Gaines for Girls with Riley Gaines - July 12, 2023


RILEY GAINES PODCAST： Unfair Play： Sharron Davies exposes the truth about transgenders in women's sports


Episode Stats

Length

31 minutes

Words per Minute

203.75932

Word Count

6,468

Sentence Count

425

Misogynist Sentences

49

Hate Speech Sentences

28


Summary

Sharon Davies is a three-time Olympic medalist and author. She was an Olympian as young as 13 years old and competed against the East Germans in the 1980 Olympic Games. In this episode, we discuss her experience of competing against them and how she dealt with it.


Transcript

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00:00:25.120 Welcome to the new podcast, Gains for Girls.
00:00:28.640 The goal of this podcast, we're going to be sharing perspective from elite athletes,
00:00:33.340 medical professionals, policy experts, really just people who these cultural issues that
00:00:38.440 are plaguing America, people who are having to deal with these.
00:00:42.680 We are going to, the overall mission is to spread awareness and ultimately spread truth.
00:00:47.540 Our first guest today is a woman I am so excited to talk to.
00:00:51.880 Her name is Sharon Davies.
00:00:53.320 She's a three-time Olympian.
00:00:54.620 She was an Olympian as young as 13 years old.
00:00:56.480 And she has an interesting perspective to this issue of males competing in women's sports
00:01:01.080 based off her experience in the 1980 Olympics of competing against the East Germans.
00:01:07.340 Okay, so Sharon, I am so, so excited to have you on.
00:01:11.700 I've been dying to talk with you.
00:01:13.700 First and foremost, I've admired you for a long time, my whole life,
00:01:17.680 strictly based off of your accomplishments in swimming.
00:01:19.740 But now, of course, I have so much to look up to you for.
00:01:24.400 I also, recently, you've published a book, which is phenomenal.
00:01:29.220 I learned so much about you in the book.
00:01:31.700 I would be remiss if I didn't tell you as well that my husband, he's from England.
00:01:35.960 My mother-in-law, she still lives in Crawley.
00:01:37.920 And she must be your biggest fan.
00:01:40.700 She's going to die that I'm even talking to you.
00:01:43.260 So, really great things.
00:01:45.620 And so, I just wanted to thank you, first and foremost, for coming on.
00:01:48.780 And thank you.
00:01:49.860 I mean, you know, it's a tough thing to be outspoken at the moment, isn't it?
00:01:52.780 And it's an even tougher thing, I think, when you're as young as you are.
00:01:56.220 And, you know, you were an athlete.
00:01:57.640 I don't know if you've taken a break or you finished with swimming
00:01:59.940 or whether you might fancy coming back again later on.
00:02:02.160 But whatever.
00:02:03.200 It is much harder when you're a little bit younger.
00:02:05.260 I had 40 years of working and earning money.
00:02:08.720 And, obviously, the whole East German thing meant that I had this huge thing
00:02:11.920 that I never wanted to see happen again.
00:02:13.440 So, I have my own reasons for being vocal.
00:02:16.340 And you have yours.
00:02:17.220 And I think, you know, between us and a lot of other wonderful women,
00:02:20.140 we are pushing back and we are making a difference.
00:02:22.680 And, you know, it's good.
00:02:24.560 It's important.
00:02:25.740 No doubt about that.
00:02:27.380 Before we get into the East German stuff, first of all,
00:02:29.960 what I've noticed in this conversation,
00:02:32.420 your accomplishments tend to get lost in the mix.
00:02:35.160 And, as I mentioned, you've accomplished some of the most incredible things.
00:02:39.340 You were breaking barriers, especially in the sport of swimming.
00:02:42.540 And so, would you mind just going over a few of your favorite accomplishments,
00:02:47.040 some of the things you're most proud of?
00:02:49.080 Oh, well, I mean, I suppose my whole career was very much, you know,
00:02:54.100 torpedoed by the East German era, which was in the 70s and the 80s.
00:02:57.320 So, it literally covered the whole of my time that I was competing.
00:03:00.060 So, had it not been for East Germans, I would have been European champion at 14.
00:03:03.640 And then I was double Commonwealth champion at 15.
00:03:06.680 And I was Olympic silver medalist at 17.
00:03:09.460 Then I took eight years out because I went to university in America for a little while,
00:03:13.740 actually, at Berkeley.
00:03:14.900 But to maintain my scholarship, I had to swim.
00:03:16.900 And I really just needed a break.
00:03:18.180 And that was in the days when you couldn't do that.
00:03:20.280 So, I came back and did a TV show, got paid £40, which is peanuts, as you'd imagine.
00:03:25.860 At the same time, the Sebastian Coe and Steve Avet were racing and earning a fortune
00:03:29.360 and putting their money into a trust fund.
00:03:31.300 And swimming didn't have them.
00:03:32.240 So, I got branded a professional and I wasn't allowed to compete for eight years.
00:03:36.740 And then I was working on the Olympics.
00:03:38.360 So, meantime, I went off and did all sorts of work in TV, working on the Olympics.
00:03:42.220 And then Mary Peters, who's a very successful pentathlete over here, said to me,
