Taylor Silberman is a skateboarder from Michigan. She is one of the first female athletes to speak out against sexism in the sport of skateboarding. In this episode, she shares her story of how she became the first woman to speak up, and how she was able to impact the way skateboarding is viewed by others.
00:11:54.500And especially if you do have a women's space and you want it to be exclusively for women to be celebrated and to have opportunities.
00:12:04.100And you're called all sorts of horrible names for that.
00:12:07.620Girls are just not going to want to do it.
00:12:10.600No, and I think all of that's really interesting.
00:12:14.380But the piece to me that stuck out initially about your story was the financial impact because we didn't see this in swimming.
00:12:22.840But it goes to show that this is affecting women's livelihoods, not just impacting their safety and their privacy and, you know, equal opportunity.
00:13:47.440For me, actually, in a weird way, I'm really grateful for the backlash because I feel like it made the story blow up more.
00:13:54.800In the post that I made originally, I talked about being done, being bullied into silence, and all the comments showed exactly what I was talking about.
00:14:06.180And I think that's happened for you, too.
00:14:07.820Like when you were in San Francisco and were assaulted, that was absolutely horrific.
00:14:14.220But what happened is your story ended up blowing up so much bigger.
00:14:20.040You were able to use it for positives.
00:14:22.440And I am still so angry that that happened.
00:14:26.140But now you have a lot more people aware of what had happened to you.
00:14:31.840But I think a lot of the comments were not, you know, I disagree and this is why and this is my stance.
00:14:48.640In my case, one factor that was kind of interesting, that was something I don't think we had seen from other female athletes who'd spoken up, is there was a huge amount of anti-Semitism.
00:14:59.380In fact, I think there were more anti-Semitic comments than there were comments about what I was talking about with males and women in sports.
00:15:06.840So, it showed that people did not have a firm stance that they could argue.
00:15:15.360They just wanted to say the worst thing that they could think of to try to make you feel bad or try to shut you up or try to scare you.
00:15:21.840But I think that's pretty much what's happened to all of us.
00:15:26.260I know you shared messages where people attack you for your looks, which is insane because you're beautiful.
00:15:31.180And it's always someone who has no business talking smack about the way you look.
00:15:38.240But that's been a similar thing with me.
00:15:41.380And what was really scary, though, is there were people I had posts that I ended up removing because I was so disturbed by the content or by the comments, like people threatening to kill my pets.
00:16:17.300There are people telling me that I was a white supremacist, which it was mostly white people calling me a white supremacist.
00:16:25.460And then it was people, like, saying horrible things about me being a Jew while calling me a bigot, which is a very interesting dynamic there.
00:16:35.260But, yeah, they go after you to try to shut you up because they don't want to have to deal with the reality that we're speaking facts.
00:16:42.840And if someone actually leaves a respectful comment that is like, I disagree, that's one thing.
00:16:50.580And, you know, you have every right to have your opinion.
00:18:37.820But at the time that I spoke up, I was actually planning to do something completely differently.
00:18:45.940I was working on getting set up to do this program in Israel where I was going to go do work trade on a farm and learn how to grow strawberries in the desert, basically.
00:18:58.800And, like, get a stipend and get a stipend and live there.
00:19:03.220And instead, I came back to America, which I was planning to do regardless.
00:19:09.060But I had ended up getting a lot of people reaching out to me, supporting me.
00:19:17.800And I didn't know who Tim was at the time.
00:19:20.480But he reached out and called me after posting on Twitter that TimCast will pay Taylor Silverman the two thousand whatever dollars that was cut from her paycheck for placing second.
00:19:34.140And I watched them talk about me on TimCast IRL that night.
00:19:39.620And it was the first time that I felt like the story was covered completely accurate.
00:19:44.640Because any time that something blows up in the news, like, especially with skateboarding and anything like that, where you may not fully understand it if you don't do it.
00:19:54.420There was a lot of stuff that I cringed at the way that they talked about it.
00:19:58.460And I felt like it wasn't quite exactly right.
00:20:16.440But he gave me a call and he asked if I would come out as a guest and hang out and skate.
00:20:21.900He told me about some of the plans that he had for the company.
00:20:25.800And he basically told me, you know, you really should think about what you want to do next.
00:20:30.440And I was really grateful because at the time I thought, OK, this is a good person to have as a mentor and to, you know, kind of talk about what I should plan to do after this.
