In Preemptive Response to the Concerned Letter-Writers

Here come the pens.

“Few things become more urgent and necessary than reminding the world when you’re at your best.” —Hanif Abdurraqib, poet and essayist

Dear Letter-Writers,

On Monday night, I received a text message from a friendly new sport psychologist contact, along with an email that was being sent around in an attempt to add more signatories to a letter protesting my recent keynote address at the Association for Applied Sport Psychology conference. This person was giving me a sneak peek. The text read: “You stirred up a storm my friend 😂”

If you read my last newsletter, you can probably intuit the content of the letter, as well as the source. (Not our esteemed friend who walked out of our panel discussion during a response to a question she asked—though of course she signed it—but some of her brood.) They only had about thirty signatures at the time, a whopping 2% of conference attendees, and were trying to bulk up before making their stink.

This person also sent me the letter itself, and let me tell you, dear reader: it is looooooooong. Like four full screen shots.

When I woke up yesterday, I recorded a video response to the letter, but the whole thing felt too small. Their protests too predictable. Too transparent for anyone who was actually at the conference and willing to hear my talk. I mean, who outside of the sport-psychology space would give a dribbly shit about my video response to a letter from a handful of pearl-clutching scientists and practitioners who were dead set on finding ways to be offended and then forcing others to be offended with them?

So I didn’t post the video.

But as I’ve sat with the knowledge of this letter, which is probably going to be delivered to AASP’s leadership sometime today, assuming it hasn’t been already (the deadline for signatures was yesterday at 3pm ET), the more it felt like it deserves a response. It’s actually the respectful thing to do. To take the letter seriously. To engage with it in a way that its signatories have refused to do with the conversations I was brought in to have in Montreal, choosing instead to plug their ears, close their eyes, and chant, bad bad bad. Of course there will be a more official response through AASP, I’m sure, and that is none of my business. Although I can’t help but hope there are some within the org who are brave enough to express the same positions publicly that they have shared with me privately.

In any event, here’s how the letter begins, in part, along with some comments from me in footnote form, which I’ve bolded so they don’t get lost:

To: AASP Executive Board and Conference Planning Committee
Subject: Formal Letter of Concern Regarding the 2025 AASP Opening
Keynote Address
October 27, 2025

Dear Members of the AASP Executive Board and Conference Planning Committee:

We write regarding the opening keynote delivered by Mr. Rafi Kohan at the 2025 AASP Conference in Montreal, titled “The Truth About Trash Talk: How to Find Signal Through the Noise.” Our concern is first on its alignment with sport’s global standards of fair play, respect, and safeguarding-and, by extension, with AASP’s mission, vision, ethical principles, and the standards that guide our work as sport and performance psychology scientists and/or practitioners. We are also concerned with AASP conference participants’ well-being and respectful treatment.

In today’s global sport ecosystem, the United Nations system and the Olympic Movement frame fair play, respect, and safeguarding as non-negotiable values for sport environments. Contemporary safeguarding initiatives treat demeaning verbal conduct¹ as a form of psychological abuse that sport organizations should remedy and prevent-not model on stage, particularly at an international professional conference…

…Sadly, and in our view also inappropriately, Mr. Kohan’s keynote normalized demeaning speech in several ways: it framed trash talk as “the language of competition,”² offered sexually explicit and identity-targeting examples as ordinary case material,³ floated whether slurs could be treated as mere “trash talk,”⁴ defined the practice instrumentally (by its intended effects rather than by content⁵), and suggested that responses “depend” on individual toughness- treating resilience as a replacement for personal and professional boundaries.⁶

Normalizing demeaning speech undermines sport’s integrity as a social institution. It shifts the competitive balance from skill and preparation to intimidation,⁷ erodes the norm of fair play that sustains public trust, and narrows those who feel able to participate and remain in sport.⁸ These dynamics diminish the quality of play, shrink the talent pipeline, and export poor norms to youth and community settings, especially when elite and professional athletes serve as role models⁹ (keynote examples came from high-level performers). For an organization dedicated to the science and applications of sport and performance psychology, modeling standards that elevate performance while protecting the people who participate in all roles in sport is not optional; it is core to our mission.¹⁰

***

OK, the letter goes on. And on. And on. But I’ll spare y’all some of the tedium by summarizing a couple of the overarching points going forward.

For example, the letter-writers next give a list of rulebook and institutional guidelines against trash talk, coming to the conclusion that it’s perfectly OK to “keep rivalry narratives, celebration, and self-referential hype” as long as you “exclude offensive, insulting, or abusive language directed at opponents, officials, or groups.” Do they not realize that the things that they’re saying are OK to keep are examples of trash talk?! But that’s only half the point I want to make here. Because while the letter-writers are once again unintentionally making the case for why this is an important topic to talk about and dissect, they go on to claim that: “In the world of sport, trash talk is recognized as unsportsmanlike behavior.” And that’s when they really step in it.