00:03:45.440 Sharon, don't spend the rest of your life saying, what if?
00:03:48.220 Get back in again.
00:03:49.200 So, at the ripe old age of nearly 29, got back in the water again after eight years out
00:03:53.560 and then did an Olympic Games in Barcelona.
00:03:56.320 So, I've done 12 Olympic Games so far, three competing in three different Olympics.
00:04:01.580 And all of my medals, apart from Commonwealth medals, when we didn't have to race against
00:04:05.100 East Germans, where silver and bronze is behind East Germans.
00:04:08.460 So, it was a tough time.
00:04:10.380 And, you know, I was one of the lucky ones that got on the podium because I managed to
00:04:13.740 beat two of them.
00:04:14.840 I had friends that were fourth behind three East Germans, you know, whose whole lives
00:04:18.900 would have been very, very different had they been standing on the top of the Olympic podium.
00:04:22.680 So, I partly fight for them as well.
00:04:25.600 No doubt about that.
00:04:26.680 I don't think people realize, first of all, you don't just take time off of swimming and
00:04:30.680 get back into it, especially the amount of time that you did.
00:04:32.920 So, that's incredible.
00:04:35.460 And then, of course, I did lots of other stuff.
00:04:37.200 You know, I mean, like, I've just been watching US Gladiators on my Netflix.
00:04:41.080 And, of course, I was a British gladiator and I presented breakfast television and I've
00:04:45.260 worked for the BBC now for 29 years on the poolside.
00:04:48.480 And when Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian in history in London, I got to be the
00:04:52.840 first person to interview him, which is a pretty cool moment.
00:04:56.140 Oh, my God.
00:04:56.620 So, I've done lots of other, you know, wonderful things around what sport has given me.
00:05:00.720 It's given me those opportunities.
00:05:02.700 No doubt.
00:05:03.160 And as I mentioned, that gets lost.
00:05:04.680 And so, I just want to remind you, you're incredible, far beyond of what you're fighting
00:05:08.940 for now.
00:05:11.080 But this issue, this issue of male advantage plaguing women's sports, it only recently came
00:05:17.020 to light, I feel like, for so many, including myself.
00:05:19.680 I was really only became aware of this when I was slapped across the face with it in regards
00:05:24.440 to Leah Thomas.
00:05:25.920 But as you alluded to, this is something that you had experience of.
00:05:29.820 You were well ahead of your time.
00:05:31.220 I mean, 43 years ago, you saw this.
00:05:34.000 And so, would you be able to touch on what that experience looked like competing against
00:05:40.940 the East Germans?
00:05:42.480 Yeah.
00:05:42.720 So, obviously, it's the same end result, but it was a very different sort of process.
00:05:47.000 So, what was happening during the 70s and the 80s behind the Iron Curtain was that the
00:05:51.480 East German Democratic Republic was giving very nasty steroids, anabolic steroids,
00:05:58.240 storanabol, testosterone to these young girls.
00:06:00.840 Some of them as young as 11.
00:06:01.960 And basically, giving them a male puberty.
00:06:05.360 And all the documentary evidence, because I did a documentary for British television
00:06:08.400 afterwards, showed that they could make her, on average, some more, some less, but on
00:06:11.980 average, a 9% improvement.
00:06:13.980 So, they could take a very average female swimmer, and they could make them a world champion.
00:06:18.380 And we would have East German athletes turning up to things like, even like the Olympics,
00:06:22.480 and we'd never, ever seen them before.
00:06:24.800 And they would literally arrive and smash world records.
00:06:27.920 They looked and sounded like, you know, very masculine.
00:06:30.780 They had deep voices, very large Adam Apple, bad skin, through no fault of their own.
00:06:36.180 You know, I've never had a problem with these individuals.
00:06:38.140 They were pawns of a horrible system.
00:06:41.180 The people I have a big problem with is the IOC.
00:06:43.620 And they allowed this to happen for 20 years.
00:06:46.140 You know, they even had East German doctors sitting on international doping panels.
00:06:49.480 So, every time we came up with a way to try and catch them, they would find a way to,
00:06:52.660 you know, avoid being caught.
00:06:54.800 And this was allowed to go on for two decades.
00:06:57.120 So, imagine the number of females that missed out.
00:06:59.500 However, those females only missed out at international competitions,
00:07:03.300 and they predominantly missed out in swimming, track and field, and rowing.
00:07:08.360 What we've got now is 10 times worse, because this is happening across every single sport,
00:07:12.880 at every single level, in every single country.
00:07:16.220 You know, so even things like parkrun in this country,
00:07:18.600 which is a social event that happens at the weekend,
00:07:20.680 women every single weekend in the UK are losing their course records to people who self-identify
00:07:26.580 as women, males that are self-identifying, ticking a box online.
00:07:30.760 And we're losing dozens of records every weekend.
00:07:34.860 You know, the same with Strava.
