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I got an email last week from a man named Daniel Slosberg regarding my review of the film Nyad for Xtra Magazine.
I pitched the idea of covering the film as a larger critique of which queer voices get uplifted and canonized, in light of marathon swimmer Diana Nyad’s anti-trans beliefs. I wanted to question which members of the LGBTQ+ community we commemorate with a biopic, and which members that lionization1 comes at the cost of.
But between the time I pitched the story in August to when it was released in theaters and streaming on Netflix in November, Nyad had reversed her stance. She expressed regret for having written an op-ed for The Washington Post in 2022 arguing that trans women should not be allowed to compete against cis women.
“I have come to understand that the science is far more complex than I thought, and there are clearly more educated experts than I who are creating policy to ensure that elite sports are both fair and inclusive of all women. I regret weighing in on that conversation and any harm I may have caused,” Nyad told Out Magazine. “Also, in recent times, the climate for the transgender community has turned dire and dangerous. I now see how all women are negatively affected by the ways transgender women are targeted by discrimination and abuse in sports and elsewhere.”
She continued: “I am today firmly on the side of inclusion. Trans women athletes deserve our utmost respect. I stand with them in the world of sports and in the fight for full equality for all trans people. We are all sisters and siblings under the blue sky, and we should all have equal opportunities to play the sports we choose, the sports we love.”
And so, I pivoted. My review of her biopic was titled, “For its subject’s ability to evolve alone, ‘Nyad’ is inspirational.”
I didn’t love the film (aside from Jodie Foster’s performance in it; watching Foster’s comfort and ease with playing a dyke is truly the best part of the movie), I found the character of Diana Nyad to be hard to root for and incredibly unlikable—which may have been by design, as the real Diana Nyad is a very polarizing figure. Her own accounts of her career achievements are incredibly disputed, which was something I wasn’t prepared to get in the weeds about in the review of the film, which I wanted to review on its own merits and with the understanding that it’s a semi-fictionalized re-telling that can still be a wonderfully told story regardless of how closely it hews to fact. But I did want to applaud Nyad for publicly admitting she was wrong about trans inclusion.
Which brings me to Slosberg and his email. He wrote:
“I'm not sure Nyad has evolved at all. She now says she believes in ‘inclusion,’ leaving us to assume she means the inclusion of trans women in women's sports. But she never says that. Also, I've found no evidence that she left the Women's Sports Policy Working Group. Nyad likely said what she said because her PR handlers told her it would increase the audience for her biopic.”
Now, it’s important to know two things: 1) that Slosberg is not exactly a neutral party in all of this, and 2) his point is well-taken and due to the history of Nyad being an unreliable narrator, I felt it was important to show my work and clarify my intentions here.
First of all, let me introduce you to Slosberg because he is a fascinating figure. It will also explain why I was compelled to email him back and actually engage with his questions. He’s someone who has dedicated years of his life to exposing Nyad as a liar. Slosberg runs NyadFactCheck.com, which is an incredibly thorough cache of receipts documenting the many inconsistencies in Nyad’s stories over the years. He calls her "the greatest con artist in the history of marathon swimming."
I will not get into the weeds of his arguments here (but know he is not alone in his critique and his concerns are well-founded), but Defector ran a deep dive into Slosberg and the larger crusade to have Diana Nyad’s accomplishments in the sport of marathon swimming discredited. Most compelling to me was the International Swimming Hall of Fame’s refusal to induct her because of her behavior, both in and out of the water.
I did make sure to mention that Nyad’s accomplishments are disputed in my piece for Xtra and included a link for people who wanted to read more. Beyond that, this was a film review, not a piece of journalism about Nyad’s career. With all that said, I will address Slosberg’s other concerns here, in case anyone else shares them.
It’s funny because when most people see a piece like this, they probably assume there’s no original reporting involved. It’s a 1000-word film review, a piece of cultural criticism that pulls research and reporting that others have done to help support whatever arguments I make in the piece. But that’s not true—I did actually reach out to several sources to write this piece.
I've found no evidence that she left the Women's Sports Policy Working Group.
So let’s start here. If we go to the WSPWG website, we can see that Nyad is not listed among the current supporters of the group:
We could say that’s enough, but I did more than just that. I confirmed that she had been a supporter since the beginning, which you can see here on this press release they sent out in 2021 announcing the formation of the group.
Then I went to the Wayback Machine to confirm that she had been listed on the supporters page previously, so her absence from it was a notable change. In this screenshot from July 25, 2023, you can clearly see Nyad listed.
But this screenshot from September 22, 2023 no longer shows her, indicating that she was removed somewhere in that time window (I pitched my story on August 29th and checked the site before I pitched, so it’s safe to assume she was removed between those two dates).
After I had that data and those dates, I reached out to the WSPWG to ask when Nyad had been removed from their site and whether or not she was still affiliated with the group. Their PR person replied and let me know the WSPWG was declining to comment but he had passed my request to Nyad’s reps. Nyad’s team reached out later that day.
