What’s Current: 42-year-old trans-identified archer to compete as a woman at Tokyo Olympics

Image: Stephanie Barrett Archery/Facebook
  • Computer game developer Stephanie Barrett, who identifies as female and took up archery at 37 years old, qualified to compete at the Tokyo Olympics this year. In May, Barrett scored a 652 in the qualification round at the World Cup stop in Switzerland, the highest ever by a Canadian woman in an international competition
  • Inuk leader and former ambassador Mary Simon is set to be the first Indigenous person to be appointed as Governor General of Canada.
  • CNN reports black female athletes are subject to a “wave” of penalizations and criticisms ahead of the Tokyo Olympics. Two Namibian female sprinters are ruled ineligible for the Tokyo Olympics due to naturally high testosterone levels, despite trans-identified male Laurel Hubbard’s placement on New Zealand’s women’s weightlifting team. 
  • Spain’s government approves legislation to define all non-consensual sex as rape, part of a legal overhaul to crack down on sexual assault by toughening penalties and mandating more support systems for survivors.
  • Egyptian women who say they were sexually abused by government authorities during invasive searches and medical exams are speaking out for the first time in a New York Times feature.
Meghan McCarty

Meghan McCarty is an undergraduate student and aspiring journalist living in the United States.