SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Olympic Heptathlete and Kinesiologist Linda Blade： Women's Sports Under Attack By Radical Gender Activists
Episode Stats
Words per minute
163.21576
Harmful content
Misogyny
33
sentences flagged
Toxicity
9
sentences flagged
Hate speech
30
sentences flagged
Summary
Linda Blade joins me to discuss her new book, Unsporting: How Trans Activism and Science Denial Are Destroying Sport, co-authored with columnist Barbara Kay. In this episode, we talk about the current state of women s sports, and why it s time to speak up.
Transcript
00:00:00.800
Oh hey guys, it's Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of
00:00:05.760
my weekly Wednesday night show, Aptly, called The Gunn Show.
00:00:09.900
However, you know what, this is the internet so you can watch or listen whenever you feel
00:00:14.400
That's the beauty of not being tethered to terrestrial TV or radio.
00:00:19.040
You can just basically watch or listen whenever you want at your own convenience.
00:00:23.620
Now, tonight my guest is someone whom I have been dying to talk to because I have a daughter
00:00:34.120
She co-authored the new book, Unsporting, How Trans Activism and Science Denial Are Destroying
00:00:40.940
She co-authored this book with everybody's favorite Jewish grandma, Barbara Kay.
00:00:47.080
Now, if you like listening to the show, then I promise you're going to love watching it,
00:00:51.400
but in order to watch, you need to be a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
00:00:55.480
As you know, that's what we call our long-form TV-style shows here on Rebel News.
00:00:59.660
Subscribers get access to my show, which obviously I think is, you know, pretty great.
00:01:04.200
But you also get access to Ezra's nightly, fully-produced Ezra Levant show, David Menzies'
00:01:10.660
fun Friday night show, Rebel Roundup, and Andrew Chapados' brand new show, Andrew Says, which
00:01:18.100
It's been on the network for six or so months, but it feels new to me because I've been here
00:01:24.700
Anyway, it's only eight bucks a month to subscribe.
00:01:27.400
And just for my podcast listeners, you can save an extra 10% on a new Rebel News Plus subscription
00:01:33.000
by using the special coupon code PODCAST when you subscribe.
00:01:40.640
Just go to rebelnewsplus.com to become a member today.
00:01:45.840
And now please enjoy this free audio-only version of my show.
00:01:53.140
Are we watching the slow demise of women's sports?
00:01:56.160
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
00:02:06.060
At this summer's Olympics, a genetic male will likely take home a gold in women's weightlifting.
00:02:12.700
It's not bigoted or intolerant to simply state the biological reality that human bodies,
00:02:20.780
which have experienced male testosterone-inspired puberty, carry more muscle mass, have greater
00:02:27.660
bone density, they have larger hearts inside their chests, and that leads to stronger cardiovascular
00:02:34.280
It's the reason female-born athletes who take testosterone were once considered guilty
0.97
00:02:44.580
Testosterone is a performance-enhancing substance.
00:02:51.140
And to deny it by allowing transgender, female-identifying competitors to compete with or against biological
0.99
00:02:59.240
women is to rob these female athletes of their work, their accomplishments, and future opportunities
1.00
00:03:06.740
But it's happening right now in mixed martial arts, in cycling, weightlifting, even contact
00:03:13.660
Male-born competitors are stealing accolades and endangering the women they are competing
1.00
00:03:19.780
But if you say these things, you risk being cancelled, fired, or losing funding for your
00:03:27.600
You're damned if you do speak up, and, well, damned if you don't.
00:03:32.220
That's why my guest tonight is so, so very brave.
0.58
00:03:36.560
As a career athlete and coach, Olympian and kinesiologist Linda Blade saw exactly what was
00:03:45.200
happening to women's sports, and she saw what was coming on the horizon, and she had to speak
00:03:50.060
up, regardless of the consequences to her, before it was too late.
00:03:54.600
So she co-authored the new book, Unsporting, How Trans Activism and Science Denial Are Destroying
00:04:05.620
Linda joins me in an interview we recorded yesterday morning to discuss the future of women's sport,
00:04:13.820
if any, and to offer a way forward in which all athletes are able to compete on a level
00:04:29.380
So joining me now from BC, Linda's taking the time to, while she's on vacation to talk with
00:04:37.840
And Linda, I wanted to have you on the show for, well, for me, for personal reasons.
