about indigenous claims to that land and what does it mean for our presence to be on that land. So I think there can be some more thoughtfulness there around where we go, when we go, who we go with, and what does it mean to go there. So that's something that is important that I don't think a lot of trail runners think about. And that is a much more complex conversation that far exceeds a 30-minute chat on a podcast.

But it's certainly maybe scratching the surface right now. We're, we're starting the conversation as at least that's the way I see it. So what are you mentioned being more sensitive potentially to the needs of the group in terms of like location and things like that? There's a lot of locations in our area that we commonly go to. So it's just sort of natural, like, oh, let's meet here. Let's meet there, whatever. How do we know whether that's an— how do we ask the question whether that is an uncomfortable time, place, situation? I wouldn't even know how to breach that.

Well, one of the things that you can do is if you're a leader in a club or, you know, a group, you can do a needs assessment, right? So you could send out a survey to your group members and ask them where are their preferred places to run, bike, swim, hike. Times of day, because you also have the piece around— so you've got the safety piece, but you've also got a transportation piece. Not everyone has ready access to a vehicle. So some people might be relying on transportation. So if you're meeting at 6:00 AM at some far-off location, you're potentially excluding a significant number of people who might want to participate because they just can't get there.

Would you include like moms in this situation? Because I know that there's been issues with childcare.

Yes. That's it. Moms or single parents, right? Single dads, any caregiver that might not have the support that they need. And obviously childcare is a mess in the US in terms of access and cost. So that's absolutely something to consider, right? So if you have a bunch of people who are running a group who are childless or their children have since left the home, that is not a consideration, right? So if it's not a consideration for you, you often don't think about the need to address that in your scheduling, right? And religion too, right? So are you aware of all of the religious holidays that exist in the United States beyond kind of the Christian ones, right? Because if you're scheduling some big event for your club on a Jewish holiday because you didn't pay any attention to that because you're not Jewish, then you're potentially excluding all of the Jewish people in your club. Right.

This reminds me of all the Sunday mornings that are so easy to run or ride, and so many people are in church, as an example.

Well, and Saturday is a big day, religious day, for the Mormon religion, right? So if you hold all your things on Saturdays, then that's going to affect who can attend there. And, you know, in Utah, which is obviously a heavily Mormon state, a lot of their races happen Thursday, Friday, or Sunday, right? They're not on Saturdays for that reason.

Interesting. So I feel almost in a way that we're sort of naturally excluding ourselves by saying, oh my gosh, there's so many questions and there's so many things to integrate and so many different considerations. You know, I give up. I'm just going to keep running with my two white male friends, or, you know, I'm just as an example, right? How can, and, and then it makes me think, okay, well now there's this Black Girls Run group that started over here. Like, are we further? Separating ourselves in, in that? And hopefully I sort of make sense in that way. Like, some moms don't have any other moms to run with, so they create their own group. And these Black women have created their own group. So we're— are we further segregating ourselves? Are we not? Does that make sense?

It does. I think it's a complicated question because there is value and importance in participating in groups with individuals who have like identities or like experiences, right? So I certainly, I want to tread carefully here because I don't want to speak for all women of color. What I will say is that women of color experience sexism, racism, right? So as a white woman, I experience sexism, but I don't have that piece around racism. So it can be extremely exhausting for women of color to be in a predominantly white group where there is no one to connect with around those microaggressions, around those experiences that they have. So having a group that is comprised of people who are racially and gender identity like them, is actually important, right? So I don't think it's as easy as saying, are we segregating ourselves more than we should, right? Because we're not currently at a place where race and gender and ability and sexual orientation and nationality and religion don't matter, right? We still live in a world where people are judged and treated based on how they are read in those contexts. And so I think it's potentially the invisibility of our whiteness, and for men, the invisibility of their maleness, that can lead folks with privileged identities to say, why can't we all just get along? Right.

Yeah.

You know, and that kind of, that happened on the Women for Tri page a little while ago.

Oh gosh. I remember that. Yeah.