So let’s address that idea: sportsmanship.

Because this too is problematic. And again again again: I wish we’d have been able to have these conversations in person. And the funny part is that I think everyone at the conference wants exactly what the letter-writers are suggesting in terms of inclusive spaces, fair play, healthy culture, and athlete safety.

But that being said, when one group feels that they get to define what is “safe sport” and what qualifies as “sportsmanship” for others, they actually create the conditions for exclusion. And that’s because sportsmanship has always been a flawed and exclusionary concept. Indeed, many of the professed values of sportsmanship—things like humility—are often vague, discretionary, and “culturally relative,” as sociologist Herbert D. Simons argues in his 2003 paper “Race and Penalized Sports Behaviors.” And as a result, leagues, administrators, and societies writ large have then been able to wield concepts like sportsmanship as cudgels to control the behavior of other people—and Black people, specifically.

Look, trash talk is messy. The world is messy. It’s nuanced. But it’s clear from this letter that some people don’t want to engage with that kind of nuance, that messiness. And that inflexibility is what makes the rigidity of this letter feel so performative. It’s an all-or-nothing approach that refuses to even acknowledge nuance, let alone engage with it. I mean, what would their response be to the many thousands of athletes who delightfully engage in non-abusive trash talk? And what about those individuals who come from cultures that talk trash as a matter of course, and therefore engage in trash talk as part of their authentic selves? As part of how they express themselves?

From my book:

The poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib has written about trash talk as a kind of historical imperative for Black Americans. In his words, “Few things become more urgent and necessary than reminding the world when you’re at your best.” Or as David J. Leonard, professor at Washington State University, Pullman, says, “Trash talking becomes a way of celebrating one’s self, celebrating one’s voice, celebrating one’s power in a world that does none of those things.”

But sportsmanship doesn’t account for any of that.

***

The moral panic of these letter-writers is almost a perfect reflection of the moral panic that sprouted up in the early 1990s in the U.S., shortly after the popularization of the term “trash talk” itself. But that panic, like the ensuing efforts to police trash talk, has always been inflected by the limitations of one’s own cultural views, if not outright racism.

Also from my book:

Sociologist and Yale University professor Elijah Anderson has made a comparison between the early concern over trash talk and the panic that swept the American South in the 1950s “when black soul singers were singing all these rock and roll songs.” Per Anderson, “A lot of white church-going types were really threatened by this. They thought somehow they were going to lose control of young people, that young whites would get turned on to black music.” In this sense, the penalization of trash talk was always about control, too, even if only on a subliminal level. According to American University professor Theresa Runstedtler, trash talk “gets linked into this whole racialized discussion about the changing face of basketball,” as Black athletes, starting in the 1960s and ’70s, introduced new styles of play that were seen as foreign and threats to the game. [Sportswriter] Phil Taylor says, “I’m old enough to remember when coaches got upset when guys would dribble between their legs or throw a skip pass.”

Nobody wants to think about themselves as reactionary. I don’t believe these letter-writers are bad people—even if it’s been suggested to me that some simply have “an axe to grind”—and I’m confident that we would actually get along swimmingly had we met under different circumstances.

But I do want to make a couple of quick final points.

One is that it’s obvious from the number of footnotes and citations in the letter that these people are capable of engaging with ideas on an intellectual level. And what I find ironic is that they would put so much scholarship into this letter, while shutting down the material I presented out of hand. I mean, honestly, how many of them decided to attack my scholarship after reading my book? How many of them have engaged with the deeply researched and science-based discussions that take place in its pages? How many of them have read the final 100 pages, almost a third of the manuscript, which concerns itself almost exclusively with the morality of trash talk and its ethical concerns, and raises questions about what our responsibilities are in terms of being the kinds of people we want to be, and building the kinds of societies that we want to build? My guess is zero.¹¹

On the one hand, maybe these are exactly the kinds of conversations that need to happen, and that I was challenging people to have—and this is just how they’re happening. But this letter doesn’t feel like it’s looking to engage. It feels disingenuous, ignoring all of trash talk’s pro-social possibilities just as it ignores the nuanced discussions around morality that I made very clear are important for people to grapple with, too, as we dive into the idea of trash talk.