00:04:43.300
But I think what are personal reasons for me are the same reasons that a lot of other
00:04:48.600
mothers really appreciate your brand new book that you co-authored with Barbara Kaye.
00:04:54.700
It's called Unsporting, How Trans Activism and Science Denial Are Destroying Sports.
1.00
00:04:59.680
And I'm proud to say that we at Rebel News are the publishers of your book.
00:05:03.680
Now, Linda, for people who don't know you, I know who you are, and you've sort of been on
00:05:17.160
But for people who don't know who you are, tell us a little bit about your background.
00:05:22.980
Yes, I was on Team Canada as a track and field athlete in the event called Heptathlon, which
00:05:39.000
Then I went to university, got my PhD in sports sciences, kinesiology, then became a coach.
00:05:45.220
And I've coached athletes in about 17 different sports across the board on their fundamental
00:05:51.080
movement skills and helping them to become better athletes.
00:05:55.860
I've even coached some Olympic gold medalists, Jamie Saleh and David Peltier in the figure
00:06:02.380
And so by 2014, I became the elected president of Athletics Alberta, which is the Alberta Track
00:06:10.860
And so since that time, I've been entering this whole bewildering world of policy, sport
00:06:23.400
I guess that moves us into why did you write this book?
00:06:34.720
And I guess, you know, even just voicing an opinion on these subjects can end up with
00:06:42.700
Your career's basically over for a lot of people who go against the narrative.
00:06:47.000
But you took a step beyond just saying, hey, I've got some issues with this.
00:06:56.100
Well, it's precisely because of the canceling that I wrote this book.
00:07:05.660
I wrote this book precisely because when I raised the issue that I was concerned about
00:07:11.220
male bodies entering women's sports for safety reasons, obviously, and contact sports, and
0.62
00:07:21.120
And, you know, it's that strange feeling around the table that you're not supposed to be saying
00:07:25.040
And when somebody, you know, when I get that feeling, I realize something's terribly wrong,
00:07:33.680
And I just committed to speaking out as much as I could before it was too late.
00:07:38.640
Because really, if the rules of sport change to the point where somebody could be even in
00:07:43.660
prison by saying the wrong thing about males in sport, I need to say this quickly before
00:07:50.900
Now, what were some of the responses when you first started raising concerns about, as
00:08:00.000
Because you don't come at this at all from really an activist viewpoint whatsoever.
00:08:06.360
You come at this from an issue of fairness and science based on your own science background.
00:08:12.200
Your background is in how the human body works.
00:08:16.500
And so you have a very unique perspective on this, but yet you were treated as something
00:08:21.840
less than an expert when you raised these, I guess, dissenting opinions.
00:08:28.980
Well, because I am president of an association, I realized that it's our governing, my governance
00:08:36.140
colleagues who are in governance, sport governance, that if we don't set the right policy, it's
00:08:41.680
going to not just ruin sport for women and girls.
00:08:43.720
It's going to ruin sport for everybody because imagine if there's a parent or volunteer, an
00:08:50.040
official, most of our people at ground level, Sheila, are just volunteers.
00:08:54.900
And if we don't protect them and give them the right to distinguish what the rules are,
00:08:59.700
distinguish between male and female on the field or on the track, we put them at risk
0.89
00:09:05.700
and then they feel uncomfortable and our volunteer class could just walk away and we would actually
00:09:11.100
have no capacity to conduct sport at ground level, which is going to hurt the boys and
00:09:18.060
And so I just felt like this was actually an existential threat to sport.
00:09:22.720
And if I get canceled, you know, Sheila, I've had my turn.
00:09:26.840
So I immediately saw that I'm of the age, you know, I'm almost six years of age.
00:09:41.220
If they cancel me now, I guess that's the price.
00:09:44.040
It's not a big price for me to pay, at least in terms of my career.
00:09:48.760
And I just felt like I was in a really pretty good position to make this argument without
00:09:53.200
a huge deal of threat to my, you know, my life and my career.
00:10:00.960
I guess that's really the question I was asking myself.
00:10:04.720
And so around those policymaking tables, what was some of the pushback that you were hearing?
00:10:13.300
First of all, the activist pushback is these aren't men.
00:10:17.160
They're really females inside a male body.
1.00
00:10:21.680
You know, I mean, it may be true that somebody really honestly, fervently believes that they
0.97
00:10:26.800
have grown up with a male body with all the advantages and really secretly inside they
00:10:39.160
Like, it's not our business what somebody believes about themselves.