Um, you know, uh, predominantly white women saying triathlon's not about politics, right. When women of color were trying to talk about their experience of racism and sexism on race courses, out training, you know, and how difficult it is for them. White women, not all, many, shut that down saying, "This is not a place for politics," as though a person's identity is inherently political, right? But it's their lived experience and they're experiencing racism every single day. And so for a white woman to say that's not important is just a repetition of that racism. And so I think that comes from never having to think about whiteness, never having to think about gender as men. If you're able-bodied, never having to think about ability or disability, right? Like, because everything's set up for you, you know? Like, if you're able-bodied, you don't have to think about whether a race course is accessible for you, right? You don't have to have an argument with a race official about why you should be allowed to swim if you're deaf, right? Like, if the race official is assuming that's unsafe, like, that's— you don't have to do that, right? And so these are barriers that folks who don't, um, have privileged identities— privileged being that they— the world is set up for them have to deal with. And so I think part of, for you and me as white people, is being more in tune with some of those barriers. And that's not asking necessarily people of color or disabled people. The onus is on us to do our own research, right? We have the internet, we have Google, there's a lot of resources out there, there's a lot of blogs, there's tons of information, right? Do the research. Because if you're asking folks who experience marginalization every day about that experience, you're just further adding weight to their already difficult experience living in the world that isn't built for them, right? So what can you do to understand that? And then what can you do to try and make things different, right?

So two questions on that. A, good resources, but let's pause on that because B, let's go back to that social media example that you gave. So when these women are giving their experiences in sport, what would have been a better way of reacting? Or what questions could we be asking such that— because I remember that, I mean, it, it like blew up the group and it, and this is such an emotionally charged topic. And, uh, I'm glad that you're here and then I can ask potentially dumb questions, like, or at least maybe I feel kind of, uh, just uneducated and I want to know more about it. What, what were, What would be some of your suggestions as to how we would have handled that?

Well, I think the first one for the white women in the group would have been not to invalidate the experience of women of color, right? Not to tell them, one, that their experience is wrong, two, that their experience doesn't belong on the Women for Tri page, right? And three, try to offer up some other ridiculous counterpoints, right? Like Black-on-Black violence. Because this will happen in the context of George Floyd's murder. You know, like you're missing the point there, right? And the other piece is if you are challenged by a woman of color about your behavior, about your minimization of their experience, getting defensive and assuming that you're being called racist is not a helpful response, right? And I think white people are very nervous about someone calling or implying that they're racist. And I would argue that we are all racist, right? Because we have all grown up in a white supremacist society. We have all absorbed those messages. And so whether that's subtle behaviors or explicit behaviors, right? We all in some way perpetuate racism in our lives and we have to actively fight against it. That doesn't make you a shitty person, right? It just means you have to think a little bit more and kind of unlearn all of that stuff that you've learned. Your whole life, right? And a lot of that's really subtle, and it's a kind of a painful process to unlearn it, but if you care, you'll do it.

So it sounds like we, we've got a lot of work to do.

Yep.

Like a lot, a lot of very deep personal questions because I think so. It seems like when, like you saying, we are all sort of inherently racist because this is the community and this is the society we've been brought up with, like, whoa. It's, it's like, how do, how do we do the work when it's something so personal? Like, we're going back into our childhood. Oh, is there something wrong with my parents? Did they raise me incorrectly? Was my school— or— and I feel like that is where a lot of the emotion comes into it. So gosh, how do we remove ourselves and start to ask the right questions? And is this the learning part? Should we get into some of these resources?

Yeah, I think it is. I mean, I believe really strongly that the only way that social change can happen inside and outside of triathlon is if people do the work. And that work is internal to begin with, right? Because if you don't understand the ways in which you are complicit in a system that oppresses other people, and that the oppression of other people, the opposite side of the oppression of people is your benefit, right? So I benefit through white privilege. At the expense of people of color who experience the flip side, which is the oppression, right? And so, and that's hard because to your point about school and parents, you know, did they do something wrong? It's this association with these behaviors and attitudes that therefore I'm a bad person that creates the emotional response rather than I grew up in a society that sends these implicit and explicit messages So it's not surprising that I have some of these thoughts, behaviors, and attitudes, right? So now what can I do now that I know that to unlearn it? And that's where the work comes. You think about in school how history is taught. I mean, history is completely whitewashed in the US, in Great Britain. The contributions and experience of particularly enslaved people in the United States is brushed over in many contexts. There was a push in Texas, I think a while ago, to not even call the slave trade the slave trade. It was something like the Atlantic labor something. I can't remember. They even wanted to take that out. And so you have millions and millions of children, you and I included, who are growing up with this limited vision of history. And so my friend, Dr. Shona Payne Gold, says that one of the great books that you can read is Lies My Teacher Told Me. And it's a book that, it's US-based, that talks about all the things you weren't taught in school, what was omitted, right? And how history was whitewashed. And she said that's a really good place to start. You know, there's tons of books out now that you can read to do that personal work. You know, Ibram Kendi has written a couple of books, you know, one of them being How to Be Antiracist. There's Ijeoma Oluo, she wrote Let's Talk About Race, I think. So there's a number of books out there that I think are really accessible, but white people have to be brave about it, right? Because it's potentially going to pull the rug out from under you. But if you ignore it, that's you sitting in your privilege, right? Because it doesn't affect you. Because you don't walk through the world where you go for a run, and if you run in the wrong place, that could be the end of your life, right? Like white people don't experience that. And I'm not being hyperbolic, right? That is a lived reality.