00:07:36.340 Strava enables people just to self-identify, and course records on bikes are going all over the world
00:07:40.920 that used to belong to people that are biologically female, to people now that are biologically male.
00:07:45.900 And I suppose I was also part of the era where we used to do sex testing.
00:07:49.480 You know, and that only really stopped in sort of in the 90s, I think it was.
00:07:52.920 But it was the simplest thing in the world.
00:07:54.300 It was a cheek swab to the inside of your mouth.
00:07:56.420 And you had to do it once in your life, because you cannot change your biological sex.
00:07:59.960 And that was it.
00:08:01.220 It meant that we could protect the female category, whether that was someone that was DSD, male,
00:08:06.540 or whether that was someone that was self-identifying into a classification that their biology doesn't equal.
00:08:11.960 You know, so I've been pushing very hard to say, right, we need to have a female classification,
00:08:16.300 however that looks.
00:08:17.260 Me, ideally, I'd love to bring back sex tests.
00:08:20.780 And then an open and inclusive category so that everyone is still welcome in sport.
00:08:24.520 Because just like you, I'm sure, you want people to do sport.
00:08:27.360 You know, you want people to be physically active, to be healthy, because it helps us both our body and our minds.
00:08:33.400 You know, and in a world at the moment with mental health, particularly in young girls through the roof,
00:08:37.660 we need people to be physically active.
00:08:39.960 So it's the last thing in the world I would ever want to do is to ban anyone from sports.
00:08:44.340 I just want to get the opportunities for people that are biologically female to have equal chance of being able to win medals,
00:08:52.400 put successes onto their CV going forward, get university scholarships, get places on teams,
00:09:00.680 you know, be proud of records that they set, whatever it is.
00:09:03.980 Females are worthy of equal opportunity.
00:09:06.560 We are not second class citizens, and I'm not prepared to sit back and pretend that we are.
00:09:12.300 Amen.
00:09:13.360 Oh, my gosh.
00:09:14.300 It's so true.
00:09:15.480 There is no compromise for women.
00:09:17.420 There is nothing that we should have to give up to ensure that trans athletes can compete.
00:09:21.740 But that being said, trans athletes shouldn't be banned from sports.
00:09:25.440 Of course not.
00:09:26.060 And that's something that we see in the states a lot, especially in regards to state legislature being pushed.
00:09:31.720 The opposition, they always say this is an anti-trans bill that bans trans athletes from competing.
00:09:37.640 And that's simply not true.
00:09:39.860 Everyone should be able to compete.
00:09:41.300 There's so much value in playing sports outside of just what you can achieve athletically in regards to the characteristics you develop, which are lifelong.
00:09:49.920 I'm sure it's given you the leadership to do exactly what you're doing in your modeling career, your TV career.
00:09:55.500 I'm sure sports played a big part in that for you.
00:09:58.980 Yeah, I think it made me resilient, you know, and that's something which is lacking from a lot of young people in particular, is that resilience.
00:10:05.280 That we've sort of built that out of the generation coming through.
00:10:10.020 I don't know how it is in America.
00:10:11.480 I haven't been over there, you know, for a long time.
00:10:13.560 I've been over there on holiday at different times, but I've not been over there living for a long time.
00:10:17.200 But here in the UK, we've been wrapping our kids in cotton wool and not having non-competitive sports days and not allowing them to fail.
00:10:25.380 And teaching them that failure is actually an opportunity to learn.
00:10:28.780 And when you go for your job interview, there's going to be several of you and only one of you is going to get the job.
00:10:32.580 So learning that every single failure is a lesson, it's really important.
00:10:38.780 And that's one of the wonderful things that, you know, sport teaches you.
00:10:41.320 Because out of eight people in that final, only one person is going to win.
00:10:45.300 And we go home and we go, right, what did I do wrong?
00:10:47.380 How do I fix that?
00:10:48.200 How do I train harder?
00:10:49.060 How do I change this?
00:10:49.900 How do I eat better?
00:10:50.560 How do I sleep better?
00:10:51.320 You know, whatever it is that you need to make your performance better, those are wonderful lessons that we teach.
00:10:57.220 So I think because I had this all East German thing going on and my dad was quite tough.
00:11:02.100 I mean, I broke both my arms when I was 11 and he wrapped them in plastic bags and I trained with two broken arms.
00:11:06.520 I just learned to be very, very resilient as a kid.
00:11:09.840 And I suppose that's been quite useful, you know, particularly recently.
00:11:13.680 No doubt.
00:11:14.360 Yeah, we most certainly need resiliency in what we're doing.
00:11:18.260 And so that leads me to the next question of when did you first really feel the need to take that leap of faith and speak out against this?
