the athletic should retract their britta curl redemption story

Thank you so much for being here! I am a full-time freelance writer and paid subscriptions to this newsletter allow me to continue to do work like this, as well as support the community that we are building here, which includes events like the book club (this month’s selection is UP TO SPEED by Christine Yu) and our (very active) paid subscriber Discord server. You can upgrade here:

Back in December, The Athletic wrote a story about the Minnesota Frost’s Britta Curl-Salemme. The PWHL’s fan least-favorite is booed in every arena, known for her dirty play and transphobic beliefs. The Athletic’s story was an attempt at image redemption for Curl-Salemme, claiming to clarify her views on the issue—views that Curl-Salemme said were based on a “misunderstanding.”

At the time, I criticized the story because it never actually pushed Curl-Salemme to define what her views on trans women in sports actually were. The Athletic gives Curl-Salemme a platform to spew a bunch of vague platitudes while never forcing her to clarify with a yes or no answer whether she believes trans athletes should be able to play sports. It was bad journalism, and I wondered if there had been a push from the league to run the story because Curl-Salemme was likely going to be making the Olympic team and they were trying to do some damage control.

That turned out to be correct, as Curl-Salemme is on Team USA for Milano Cortina, where she will be making her Olympic debut. But it was even deeper than that—less than a week after The Athletic’s story ran, Curl-Salemme was announced as the Frost’s Player Representative for the league’s players’ union, the PWHLPA. And then, with the Olympics just weeks away, Curl-Salemme openly flaunted her connections to an anti-trans group called FIERCE Athlete.

On Instagram last week, Curl-Salemme posted a game day GRWM video to her Instagram account. And while she doesn’t explicitly name trans people in her video, she tagged FIERCE Athlete, a group that “empower[s] female athletes to thrive in their God-given identity and femininity” and fights “transgender ideology in sport,” according to their website. Curl-Salemme has been one of the group’s “FIERCE Sisterhood” representatives since last September—something else that wasn’t mentioned in The Athletic story about her supposed lack of transphobic beliefs.

“FIERCE has actively opposed defendants in Supreme Court cases West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox,” Them reported. “In both cases, trans athletes have alleged that laws banning trans women and girls from school sports leagues in Idaho and West Virginia violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law. Earlier this month, as the Court heard arguments for the cases, FIERCE founder and president Samantha Kelley spoke against trans sports inclusion outside the Supreme Court building.”

Curl-Salemme isn’t fooling most PWHL fans with her attempts at a redemption arc, but The Athletic’s participation in uncritically doing damage control for a player whose beliefs are actively harming a marginalized group that is under attack to the extent that experts are warning that trans Americans are in the beginning stages of a genocide is something they should be ashamed of. How related is it to the fact that The Athletic is owned by the notoriously transphobic New York Times? That I can’t say, but it’s not a good look.

Add into all of this the fact that USA Hockey quietly banned all trans people from playing—including at the amateur and club level—and the fact that despite the league claiming to be embracing the new fans that Heated Rivalry is bringing to their games, multiple NHL teams have backed out of their Pride Nights this season. American hockey is at critical juncture right now in terms of what kind of environment they want to foster and all signs are pointing in the wrong direction.