00:10:41.880
We don't classify sport on the basis of belief.
00:10:45.020
Like, otherwise, we would say, okay, if you're this religion, you compete in that category,
0.99
00:10:49.840
another religion, or if you actually have, you know, a political party, you go over there
00:10:54.520
and this other political party, you race over here.
00:10:57.620
We do not compete on the basis of our ideologies.
00:11:01.180
I mean, the beauty of sport is that, you know, we can put that baggage aside.
00:11:05.360
But so that's like the one thing that I was getting at, that it's not, even if you're
00:11:09.640
really a female inside, I mean, it's not my business.
0.60
00:11:13.560
Second thing is, the people around the table were frightened.
00:11:17.320
I could tell from the looks on their faces that they were ignoring me and shunning me
00:11:26.780
It might cause, you know, our sport to be, you know, somehow demeaned or maligned by activists.
00:11:35.340
Maybe we might not be in line with what the government wants us to think.
00:11:40.460
So there was a lot of fear, I think, around the table.
00:11:44.620
Most of my colleagues were males, like at the top of the sport decision-making process.
00:11:49.300
And, you know, I have noticed, I can't help but notice that a lot of times, because they're
00:11:55.140
men, they just don't get the threat that it feels to be a woman and feel this, like, what
00:12:01.480
happens if a man comes into our, you know, safe space and our single sex space.
00:12:06.360
And I mean, I'm not, you know, I've never been an activist.
00:12:11.420
I just realized that there was something terribly wrong.
00:12:13.860
And they were afraid, afraid when people are afraid, there's something going on.
00:12:19.700
Yeah, I suppose they were afraid of being canceled.
00:12:27.720
But I mean, it's so much bigger than that, you know, and I think they were afraid that
00:12:34.900
If we don't get funding for our sports in Canada, we're really not.
00:12:40.960
So I'm saying an existential threat from the purpose, from the point of policy and ground
00:12:46.280
And they're thinking as existential threat from the top, from the minister, from, you know,
00:12:51.320
where they get their funding, the quiet cancellation that happens when you just don't get the grant.
00:12:56.800
And I don't, I can't blame them actually, if you're feeling like that, but I feel like you
00:13:00.780
have to balance those threats and protect sport as best we can.
00:13:06.320
Now, I want to talk to you a little bit about the science of it all, because a lot of the
00:13:11.840
pushback that we hear from the activists on the other side, because truly that's what it
00:13:17.360
is activism on the other side, whereas, you know, you take a, we're just trying to protect.
00:13:23.820
You take a fairness viewpoint of it, but on the other side, they do try to argue the science
00:13:28.260
and they say, well, for example, uh, with the case of like Fallon Fox, um, they will argue that
00:13:35.320
even though, uh, Fox has gone through male puberty carries male muscle muscle mass has male bone
00:13:44.260
density, the fact that this person is now taking estrogen to suppress, uh, their male hormone
00:13:50.340
hormones, that, that somehow equals the playing field.
00:13:58.100
Well, um, that goes straight to the, uh, into the, um, responsibility of the international
00:14:06.500
Um, because in 2015, the international Olympic committee bought the lie.
00:14:11.040
In fact, perpetrated the lie that if a male, a grown adult male athlete takes, you know,
00:14:17.180
reduces their testosterone level, that that somehow brings that the level, the playing
00:14:22.300
field level to the female level, which is just absolutely not true.
00:14:26.720
The IOC themselves, um, have for years expected solid scientific evidence for any new policy they
00:14:34.880
But on this case, immediately, they just went with the, with the culture and with the activists
00:14:41.220
and, and without studying anything just said, yeah, you take hormones.
00:14:47.080
But in fact, there have been 13 scientific studies, uh, that measure hormone, like the
00:14:53.080
performance levels and muscle muscle strength in males before they transition.
00:14:57.420
And then after they take the hormone like reduction, uh, uh, hormone replacement therapy, and in
00:15:04.560
every single one of those cases, the advantage that they have, the male advantage and strength
00:15:09.220
and many other variables has not diminished, has not diminished appreciably.
00:15:14.100
There is no evidence that it brings the male body into even level playing field with the
0.97
00:15:20.160
And we're not, listen, Sheila, female bodies are not just male minus the hormones, right?