00:11:27.720 Yeah, I think it all went wrong when we started to include any males.
00:11:30.780 You know, even people that had gone through surgery, which was happening pre-2015, but the IOC's ruling in 2015, which wasn't in time for the Rio Olympics, that surgery was taken off the table.
00:11:44.980 All the people had to do was to self-identify.
00:11:46.760 And then we had all of this total bogus rubbish with reduced testosterone levels, of which not a single one of ever any of those, you know, levels, whether it's five, two and a half or 10, has any scientific backing whatsoever.
00:11:58.100 We know once a male has gone through male puberty, it's like boiling an egg.
00:12:02.080 Once you've boiled that egg, you can't unboil it.
00:12:04.480 And they have the benefits of, you know, bigger hands, being taller, a cue angle, which is your hips to your knee angle.
00:12:11.180 I mean, for example, in football, female footballers get six times as many knee injuries because we have a larger cue angle.
00:12:18.560 You know, males can put more power when they cycle on a bike because of the cue angle.
00:12:22.500 They have a better stride because of the cue angle.
00:12:25.020 They have larger hands, so that's better when you're a goalkeeper.
00:12:27.480 You know, all of these different things are not things that reducing testosterone removes.
00:12:31.380 So all of that was bogus.
00:12:33.040 So when in 2015 the IOC removed any need for a male to have surgery, I think that was kind of the massive hurdle which had kept a lot of males out of female sports.
00:12:43.640 And that was when I could see that we literally had a train coming towards us, that we were going to end up with the same situation that we had with the East Germans,
00:12:51.340 where, you know, they were dominating because of male puberty.
00:12:56.800 And that was what was going to happen.
00:12:58.600 It was going to cascade, you know, and when they were saying, oh, it's only one or two, that's rubbish.
00:13:03.140 And we all know that's rubbish.
00:13:04.580 Once those trans identifying males were able to succeed, it just encouraged others to do it more and more and more.
00:13:11.320 And right now we have 50 in English football.
00:13:13.800 We have 50 in cycling in North America.
00:13:16.380 You know, there's hundreds and hundreds all over the world, and that's just the ones we know about.
00:13:21.300 It's not the ones that are self-identifying at the weekend in Parkruns or Strava.
00:13:25.980 These are just literally the ones that are high profile.
00:13:29.080 Totally.
00:13:29.680 And that's what I think people don't realize.
00:13:32.060 Again, in the states here, especially in regards to state legislature, the opposition, they will say it's not really happening.
00:13:38.940 You know, why should we create a solution to a problem that doesn't exist?
00:13:42.120 It's, you know, it's just women's middle school basketball.
00:13:45.600 Who cares?
00:13:47.580 And my question is, what message does that send to girls?
00:13:50.700 It's just women's basketball.
00:13:52.240 Who cares?
00:13:53.420 Exactly.
00:13:54.380 And for them to not be proactive enough, how many women have to get hurt?
00:13:58.000 How many women have to be exploited in the locker room?
00:14:00.940 How many women have to lose out on opportunities before it does matter?
00:14:04.020 And they do do something about it, which is, it's just crazy.
00:14:07.840 And so my next question, we've talked a lot about the fairness of it and, of course, the issues that arise there.
00:14:14.940 But outside of the fairness, what are some other issues that come along with allowing men into women's sports and women's spaces?
00:14:24.120 Yeah, I think, I mean, obviously, the situation at the NCTAs with Leah Thomas was an exact, you know, a huge example where you young women were told that your feelings and your dignity did not matter at all, which was extraordinary.
00:14:37.240 I mean, just extraordinary that this person, if they've been out on the streets and identifying as male and then decided to undress, that would be against the law.
00:14:47.560 But if they identify as a female and do that in front of you guys in a women's changing room, that's not, well, that's not right, is it?
00:14:54.600 You know, I mean, you can't just change location and change what comes out of your mouth and it makes the whole thing go away.
00:15:00.960 I mean, it's just crazy.
00:15:02.160 So, again, this was about, you know, why can't we have to open debate about this?
00:15:06.620 And you've got to remember that for, you know, for a very long time, as you will know, they did everything in their power to stop us debating, everything in their power to stop us presenting the scientific facts, everything in their power to stop us from having a voice to say, no, we're not happy about this.
00:15:23.140 And it took seven years for a governing body to ask a single female athlete how they felt about this.
00:15:27.600 And they're still not asking female athletes, you know, on the whole.
00:15:31.340 I mean, we should have been doing anonymous polling from the word go.
00:15:35.120 And I just feel like this is a live experiment and women's sport just doesn't matter.