00:20:44.560Because I probably had a lot of opportunities and I wanted to use them.
00:20:48.640But I didn't understand that he was saying, what do you want to do working for me?
00:20:53.840So I ended up going out there a few weeks later.
00:20:58.980At the time, I was really scared to come back to America because I was still in Israel.
00:21:03.260And I thought if I went back to America, there would be people with like pitchforks and like coming outside my house to try to kill me, which wasn't the case at all.
00:21:16.300But because of all the online stuff, I had this like illusion in my head that this was real.
00:22:01.180I still work on a show called Cast Castle, which is a comedy show where I kind of make fun of woke stuff and spoof current events, which is a lot of fun.
00:22:12.900And working out here, I met my fiancee because he was hired not long after me as a writer and filmer.
00:22:23.720And at the time, we were just friends for many months.
00:22:28.180And then finally, we started dating and pretty much everyone at work was like, yeah, it's about time.
00:22:35.360We knew that was going to happen, but we just got engaged back in May.
00:22:40.660And now I'm currently working on some new projects at Timcast.
00:22:45.220I can't really talk about them too much, but stay tuned.
00:22:49.200And hopefully, we'll be able to announce more soon.
00:22:55.560But as you mentioned, you're from Kalamazoo.
00:22:59.960And the other day, I was watching Jesse Waters on Fox.
00:23:03.300And this dad comes on and he talks about an incident that's happening and continuing.
00:23:11.760It's ongoing right next to Kalamazoo in Vicksburg, Michigan.
00:23:15.900I remember being appalled watching this.
00:23:20.160Actually, at this point, I'm not surprised anymore.
00:23:22.280Of course, it's still appalling, but I wasn't necessarily surprised when this dad got on to talk about the incident that was happening.
00:23:31.120Because this is close to home for you, do you kind of want to fill us in on what I'm talking about and what they're doing moving forward to trying to try and, I guess, combat this?
00:23:43.940Yeah, so I found out about this just a few days before the Jesse Waters interview.
00:23:51.160Someone from Kalamazoo reached out to me, sent me the article, and immediately I wanted to do whatever I could to help these families and this attorney.
00:24:00.280So I sent out some statements and tried to get media aware of what was going on.
00:24:08.520And luckily, it was covered by several different outlets.
00:24:11.740But basically, in Vicksburg, Michigan, which is southwest Michigan, there are four families who are suing the school because they have allowed a male student to use the girls' bathroom and locker room.
00:24:28.660And there have been really uncomfortable incidents that have occurred from this for the girls in the school.
00:24:33.880And in the beginning, the girls actually went to school officials, went to the principal, and raised their concerns and said they were uncomfortable, they didn't feel safe.
00:24:45.360And the school told them to just deal with it and to not bully the student and to just basically look the other way or that they could use a different bathroom if they didn't feel comfortable.
00:24:58.780And the lawsuit states a lot, you can look it up and seek it online, but there was girls who had said that they had been exposed to male undressed.
00:25:13.720There was an incident where, it doesn't go into complete detail, but you can probably guess what happened, where someone had an embarrassing experience with their menstrual cycle because they were scared to go to the bathroom.
00:25:29.880Which, like, I can't imagine as a teenage girl how mortifying that would be, or being at school and being uncomfortable all day because you're trying to hold it because you are too scared to go to the restroom.
00:25:43.140Like, school is a place where girls and all students should feel safe and comfortable.
00:25:48.420And unfortunately, these families' daughters were not able to have that at their school.
00:25:53.660And there has been a lot of really interesting stuff that has come out since this family spoke up.
00:26:01.480And the interview was with Rich Cutshaw, he's one of the dads in the case, and Matthew DiPerno, who's the attorney.
00:26:09.260And they have been reached out to by other families now, some at the middle school, who had children in middle school.
00:26:21.860I believe it was both sixth and eighth grade, who came home from school the first week of school and said to their parents that there was a teacher in the middle school, I believe by the name of Ashley Mann, who had been telling students that they could switch their pronouns and it would be a special secret between her and them.
00:26:42.660And their parents didn't have to know.
00:26:44.260And luckily, these parents and children have good relationships where the kids can come straight to their parents and tell them what's going on.
00:26:52.220But I'm sure there's a lot of students who didn't feel comfortable doing that, too.