Yeah.

Of people of color in this country in endurance sports. And so I think that there needs to be an emotional connection for white people in particular, and for men when it comes to gender, about the violence that marginalized people experience when they're trying to train. You know, like cyclists are, you know, people of color who are cyclists get things thrown at them, you know, that rolling coal thing with the exhaust. A slur shouted out of the window at them, particularly if they're all a group of folks of color versus having some white people in there. So these are realities that I think we need to understand. But like I said earlier in this conversation, don't be asking people of color, don't be asking women. Go do the research yourself and do the inner work. Because once that starts to click with you, then I think it will become clearer about the ways in which you can change, you know, kind of what you do, what your group does, what your race does. You have to start there. And that's hard for white people, especially because white people want to go to the solutions immediately.

Yes.

They don't want to do the work, right?

Right.

Let's get it done. ABCD. Right. What's the answer? How do we get there quickest? Right. And this stuff isn't quick. It's, you are unlearning a lot of information and that can be hard. And you might want to curl up under a desk and stop doing it, right?

Yeah. I feel like I've wanted to do that a few times over this past year. But, you know, as you're saying that, it makes me think a little bit because we do a lot of nutrition work here. It makes me think of weight loss. Tell me the things that are going to make me lose, you know, X amount of pounds tomorrow. Well, you've— there's a lot of, you know, things that are going on with your history and relationship with food. And it's something that, just like you said, it's, it's a process. So it sounds like we've got to do our homework. We need— we've got some reading to do. We've got some self-reflection to do.

Yes. Yes.

Are there at least some little tidbits of how we can do better in the immediate term?

Well, yes. I mean, in the sense of, I think, you know, you could— that needs assessment, right? So if you're in a position, if you're a president of a club or you have some leadership position in a running club, a tri club, or, you know, a consortium of race directors or whatever that may be, You know, you can send out a needs assessment asking people about their experiences, what they see as the biggest problems, where do they see gaps, what are the places that people feel safe to do these activities, right? And you can then pool all these folks that are in your group, and that will give you a direction or somewhere to start. I think making the assumption that as a leadership team, if you're elected into those positions, you therefore know what your 300-strong club wants is erroneous, right? Like it's a bit arrogant. So I think that it's important for you to do that. That's not difficult. You know, you can create an online survey, you can send that out. It doesn't take very long. That would be an immediate thing that I think that you could do. I also think that you could start having these conversations as a leadership team or start having these conversations with your friends, right? If you're scheduling a race, if you're scheduling a big group ride, look at the calendar, right? Does this fall on a day that could be problematic for some people in our club? Like, that's quick. That's easy. I mean, it's just very basic. But if you're not thinking about it, you don't do it, right? So there's not, you know, so I don't— that's some tidbits, I suppose. It's not a lot of tidbits, but because I really just believe it's a marathon, right? And to your point around weight loss, I was thinking, you made me think about training for a long course triathlon. There are some folks who just want to be able to do it, right?

Or they get an Ironman tattoo tomorrow, right?