00:15:39.580 And the thing that's probably the most frustrating is that this would never happen in men's sport.
00:15:44.220 Men would never put up with this.
00:15:46.560 They just would not.
00:15:47.500 It would not happen.
00:15:48.420 You know, if you look at the swimsuits many years ago, that was sorted out the moment Michael said, I won't race until you remove the swimsuits.
00:15:55.320 They were removed.
00:15:56.300 Then we had the carbon footwear.
00:15:57.860 That was sorted out straight away.
00:15:59.660 Oscar Pistorius, you know, wanted to run in the Olympics with his blades.
00:16:02.740 The men were not putting up with it in case he beat them.
00:16:05.120 You know, if it affects men's sport, it will be sorted out.
00:16:08.500 It's only women's sport that no one seems to care about.
00:16:11.680 And we were literally used as a, oh, well, we can't, we'll just give in because it doesn't matter.
00:16:18.400 It's women's sport.
00:16:19.300 And that's what breaks my heart.
00:16:20.820 After all these years of us fighting for some sort of equality, which we're nowhere near.
00:16:25.640 I mean, you know, the statistics will show you that we're absolutely nowhere near any form of parity whatsoever.
00:16:30.600 In the States, women get 1% of the sponsorship dollar that comes from sport.
00:16:35.340 4% of prime time sports airtime goes to women.
00:16:38.380 And here in the UK, we have 1,000 women that earn their living from sport and 11,000 men.
00:16:43.660 So we have nowhere near parity, you know.
00:16:46.160 And now this little tiny piece of the cake, we were also, it was suggested that we should just budge over and give that up to men who felt like they were women.
00:16:53.940 When, in fact, they are biologically male.
00:16:56.420 And that will never change.
00:16:58.600 You know, so I have great empathy, but that doesn't mean that women are supposed to give up their dreams and all the things that they want.
00:17:04.980 And because somebody feels like that they're sex, that they're not.
00:17:09.360 And that's the truth of it.
00:17:11.640 Absolutely.
00:17:12.320 And I think it's so interesting that you bring up how men, they would put their foot down.
00:17:16.580 And if you think about it, that's what we saw with Bud Light.
00:17:20.060 Of course, it's typically men who drink Bud Light.
00:17:22.920 And when they saw that they were being infringed on by the whole campaign with Dylan Mulvaney, they did put their foot down.
00:17:29.800 And result of that was Bud Light lost over $27 billion.
00:17:34.580 Why do we as women, why aren't we taking that same position?
00:17:38.620 And that's why I really am so grateful for you and your voice because, of course, courage, it begets courage.
00:17:44.740 And I think the more people look to you, look to me, look to Nancy Hogshead, look to all these amazing, accomplished, inspiring women.
00:17:52.200 You need to mention Martina.
00:17:53.800 Yeah.
00:17:54.380 I mean, it is.
00:17:55.400 You're right.
00:17:56.100 The problem is we're made slightly different, aren't we?
00:17:58.880 Absolutely.
00:17:59.240 You know, it's almost just expected of us that we put ourselves, you know, at the bottom of the line.
00:18:03.360 You're not a mom yet.
00:18:04.100 You will be one day.
00:18:05.240 But, you know, I literally come behind the door.
00:18:07.380 You know, I have three kids and husbands.
00:18:10.240 And I was like right at the bottom with regards to what I wanted to do.
00:18:13.220 And whenever I fought to have equal recognition or my time to do my things, it was hard going, you know.
00:18:19.840 And it's almost like it's a woman's lot.
00:18:21.620 That's what they do.
00:18:22.840 It is.
00:18:23.540 Why should we do that?
00:18:25.080 Why, you know, why is it our job to put ourselves second, third and fourth on the list?
00:18:29.220 And I think we're almost trained.
00:18:30.900 And I think if I'm really honest, I do think a lot of the gender identity at the moment is a man's rights movement.
00:18:37.620 You know, whenever Daley Thompson speaks out, who is a really good friend of mine, Daley gets a hundredth of the abuse that I get.
00:18:44.880 He could say exactly the same thing and he gets a hundredth.
00:18:48.020 And it really hardly impacts his working career at all.
00:18:50.880 Mine has been crippled because, you know, vile men ring every single one of the companies that I work for,
00:18:58.160 every single one of the charities that I've worked for for years for free, all the people that I associate with.
00:19:03.860 They've even picked on my children, you know, because I've got mixed race kids and they abuse them.
00:19:08.220 And that's the one thing that I find very difficult to deal with.
00:19:10.700 The rest of it, I'll bring it on because, you know, I've got pretty thick skin.
00:19:14.560 But my kids, really, there is nothing that's off limits as far as they're concerned to punish you for having a voice.
00:19:22.760 And it is predominantly men.
00:19:24.120 But that's what they resort to, right?
00:19:26.340 They resort to these personal attacks.
00:19:28.520 They resort to petty name calling.
00:19:31.280 They'll call you every name under the sun, whether that's transphobic, homophobic.