00:26:57.200But these parents have really had enough.
00:27:00.520And there's more and more things that keep coming out.
00:27:03.400Like, the school board president, who has basically said, we can't do anything about this, and the girls can just deal with it.
00:27:11.300It turns out that his son is a convicted pedophile.
00:27:15.240And that he had made some statements, like, that almost sound like he was defending him.
00:27:23.820Which I understand, he's your kid, but it's just really crazy.
00:27:30.640Like, it's just a deep rabbit hole that keeps going.
00:27:33.840And I'm really interested to see what happens next.
00:27:37.080But, unfortunately, what's already been done can't be undone.
00:27:42.560And what these girls went through is something that they can't, like, unexperience.
00:27:49.900And I'm sure it was very traumatic, especially at that age.
00:27:52.780But I'm very grateful that they're speaking up now and families are speaking up now because hopefully that will prevent future students and current students from going through the same thing.
00:28:04.420But it reminded me a lot of the Loudoun County case, which was out in Virginia, where there was a young girl who was sexually assaulted in a restroom by a student who I believe was transferred from another school.
00:28:22.780Where they had done the same thing to a different girl.
00:28:27.820And speaking of, what I think is so interesting about this case is the man who was using the women's restroom, he was still standing while urinating.
00:28:38.960There's a perfect hell sign that this is not gender dysphoria.
00:28:45.600Because if you were truly struggling with, and you were truly dysphoric about your gender, you would never stand in a woman's restroom to urinate.
00:28:57.100I mean, you just wouldn't do it because it would make you even more dysphoric than you were.
00:29:00.460If you really thought in the wrong body, you would not be doing that.
00:29:04.360But that shows you, it tells you, it perfectly highlights with women being the collateral damage, those poor young girls, as you said, I mean, it's traumatic.
00:29:16.660It shows you that it's a bigger problem than just live and let be with this whole, all the gender ideology stuff.
00:29:27.880And that's not in place or being taken advantage of.
00:29:29.980And to my knowledge, it was the mother of this male student who actually was threatening the school, saying, if you don't let my child use whatever bathroom they're comfortable with, we're going to sue you.
00:29:43.680And it seemed like it was orchestrated by the mother based on what I've heard, which is very sad that there are parents now who are actually encouraging their kids to do this sort of stuff.
00:33:13.460But she was still trying to hold the position that like trans women are women, which I thought it might be difficult to get support while still saying that because it kind of defeats your own argument.
00:33:26.620But she was saying, you know, how much how much fairness are we willing to sacrifice for inclusivity?
00:33:35.040And within a few days, unfortunately, due to the harassment that she faced and she said like violent threats, even she not only deleted the post, she deleted her entire Instagram.
00:33:48.220And there was an there was a skateboarder as well, another skateboarder who had placed third, I believe, in one of the contests that I posted about that I wasn't in, but it was one that was sent to me in New York.
00:34:02.060One of the girls who was bumped back in placings, she made a video talking about it.
00:34:07.700And within a couple of days, possibly even less, she deleted the video because people go after you.
00:34:16.560Like, it makes me feel lucky that I was like the youngest child and I had older siblings who teased me and bullied me all the time because you should be able to take that.
00:34:26.460It's it's most of its strangers on anonymous accounts anyway.
00:34:29.900Like, who really cares what they have to say?
00:34:32.200You should be more focused about the people in your life, your family, your friends, and also doing what is right and what I believe God would want us to do.
00:35:13.560And I hope that people see stories like yours, stories like mine, where you get through that part of it and actually a lot of positive things come out of it.
00:35:24.360And I hope they recognize that's the only way we're going to make a change.
00:35:29.600But until then, like, get used to not having rights, basically.
00:35:36.400If you're not willing to stand up for yourself.
00:36:05.200If you think, yeah, you little us at CPAC a few, what, two years ago, a year ago, whenever it was.
00:36:13.060I mean, it's been a lot of learning, a lot of adapting, a lot of growing and maturing and understanding the different nuances of it and how to communicate and blah, blah, blah since that point.
00:36:27.880So I couldn't be more grateful for you.
00:36:57.880And leaders, whether that's community leaders, national leaders, school board leaders, with effective communication tools and resources to be inspired and empowered to know that we are the majority.
00:37:10.060And you can find that at www.rallygaincenter.org.