00:15:25.980
I mean, you cannot, you cannot reduce, even if you take like change the substances in your
00:15:31.600
blood, it's not going to make your heart smaller.
00:15:35.900
It's not going to diminish the size of your limbs, like your limb length and your height.
00:15:42.100
I mean, you're not going to change the entire structure to look like a female.
1.00
00:15:53.300
The first lie is that hormones level the playing field.
00:15:55.340
The second, second lie, Sheila, was that the IOC literally said, the medical commission
00:16:00.320
said, well, there's not going to really be that many transitioning.
00:16:03.780
Just let a few into women's sports, you know, it's not going to make a big difference.
1.00
00:16:08.300
And we are seeing now that that's absolutely not true because society is championing this
00:16:13.900
some, for some reason, this movement has become popular.
00:16:17.680
A lot of males are self-identifying into women's sports.
00:16:21.080
And if you just take just even the two high school runners from Connecticut, between the
00:16:26.460
two of them for three years competing in the female high school division, they took 15 state
0.93
00:16:31.740
records and they caused about 85 girls to miss opportunities.
1.00
00:16:37.820
And if you have like Laurel Hubbard, for example, and now in the Olympics and women's weightlifting
00:16:42.520
was the New Zealand male who transitioned at 35 and now in the Olympics.
00:16:46.320
If just think about it, no matter what medal he gets, he, she, whatever medal he gets, then
00:16:59.500
So it does affect every single person in that field.
00:17:02.160
And it means that some woman in the world didn't get to compete because it's not an endless,
0.98
00:17:07.160
you know, unlimited number in the Olympic category.
00:17:12.400
It means some woman in the world somewhere didn't get to compete because Laurel Hubbard
00:17:25.080
Now, I guess too, on the flip side of that, the, many of these professional sports bodies
00:17:32.260
and amateur sports bodies, they used to recognize testosterone as a performance enhancing drug.
00:17:38.360
And yet now we're allowing people who've experienced 35 years of testosterone coursing through their
00:17:48.680
It's preposterous and it's, it's actually outrageous.
00:17:53.640
And the one governing body in Canada, the Canadian center for ethics and sports, CCES,
00:17:59.740
their only mandate, Sheila, the only mandate after the Ben Johnson affair and the cheating
00:18:04.320
in the eighties, their only mandate was to make sure that Canadians don't dope.
00:18:11.660
They are the prime association group in Canada, promoting male bodies, self-identifying into
00:18:18.020
women's sports, male bodies that have had full, like 20 plus years of, if you, if you think
00:18:24.800
there are females in a male body, then they have had 20 years of testosterone doping and
00:18:29.680
advantages built up that are now suddenly supposed to be like, we're just supposed to say, welcome,
00:18:38.360
I guess, if you're going to say that doping is cheating, then they've actually had 20 years
00:18:43.960
of cheating that they're, that we're just supposed to pretend like that somehow, even one year,
00:18:49.600
in fact, the CCES position is they shouldn't be forced to take hormones or surgery or anything
00:18:55.440
at all. In fact, CCES says they can be a male for one season in one sport and female for another
00:19:02.540
season in another sport. And then they can change their mind because, you know, gender is fluid. So
0.97
00:19:07.160
they can go back and forth between like, they could be a male hockey player one season, and then
00:19:12.180
they could be like a female sprinter the next season. And like, where does this end? This is
1.00
00:19:17.420
ridiculous. Well, how do we even police sport?
0.96
00:19:20.020
No, that's the thing, like the these bodies, their one job is to make the playing field fair.
00:19:27.440
And this is anything but fair for female sports. I want to ask you, where are the feminists in all
1.00
00:19:33.760
of this? Because I noticed that you are, whether it's purposefully or otherwise, using a little bit
00:19:40.300
of modern feminist language when you say women's only spaces. And you know what, this is where I agree
1.00
00:19:46.940
with the more radical of the modern feminists. I do believe there should be women's only spaces.
0.96
00:19:52.620
And they are largely silent on this, or pushing this. And I don't understand. I don't understand
00:20:03.260
Well, there's two kinds of feminists that you're going to run into on this issue.