00:19:35.340 I'm sure you get called racist for fighting.
00:19:37.780 I do. I get called racist.
00:19:38.720 How does that work?
00:19:39.680 You know, with mixed race kids.
00:19:40.880 But they don't care.
00:19:41.900 And it's not based on any fact whatsoever.
00:19:43.680 It's literally a tool to beat you over the head with to try to shut you up.
00:19:47.020 Yes, absolutely.
00:19:48.700 Okay, in response to that, have you had a lot of positive response and positive feedback from speaking out?
00:19:56.240 Yes, I mean, very much from people from, you know, sportswomen themselves, from parents.
00:20:00.000 The book is really going down really well.
00:20:02.100 And that was done to try and arm people, to give them all the facts, to get rid of all the terrible gotchas that are based in no science whatsoever,
00:20:08.880 total and utter lies that are constantly repeated.
00:20:12.280 I just wanted to arm people as much as I could.
00:20:14.800 You know, I've been involved in the argument now since 2015.
00:20:18.180 That's a long time.
00:20:19.640 And I've made it my business to know the science really, really well, to be aware of the whole of the transgender ideology problem.
00:20:29.660 But obviously, I specialize in sport because it's what, you know, what I know.
00:20:32.760 I've been involved in elite sport for 50 years.
00:20:34.820 So I know inside out, back to front.
00:20:36.580 And I obviously was there during that East German period as well.
00:20:39.180 And so, you know, I stick to my little space, which is sport.
00:20:42.860 But obviously, I'm very, very aware of everything else that's going on.
00:20:46.020 And I do, you know, I do very, very strongly believe that this will be one of the biggest medical scandals in history in years to come.
00:20:53.640 So, yeah, it's quite frightening what we're doing to young people.
00:20:57.640 Yeah, no doubt.
00:20:58.700 And I guess that leads into my next question, because for me personally, when I was affected by this a little over a year ago, I only saw this as a women's sports issue.
00:21:09.900 But now I've, of course, I've been able to take a step back and see the bigger picture.
00:21:14.260 And I constantly ask myself the question of why, you know, why are they asking us to deny man versus woman, which is the sheer essence of humanity.
00:21:22.780 I hate to break it to you guys, but everyone is here because of man and woman.
00:21:27.280 And they're asking us to deny what it is to be a woman or a man or vice versa.
00:21:32.440 And so I've been able to take a step back and see the bigger picture.
00:21:35.900 And as you mentioned, just how many realms are being affected by this and ultimately the bigger picture of the war on women.
00:21:42.100 And so in your experience, have you seen that?
00:21:46.360 I mean, have you seen this affect places like prisons?
00:21:49.800 I mean, that to me is mind boggling.
00:21:52.180 You have these men who are convicted rapists and they have committed heinous, awful crimes.
00:22:00.240 Yet they're realizing all you have to do to get into a woman's prison is say, I am a woman, which sounds great to these men who, again, are convicted of sexual crimes.
00:22:11.140 And they're getting into women's prisons and they're impregnating women.
00:22:14.460 And I know that's been an issue over in the States.
00:22:17.200 I know over in Europe, you guys have struggled with that on a little bit of your swap with yourselves.
00:22:23.340 And so I wanted to see if what the broader picture looks like to you.
00:22:28.880 And when you've asked yourself the question of why, why do you think?
00:22:32.780 Yeah, really good question, isn't it?
00:22:33.920 It's a really big question.
00:22:34.900 So it's one of our biggest questions of the day at the moment.
00:22:36.960 Why is this happening and who is paying for it?
00:22:39.840 Where is the money coming from to lobby organizations like the ACLU and Stonewall that used to be on the side of fairness and real minority groups?
00:22:50.960 And now it just seems to be tyrannical, which is just quite daunting.
00:22:55.160 I just don't understand.
00:22:56.940 And mainstream media, why are they not doing documentaries and asking the bigger questions and wanting to follow the money?
00:23:02.960 You know, that's this is these are the things which I find quite mind boggling, really, that there's been so much capture, quite scary, to be honest.
00:23:11.460 And I mean, I'm of that era.
00:23:13.300 I'm much older than you, but I'm of that era where my mom and my grandma in particular pushed back so hard against stereotypes.
00:23:18.680 And we seem to be going down to this ridiculous aisle now of trying to put everybody in boxes and stereotyping.
00:23:25.860 And so a female isn't really just someone that has a large gamete.
00:23:30.120 A female is someone that wears high heels, lipstick and has, you know, a red miniskirt on.
00:23:34.660 That's not a female.
00:23:35.920 That's a stereotype that society is pushing.
00:23:39.740 So a female is just biologically a female.
00:23:42.520 However, she chooses to look or dress or behave.
00:23:46.080 OK, and that, again, is regressive because we fought so hard to get away from these stereotypes.