Yeah. Or they get a training plan that's 20 weeks long and they do 50% of it and then they are angry with their coach as to why they didn't complete the race, right? So, you know, I think that's a good way to frame it in that sense is that you have to put in the work. And if you don't put in the work, then things aren't going to change. I want to just come back to the microaggression piece that you had mentioned. Yes, of course. So, you know, microaggressions are kind of everyday slights. They're a little bit invisible that you might not, as a white person, as a man, you might not think about. You know, like a microaggression against a woman might be something like you and your partner are coming to a race to sign in and the woman is the athlete. And if you're heterosexual and your partner is a male, right, and they're just there with you, the volunteer assuming that the man is the athlete, right? Or on a racecourse, spectators, they see a person of color participating in the race, they assume that that person of color is a volunteer versus a racer, right? Or, you know, working, you have a person with disabilities in your group and you assume that they're not capable of doing ABC, right? You don't even consult with them, you just make the assumption. They would be microaggressions, right? And oftentimes the response is from the person who is the microaggressor, "Well, I didn't mean it that way." And one of my best things I can say to you all to think about is the difference between intent and impact. So you may have good intentions, right? But if the impact is harmful to someone, your intentions don't mean anything because the harm has still been done. And so part of having humility is acknowledging that harm was caused, apologizing for it, and moving on, right? Not making it about you, not apologizing 1,000 times, not crying, not getting defensive, because then you shift the focus from the harm you did to your bruised ego. And that's not healthy or helpful, right? And so then the person who's been harmed ends up consoling you. The person who did the harm, right? And I think that cycle happens a lot. So, you know, you can look up microaggressions online. There's tons of resources. There's a number of academic resources that will actually produce handouts that say, here are examples of microaggressions around race, around gender, around sexual orientation. You know, so if you're really unclear about what that is, go to Google, type in microaggression examples, and there will be a litany of examples that come up for you that you can kind of start to educate yourself and recognize when you've done that. But they're like death by a thousand cuts, right? So women are experiencing them all the time. People of color are experiencing them all the time. Disabled people are experiencing them all the time. So it's over and over and over again. And then if the person who makes the mistake with the microaggression is like, oh, you're overreacting, right? 'You're so sensitive.' Yes. Like, that is a microaggression in and of itself, right? And I'm sure, Chris, you're smiling, you've probably had that happen to you. Right, right. You know, that minimizes your experience and just kind of compounds the harm that you already created. Because you got to think about the stuff, it layers, right? Like, it's tiring being a woman and having to always think about my safety, right? When I'm out exercising or the way people react to me in my place of employment, because I get judged more harshly for assertiveness than a man does, right? Always, always thinking about that. That's really tiring.

It is. Yeah. And I will have to say, as you're saying this, it kind of reminds me of— so I have a very gender-neutral name. And when people don't know who I am, I like— I almost prefer that because they assume as a business owner that I am a male. Yeah. And then say they call me up on the phone and I answer and they're like, oh, Hi, you know, you can kind of hear that hesitation a little bit, but it almost makes me feel like I'm in a little bit more of a place of power with that name. And part of me kind of feels bad about that. But the other part of me is like, yeah, I can get away without having the female entrepreneur. You know, it seems as if I'm a man, so I'm going to be treated a little bit differently until they actually see a picture of me or talk to me on the phone. 'And then I've already set the stage of I've got a little bit of—' So is that bad of me, or is that just my way of dealing with this sort of—

I think you've developed a survival strategy, right? You've taken something that you have and used it to your advantage. The larger question is, why are people treating you differently because they assume that you're a man based on your name, right? Like, that's the nut that needs to get cracked. And so it is interesting because in coaching in particular, you know, there's definitely a bias towards men being better coaches, irrespective of their level of training and experience, right? You think about in the NCAA realm, you know, the women's teams are still overwhelmingly coached by men, right? There's very few, if any, women coaches of male teams. I mean, there might be, I don't know off the top of my head, but I don't think there's many.

I think there's one that just made the news recently, and I feel bad that I don't know her name. But yeah, that's That's a big deal.

You know, and I've had women coaches say to me that despite their level of experience, whether that's educational experience or practical experience, you know, and they work in a group of coaches where there are men, that male athletes always gravitate towards the male coaches, even when the male coaches have far less experience, right? So that's the cultural piece. That's the belonging piece. That's the inclusion piece that we're not addressing. So I don't think it's wrong that you do what you do, but I think it would be funny for you to, like, call people out on it.

Oh, I have. OK. I have. And how's that gone? And usually I get the, oh gosh, well, I'm so sorry, and blah, blah, blah. And sort of what you're saying, it's just like, OK, apologize, move on.

Let's do business. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, recognize what you did wasn't OK and that you had an implicit bias there, right? That it was happening in the background.

I do that a lot with people who apply for jobs. If they call me a him, they haven't done their homework. Because you can very easily go to the website Right. And under about us, there's my big picture and you would know. So that's, that's like a little bit of a, of a ding for me. Like, okay, it would have taken you 10 seconds.

