Aug 25, 2026 · 44 min
Listen from 41:24
Listen at 41:24
Renée Richards fought for tennis—and privacy
‘Finding Renée Richards’ with Julie Kliegman
Richards’s story connects a landmark sports lawsuit with enduring questions about identity, public advocacy, and how trans athletes are represented.
- 1Richards’s 1977 U.S. Open lawsuit established her right to compete while making her a national figure.
- 2Kliegman’s fact-checking process preserved Richards’s own binary understanding of her identity and complicated relationship with labels.
- 3The book treats Richards as a contradictory person, not a symbol, offering historical perspective on trans athletes and sports inclusion.
Don't miss
Kliegman describes the fact-checking exchange in which Richards clarified how she understood her past identity, changing the book’s treatment of her pronouns and history.
The brief
Julie Kliegman explains how she earned Renée Richards’s trust and built a deeply sourced account of the transition, lawsuit, and public life that made Richards a landmark figure.
Richards’s 1977 fight to play in the U.S. Open turned a demand for professional opportunity into a national debate about gender, privacy, and who gets to compete.
A fact-checking conversation changed how Kliegman handled Richards’s past identity, honoring Richards’s own binary understanding rather than imposing a contemporary label.
The interview follows Richards from family pressure and shame to tennis, showing how childhood expectations, failure, and dressing as Renee shaped her sense of self.
Richards’s complicated views on trans inclusion sit beside her desire to influence public debate, making her history useful precisely because it resists a simple role-model narrative.
Kliegman’s central argument is that Richards should be remembered as a messy, complex person whose life can deepen empathy for trans people and elders.
Books & mentions
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