00:23:52.740 I believe that if you're a male and you want to be as feminine as you want to be, good on you.
00:23:57.720 That's what acceptance is and vice versa.
00:24:00.240 You know, a female that wants to be as butch and as masculine as they want to be, that's acceptance.
00:24:03.860 And that's where we should be going.
00:24:05.240 Not saying that you have to change your biological sex and be medicalized for the rest of your life.
00:24:09.620 I mean, that's just insane.
00:24:11.120 Yeah, we should be asking more questions about why that is happening when we fought so hard to move away from stereotypes.
00:24:18.840 No, I entirely agree.
00:24:21.500 And you're right.
00:24:22.740 They do it in the name of inclusion.
00:24:24.420 They do it in the name of love and acceptance and tolerance and welcoming and embracing diversity.
00:24:29.260 But in my experience, they haven't embraced diversity.
00:24:33.080 They don't embrace diverse thought.
00:24:35.480 And it's not inclusive to ask us as women to smile and step aside and allow these men onto our podiums, accepting our titles and our awards and our scholarships.
00:24:45.600 That's not inclusive.
00:24:47.320 That's exclusive to the very female.
00:24:49.580 And that's what we're finding, aren't we?
00:24:50.680 We're finding that women are excluding themselves.
00:24:52.500 So in this country, for example, and something like rugby, although, you know, world rugby has been pretty good, certain parts of the UK, we still have very strong pressure.
00:25:04.420 And so, you know, dads are turning up with their young daughters to play rugby, which is an extremely dangerous contact sport.
00:25:10.260 And they will see that there are transgender women, transgender girls, males are identifying as the opposite sex on the opposite team.
00:25:16.740 And what they're doing is they're just pulling their girls off the field because they're just saying, my daughter, it's not worth my daughter breaking a neck or breaking her arm or having a life changing injury to play her sport.
00:25:27.100 So women are self-excluding because they just don't want to do this.
00:25:31.780 You know, at a time when we should be trying to encourage more people to be involved in sport.
00:25:35.020 The whole point of Title IX was to do that.
00:25:36.780 And it did it beautifully.
00:25:38.180 And now it's, you know, it's being, it's almost being wrecked.
00:25:41.760 And please God, it's not wrecked, but it's very close to it.
00:25:46.160 You know, and it's such a wonderful tool to offer equality.
00:25:49.460 Well, we have an administration over here.
00:25:51.860 And if it was up to them entirely, it would be wrecked.
00:25:54.720 And that's what they're going towards is they're rewriting Title IX to where it's no longer preventing discrimination on the basis of sex.
00:26:01.580 It is preventing discrimination on the basis of gender identity.
00:26:04.000 And this affects more than just sports, actually.
00:26:06.360 It's men can join sororities.
00:26:08.300 Men can live in dorm rooms with women.
00:26:10.180 They would have full access to bathrooms, locker rooms, changing spaces.
00:26:13.120 On top of taking athletic scholarships, men can take academic scholarships away from women.
00:26:18.380 And that's what our administration over here in the States, that's what they think of women and young girls, which is, which is.
00:26:25.160 And that's why I say it's misogyny.
00:26:26.620 It's literally just misogyny room 101, isn't it?
00:26:29.280 This is, you know, this is all that it's a men's rights movement at the moment.
00:26:32.740 Yes, it's men, it's men mansplaining what it is to be a feminist, which is so comical, right?
00:26:38.720 It's like, it's satire.
00:26:40.960 Or a lesbian, you know, someone that has a penis cannot possibly be a lesbian.
00:26:46.080 You know, it's sex.
00:26:47.360 It's someone who, who's attracted to someone of the same sex, someone of the same biological sex.
00:26:52.000 And our, and our, we've worked so hard to get, you know, great understanding of homosexuality.
00:26:57.620 And, and in some ways, this feels like it's even pushing back on that as well, you know, and that's quite worrying too, because make great strides have been made for people that are homosexual over the last few decades.
00:27:06.860 And, and this is not healthy.
00:27:09.020 You know, it really isn't.
00:27:10.420 It's much bigger than sport.
00:27:12.300 You know, as you say, I tend to stick to sport because I know all the stats.
00:27:15.680 I know all the figures, I know all the science, and I can spread them off, you know, every day.
00:27:21.460 The rest of it, I leave to other wonderful feminists who are fighting those corners as well.
00:27:25.000 But I think to do our job properly in sport, we have to be aware of this, of the bigger picture.
00:27:29.640 Absolutely.
00:27:30.940 And Sharon, I could not be more proud to be in this fight with you.
00:27:34.400 As I mentioned, you really are an inspiration to me and so many others.
00:27:37.840 And I constantly look at your page for wisdom, for understanding different arguments and different things.
00:27:43.980 And so, again, I could not be more grateful for you.
00:27:47.720 The accomplishments you've achieved, you're a trailblazer for women.