One other reason this letter feels disingenuous: it’s looking to shut others down. I’ve expressed previously all the ways I find this reaction to be ironic, especially from mental-performance professionals. And this is yet another irony, because maybe the most baseline distinction between trash talk and bullying is that trash-talkers seek a response, while bullies seek to silence. This letter seeks to silence. To shut down conversation. And I would hope we could do more than try to silence one another when we’re presented with topics that make us feel uncomfortable. I would hope that we could step into a shared space with mutual respect, mutual purpose, good faith, and a willingness to engage.

Sincerely, your friend,

Rafi 🗣️

1. This very intentionally conflates “trash talk” as a broad concept with a very narrow category of “demeaning verbal conduct.” Beyond the fact that I spent the final third of my talk trying to distinguish “trash talk” from things like “bullying” and “abuse” and “harassment,” this is an obvious straw man. Off to a good start.

2. Yes, trash talk is “the language of competition.” That is one of the core takeaways from my book. Which is to say: Trash talk is an ancient mode of human communication that has existed across time, culture, and geography. This is meant to underscore why trash talk should be taken seriously as a topic. In other words, it’s a statement of fact, not a value judgement.

3. This is either a gross misrepresentation or a deliberate misunderstanding. The point of these examples—one involving a Jewish baseball player, one involving Kevin Garnett and Carmelo Anthony—was to introduce what were considered edge cases of trash talk when they happened (far from ordinary case material!), and to see whether the room felt they qualified as fair play or not. The idea was to allow folks to consider how they felt about these provocative examples, before I shared my opinion about what conditions I believe are necessary for trash talk to remain healthy and not become abuse. And for whatever it’s worth, the reason I used an example involving a Jewish baseball player, specifically, is that I am Jewish.

4. The opposite, in fact! Putting aside that the letter-writers are recycling the exact same example cited in the previous clause, my point here, which came across to almost everyone else in the room—and which, for the record, was identity-targeting but wasn’t a slur—was to set the stage for a 15-minute discussion about the morality of trash talk, its ethical considerations, and how, while there is no “line” per se, because any such line will always be subjective (and because there will always be people who choose to cross it anyway), we have both individual and collective obligations to weigh moral imperatives against competitive ones. As moral philosopher Christopher Johnson put it to me in the book, “There is an integrity to my person that goes beyond who I am on this court or this pitch. And if you’re prepared to say these quite vile things, there’s going to be some sort of compromise with that integrity when you step off the pitch.”

5. Actually, I did both.

6. Again, this is either a deliberate misunderstanding or a gross misrepresentation. Or both. While addressing the performance effects of trash talk, specifically, I posed the question: What is the answer to trash talk? What is the best way to respond? And the answer I gave is: it depends. And that’s true because the correct response, in terms of getting the best out of oneself, will depend on how these underlying pathways (anxiety, attention, motivation) affect a person individually. Is it getting you into your zone of optimal functioning, or is it offering unwanted stress? Etc, etc. Clearly, it’s important for performers to have at least that baseline level of self-awareness about the performance effects of trash talk, or so you would think.

7. I’m starting to sense a pattern! Once again, this conflates all trash talk with demeaning speech. And I could leave it at that. But I also think that the letter-writers are stepping (probably unintentionally) into a really interesting area of debate, and that is: trash talk from a moral philosophy perspective. Because believe it or not, there’s actually quite a lot of literature about this! And the debate really turns on this one question: Is trash talk essential or extraneous to the activity? In other words: Is it fair to be challenged not just on a physical level but also on a mental level? Is that not the biggest challenge one can present? The pro-trash talk side would say: Yes! Absolutely. If I could beat someone by challenging them mentally, but I don’t do so and lose, then I didn’t present the biggest challenge that I could have. Meanwhile, the anti-trash talk side takes a Kantian perspective. To them, it’s wrong to denigrate or even objectify (i.e., treat as an object to be manipulated, as a means toward an end) an opponent in sports for the same reason it’s wrong to do so anywhere. It’s an interesting intellectual discussion, for sure. If only the letter writers were looking for a discussion. *sigh*

8. More on this—what is and isn’t inclusive—in the next section.

9. Nobody wants bad role models. But this misunderstands where trash talk actually comes from. It didn’t trickle down from the pros. It grew up from the playgrounds and Little League fields and youth hockey rinks. (Uh, chirping, anyone?) And that’s because, again, there’s something fundamental about trash talk to us as humans, which is why it’s probably a good idea to talk about it?

10. “Protecting people who participate” is not antithetical to engaging athletes on the topic of trash talk. In fact, discussing the topic may be the best way to protect people—by actually engaging the topic. And if not with athletes, then at least as an organization that works in spaces where trash talk is a reality on the ground.

11. To that end, if any of the signatories are interested in actually engaging with my book, reach out to me directly and I will be happy to send you a free download code for the audio version.