1.00
00:20:06.440
There's the intersectional feminists who believe in, you know, like third or fourth wave feminism,
1.00
00:20:10.940
where they want to believe that men and women are equal. And so sports maybe is a platform to show
00:20:18.480
that we can just kind of all be equal and share the same space. And then there's the more radical
00:20:23.620
feminists, which means it's not extreme feminists. By that, the radical feminist means the root of
0.99
00:20:29.720
feminism, radical being the root. And those more like wave two, like the World War Two, after World War
00:20:35.420
Two, we believed in equal pay for equal work, that women should be allowed in the workspace and in
0.73
00:20:41.760
public spaces, in government. So, so I guess, you know, I had to study all that, just because I mean,
00:20:49.060
I was a coach, and I didn't even, I didn't even understand what was going on. I'm just coaching all
00:20:53.000
my life and in the trenches with my head down. And then when this hit me, I thought, well, okay,
00:20:57.500
why aren't some women supporting me? And why are others supporting me? And so it just, I think it turns
00:21:02.180
out that there's the more modern feminists want to believe this, this, it's a fairy tale, actually,
1.00
00:21:09.020
that there's no difference between male bodies and female bodies. And then the more traditional
00:21:13.360
feminists, which are the radical feminists, believe that, you know, we have to have distinct
1.00
00:21:19.360
recognition, have sex, single sex spaces, whether it's in prisons, in women's shelters, like, you can't
0.97
00:21:26.780
put a male rapist into a women's prison, I'm sorry, he's going to end up raping people. That's the way
1.00
00:21:31.820
he does it, right. And so yet our government through Bill C16 is justifying even that. So I'm just
00:21:38.560
saying that there's just, there's a purpose for having single space, sex spaces for females to be
1.00
00:21:45.540
safe, for life to be fair. And for us to have parity in society and have equal standing and have security
00:21:52.860
to thrive as women. And with all the skills that we have, we bring skill sets, men bring skill sets.
00:22:00.380
I mean, I love to death, my father, my husband, my son, like, I love the men in my life, I'm not
00:22:06.560
against them. But I also realize they're men, and I'm a woman, and there's differences. And let's
00:22:11.900
celebrate that. Like, why do we have to pretend like we're just one big blob of a humanity? I mean,
00:22:18.320
not a single person in this country, I dare you to find a single person in this country, that came
1.00
00:22:24.200
about by any other way than the joining of two gametes, a sperm and egg, male and female, and then
00:22:31.300
they made another person. Find me the person that came about any other way than that. And I will maybe
00:22:37.140
change my mind. But until then, we are biological beings. Now you just touched on Bill C16. And
00:22:44.680
there is some pretty serious threats to people like yourself who speak out against this radical,
00:22:52.700
I will call it radical gender, gender ideology, because I think that's really what it is.
00:22:59.460
Do you feel like that sort of thing is looming over the head of people like you that could serve
00:23:08.100
So when, when I look back at what the politicians were saying, Sheila, during the Bill C16 debate,
00:23:16.300
they made it very clear that there was a difference between biological sex and gender identity. And
00:23:21.840
let's face it, our charter, National Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian Charter of Rights and
00:23:26.480
Freedoms, does emphasize that we can't be discriminated on the basis of our sex, which is biology. And then
00:23:32.960
these newer bills were about gender expression and gender identity. And so I not a single politician at that
00:23:42.300
time that I was looking at in Parliament, was talking about the fact that gender should completely replace
0.99
00:23:48.500
biological sex, they were saying these two things were being held in balance. So when you say like somebody
00:23:54.960
needs to like the law says you can discriminate on the basis of gender identity or gender
00:23:59.420
expression, expression, fine. But not bullying somebody does not mean that you include the wrong
00:24:07.200
sex body in a space that's going to be harmful to the other sex. These two things have to be held
1.00
00:24:15.900
in balance. And this is what laws are, they're trying to find the balance. So when they passed that law,
00:24:21.480
I honestly didn't think that there was a single politician who thought, oh, that'd be a great idea,
00:24:25.360
put a rapist in a female prison. No, no. But I think what's happening is the middle management and
0.87
00:24:31.780
the and the wokesters and everybody in the middle is interpreting it that way. Yeah. So like, for
0.93
00:24:37.280
example, in sports, we can say if a if a boy shows up, let's say a high school boy shows up in a dress
00:24:43.360
and wants to run a race, it's still run with the guys. We don't we have already resolved that issue.