00:27:51.740 And so I wanted to give you an opportunity to, again, talk about your book.
00:27:56.240 Where can people buy it?
00:27:57.480 What can people expect from it?
00:27:58.900 Okay.
00:27:59.720 It's amazing.
00:28:00.480 I've read through it, and I couldn't recommend it enough.
00:28:04.700 So it's called Unfair Play, and it's the battle for women's sport.
00:28:07.720 And the whole idea is to show that even someone like Pierre de Coubertin, you know,
00:28:11.300 that we're supposed to be celebrating next year at the Olympics in Paris, did everything in his power to keep women out of the Olympic Games.
00:28:16.860 And it's the battles we've had throughout the whole of the last hundred years, really,
00:28:21.380 and where we were starting to win and the pushback.
00:28:24.320 And then it's the science.
00:28:25.500 It's explaining what happened with the East Germans.
00:28:27.880 It's explaining all the bureaucracy as well.
00:28:30.300 It's explaining how difficult it's been for women to get on committees and on boards,
00:28:34.020 and how when I won my medal in 1980, there was not a single woman sitting on the IOC, you know, board.
00:28:39.540 And even now, the women that we have sitting on the IOC boards come from the Middle East or North Korea.
00:28:44.680 Yeah, those huge Great Big Nations that have so many winning women, right?
00:28:48.180 Irony.
00:28:49.600 So, you know, it's trying to get women who are powerful and strong and have a good voice.
00:28:54.060 We talk about Nancy, you know, how Nancy does such amazing things.
00:28:57.260 But because Nancy isn't a handmaiden, she's been pushed to the side, you know,
00:29:01.420 and those are the women that should be in positions of authority sitting on boards that fight, you know, fight for women.
00:29:07.560 So it's all of that.
00:29:08.660 And it's a handbook for parents and for teachers and for people that run sports clubs to be able to use
00:29:13.540 so that they can fight back with the actual facts and the actual information
00:29:18.100 and not have people throwing gotchas at them, which are just not true.
00:29:23.060 You know, whether it's talking about Castus Semenya and DSDs or inferring the word intersex means some form of hermaphrodite,
00:29:29.820 which does not exist.
00:29:31.700 There are only two sexes, small gamite, large gamite.
00:29:34.680 There is no gamite.
00:29:36.280 That's a mixture of both.
00:29:38.060 You know, it doesn't exist.
00:29:39.840 And DSDs exist, but it's a tiny minority.
00:29:42.300 And again, they're still male or female.
00:29:44.380 OK, so there are anomalies of sexual development.
00:29:47.760 They're not someone who becomes both sexes.
00:29:49.740 And these are misinformation that's being used to create a smokescreen.
00:29:56.300 And so I wanted the book to be able to, you know, do all of that, defog it all,
00:29:59.980 and hopefully arm people to fight the battle.
00:30:03.120 Absolutely.
00:30:03.940 I love how you mentioned it equips people with the right information, with effective messaging,
00:30:09.040 how to communicate about it, what to do.
00:30:12.280 Really powerful.
00:30:13.440 You mentioned in your book, you had a quote, I think it's from Cynthia Millen.
00:30:17.720 And it says, bodies compete against bodies.
00:30:21.040 Gender identities don't swim.
00:30:23.220 Which is, that's the basis of the argument.
00:30:25.980 How do we marshal feelings?
00:30:28.740 It's ridiculous.
00:30:30.320 You know, if you turn around and say that we're going to accept a feeling
00:30:32.860 that says someone can feel like a male or a female, depending on their feeling,
00:30:36.540 not the reality of their body, where does that stop?
00:30:40.040 You know, what's the next feeling that's going to trump a reality?
00:30:43.020 And we're not doing our kids any favors by not dealing with the truth.
00:30:46.140 You know, it's by telling young children that they're going to be able to change sex
00:30:51.020 when they're not.
00:30:51.620 They're going to have to take medication for the rest of their life.
00:30:53.740 They're going to have to do things to their bodies, which will probably shorten their lives.
00:30:57.460 And having watched those young East German girls, you've paid with their health
00:31:00.940 for the rest of their lives because of those drugs that they were given, you know, as young girls.
00:31:05.880 I know down well that this is not a happy ending, you know, either way.
00:31:11.740 So I wanted to sort of just show all of that, just show all of the things that I've seen over 50 years
00:31:16.940 of being involved in sport.
00:31:19.600 A big thank you to Sharon Davies for coming on today and engaging in conversation.
00:31:24.140 Make sure you check out her book, Unfair Play.
00:31:26.480 It really is a phenomenal book that will equip you with the right information on how to tackle this
00:31:31.320 and how to defend yourselves, defend your daughters.
00:31:34.760 Check out Gains for Girls podcast.
00:31:36.640 This is a new venture, super exciting, super fun.
00:31:38.980 And make sure you check it out on outkick.com and anywhere where you stream your podcasts.
00:31:43.180 We can't wait to see you next time.