In my conversation with Nyad’s representative, I confirmed that she was no longer affiliated with the WSPWG and had asked to be removed from the website in mid-September 2023, which I noted in my story. What you see as one or two lines of text in my final article was several different steps and methods of fact check and confirmation before making it to print.
As for Slosberg’s next concern:
Nyad likely said what she said because her PR handlers told her it would increase the audience for her biopic.
I agree that it’s quite likely that Nyad publicly came out as reversing her stance on trans inclusion because it was bad PR for her film. The timing of it is too coincidental otherwise. In fact, the timing is quite interesting when you take this Autostraddle review of the film into consideration. It was published by Drew Burnett Gregory on September 14, 2023 after she screened Nyad at the Toronto Film Festival.
Consider that a large part of the audience for this film—and a large number of the reviewers for this film—are members of the LGBTQ+ community. Now, consider this, from Gregory’s review:
Now I have to admit something that’s undesirable as a critic. I watched this movie so I could give it a bad review. The first time I heard about Diana Nyad, it wasn’t due to her superhuman swims. It was in a Washington Post op-ed from last year where she wrote that trans women — specifically swimmer Lia Thomas — should not be allowed to compete against cis women. I expected the movie to be a mediocre biopic and an uncomplicated celebration of the woman whose story it told. I relished the possibility of tearing it down while explaining the fallacies of that op-ed.
Here’s the thing: I pitched it for this reason, too. It probably became clear to Nyad’s team that this early review wouldn’t be the only one to mention the op-ed. Sometime around the time this review was published2, Diana Nyad was removed from the WSPWG.
Then, on October 17, 2023, Out Magazine ran a piece headlined, “Diana Nyad Reverses Her Stance on Trans Sports Participation, Calls For Inclusion.” Nyad was named one of the 2023 Out100 and she used her entire profile to announce her newfound belief, less than a month before her biopic hit theaters.
Do I think it was PR? Absolutely. Do I think it was important and smart? 100 percent yes.
And Slosberg’s final point (which he clarified to me in a follow-up email):
She now says she believes in ‘inclusion,’ leaving us to assume she means the inclusion of trans women in women's sports. But she never says that… Until she publicly defines what [inclusion] means to her, I can’t assume she means what she and her handlers want us to think it does, i.e., that trans women should be able to compete with cis women.
If we look at the statement her representative provided to me, we can see that Slosberg is correct:
“There is perpetually emerging science vis a vis transgender women athletes. I no longer feel qualified to offer an empirical opinion as to the benefits-vs-challenges of a transgender woman competing in elite sports against cisgender women. This should be left to the science experts in the field, posting their findings, rendering their assessments, and collaborating with various sports entities.”
Here she says she doesn’t know enough to be offering an opinion on the matter and it should be left to the experts.
“I have come at this juncture to feel more comfortable promoting inclusion of transgender people at all levels of sports, as opposed to excluding them.”
And here she never specifies trans women when she talks about inclusion.
Her statement to Out is slightly more specific, mentioning trans women by name twice:
“I have come to understand that the science is far more complex than I thought, and there are clearly more educated experts than I who are creating policy to ensure that elite sports are both fair and inclusive of all women… I now see how all women are negatively affected by the ways transgender women are targeted by discrimination and abuse in sports and elsewhere.”
However, her focus still remains on cis women, if you look closely—she wants policy to ensure fairness and inclusivity of all women, and she can see that all women are negatively impacted by trans discrimination.
So yes, it’s quite possible that Nyad still doesn’t believe that trans women should compete alongside cis women. But she’s not saying that directly anymore and she’s doing something significant: admitting she was wrong and that she spoke on something she didn’t know enough about. It was incredibly important to me to highlight a public figure who came out and said she learned more about an issue and had changed her mind. In admitting she was wrong, she gives other people permission to do the same thing.
I am willing to bet that this public betrayal of the members of the WSPWG came at some sort of personal cost for Nyad. If you look at the group’s website, you will see that many of the founders and supporters are from the world of swimming—Nyad’s world (I have written about why women’s swimming, in particular, is so transphobic). In publicly unaligning herself with her long-time colleagues, she has done something notable.
Regardless of what I think about Nyad’s credibility as a narrator on her own life and her career, I can only hope that Nyad’s example of backtracking on this issue can move the needle for other people. It’s never too late to change your mind. It’s never too late to stop talking about things you don’t know enough about. It’s never too late to admit that your behavior has caused harm.3
I do think the decision to publicly admit that she was wrong about this is inspirational. And that is the only point I really wanted to make with my piece. If her reversal can inspire even one other person to do the same, it’s a massive deal.
In very happy gay sports news this week, congratulations are in order for OL Reign players Tziarra King and Jess Fishlock, who got married!
Congrats also to WNBA player Candace Parker and her wife, Anna Petrakova, who announced that they are expecting another baby.