Right. You didn't do your homework. Yes. So everything we're talking about today is do your homework, right? Be an educated person. And that's not necessarily academically educated. That's just educated. But to your point about seeing your picture online and knowing that you're not a man, that brings me to gender pronouns, which you had asked about before we started recording. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, and this, we probably don't have time to go into this, but gender is a social construct, right? It's manmade. It's not real in the sense that the sex that you're assigned at birth does not also determine your gender identity, right? So the kind of the degree to which you are feminine or masculine, right? Whether you wear the clothes you wear, the way that you, whether you wear makeup, your hair, all of those kind of traditional ways you might think of masculine and feminine. And so the movement to have folks identify their gender pronouns, so say, you know, my name's Lisa Ringerfield, I go by she/her, is to kind of knock off center this assumption that I can look at you and know what your gender identity is, right? And so there are more than two genders. Gender is a continuum. But if we try to categorize people into this binary, this man, woman, male, female, then we're excluding all of these people who don't fit, right? Don't want to fit, don't fit, don't feel like they fit, whatever their reasoning is for it. We need to be more gender expansive. And so the intention behind saying your pronouns is to say, you can't look at me and know, right? That's an assumption. That's a learned behavior because you've been taught that there are only two genders and each gender looks a certain way. That was, that was big.

So I'm going to take a breath on that and leave us, please, if you would, with 2 or 3 things that we can do to sort of summarize and wrap things up. 2 or 3 action items or, or homework to do so that we can be better at this, more diverse.

Yeah, so I would say history is really important, right? We aren't where we are today without the historical context. So if you're a business owner, if you're a coach, you know, if you're a race director, I would encourage you to look back in US history or whichever country you're from around the ways in which women and people of color and people with disabilities have been excluded. Because if you have generational exclusion, then that is felt today. So you can't just click your fingers and turn on a switch and things are different, right? So that historical context matters. So You don't have to be a history buff, right? But there's resources out there on the internet. Like, I just go on the internet when I have a question. Granted, you have to be a bit careful because some of the resources are a bit sketchy, but there's often like some academic resources, you know, like University of California or New York University that you know are legit. That would be one thing, right? Because if you understand that historical context of exclusion, that it makes more sense why there are few women participating in various sports now, why there are few people of color participating in sports now. So that's something I think that you can do. The needs assessment we already talked about. And then the last thing I would say as a tidbit is to stop making assumptions, right? So you make assumptions based on this implicit bias or stereotyping you do in your head, whether that's you assume women are all beginners, whether you assume African American people can't swim, whether you assume, you know, moms don't have time for sport, right? Like, stop doing that. Like, if you feel yourself making an assumption, like, identify it, stop, and then reevaluate, right? And perhaps that means you need to actually ask some questions, you need to do some research. Because if you build programs and activities based around your assumptions, you are likely excluding people because each of us looks at the world through our own lenses, right? So my lens is British, white, heterosexual woman, right? So I'm not aware of things that are outside of my own experience. I have to work at that, right? So I have to catch myself when I'm making some of those assumptions because not everyone experiences the same as mine. And I think we do that too much in triathlon. We assume that because This is why I like a triathlon and this is how my experience is in triathlon, that that must be true for everyone when it's not.

So you've given us a lot of homework. I love it. So this is not, um, hopefully this is not the last time we talk, but what resources or how can people get ahold of you? And please mention your other podcasts as well again.

Oh, sure. Yes. So the best way to get ahold of me would be you can send me an email at lisa@ tritodefi.com, which is T-R-I-T-O-D-E-F-I.com. And I co-host a podcast with Dr. Shauna Peingold. It's released every Tuesday and it's called Unfazed, and you can subscribe and access that via Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever. And we are talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion in endurance sports. So it's a bit broader than triathlon. And then you can also go to the Outspoken Women, uh, Women's Summit. Which is www.outspokensummit.com. And follow us on social media for Outspoken. It's Outspoken Women in Tri. And we're— we just created an Unfazed Facebook group. So you can join that if you want to continue these conversations. I think that's probably everything.

Okay. All right. Well, if you think of anything, then we can always add, tag that in. All right. Lisa Ingerfield, Christina Fiumara Newport Newport.

Thank you so much for your wisdom, and we got some homework to do. Yes, you do. So awesome.