00:24:48.640
We have no bullying policy in sport. We will not bully. We will respect the gender expression,
00:24:55.320
gender identity, but but we will also stick to the sex based rules. This is easy to implement. It's not
0.79
00:25:02.060
like we are somehow breaking the law. We are holding the law in balance. You know, and it's it's funny,
00:25:08.900
because even these days to watch your child play sports, you have to go through an anti bullying course.
00:25:14.380
So it's it's not like we're we're completely against anti bullying. Most of us are forced to
00:25:21.060
participate in these anti bullying programs. Even if you've never bullied anybody in your life,
00:25:25.420
you still have to do it. So I mean, it's not like sport doesn't take bullying seriously. But this is
00:25:30.180
not the same. This is really not the same. Right. I wanted to ask you, I guess, if we don't rein this
00:25:38.180
in, and that'll be my last question, how do we rein it in? But if we don't rein, if we don't rein
00:25:43.240
it in, what are the consequences for women's sport going forward? Like, what's the timeline? How
00:25:48.180
how long do we have left before there's no such thing as women's sports? I say we have about five
1.00
00:25:53.960
to 10 years, and then women's sports will not exist because and let's face it, I'm going to say that
00:25:59.100
it's going to hurt women and trans identifying women. So trans males who identify as women. Because
0.70
00:26:06.760
I think about it this way, Sheila, once the whole final, let's fit the entire podium in every
00:26:11.940
competition is there's enough males now who self identified into women's sports, that the real
00:26:17.220
female athletes who are born female, don't have a chance, they will walk away quietly.
1.00
00:26:24.420
Because I know this, a lot of females would rather not complain, they just walk away disappear.
1.00
00:26:28.100
So they will self exclude from the sport category. What's going to be left at that point is a bunch of
00:26:34.940
males in the women final. And once these activists are seeing that they're surrounded
00:26:41.760
by other males just like themselves, in the final, they will no longer feel special or unique, or
00:26:49.200
they will no longer feel that they're being affirmed with the females. So the very, you know, they enter
00:26:56.320
women's sports specifically to for a social affirmation. It's not because they want to compete, because we
1.00
00:27:02.340
offer them third categories, and they say no, they want to be with the women because they feel they need to
00:27:08.320
be seen with women, right to as a form of social expression. So the minute everybody disappears,
0.78
00:27:14.160
although all the female born athletes disappear, the field will be left, it'll be like the men's a
1.00
00:27:20.560
final, the men's be final, and there will be no women. And you know what, these people will no longer
0.54
00:27:25.040
feel affirmed. And they'll probably just end up walking away to because they're not getting what they
00:27:29.600
need. They're not getting the social affirmation they need. So it's only the first few people like Laurel
00:27:34.000
Hubbard, who will feel like they're so special, and they're being platformed and profiled with all
00:27:39.060
the women. And then eventually, it'll just be all men. And they won't feel special anymore. And then so
00:27:44.620
what I feel like is, why go through that cycle? Why destroy the entire thing? And then we'd have to
00:27:51.960
rebuild women's sport anyway, in 10 or 20 years, to start over again. What so it's worth defending now.
1.00
00:27:59.920
And the, and you alluded to what is the solution? Yes. And the solution really is when we bring this
00:28:06.380
up again, I'll show the book one last time, we bring this up in the book. I'm sporting. We basically
00:28:14.740
advocate that there should be an open category for all all different types of like, anybody who's not a
00:28:24.480
female and a female only category. So female and open. And actually, this is how sport works right
1.00
00:28:32.240
now. If you look at the NHL, NFL and NBA, all the professional male sports are actually open sports.
00:28:40.080
If a woman was good enough, she could be an NFL player, she could be an NHL player, they are open.
00:28:46.340
But of course, magically, no women ever qualify because the male body has quite a few inherent
1.00
00:28:52.200
advantages. So I'm just saying that we should just stick with what we have male, like we should
1.00
00:28:58.160
have an open category, keep the binary, keep it open. So let's even if you're a female who identifies
1.00
00:29:03.300
as a man, and you're taking extra hormones, we'll then go into the open category. But the baseline
00:29:09.580
should be female, specific, born female, not doping. And then everybody else can go into the open
1.00
00:29:16.820
category. And, and, and, and it's, that operates on the principle of absence of competitive,
00:29:22.460
competitive advantage. So whenever you add a new person to a category in sport, the one thing they
00:29:28.860
cannot bring with them is a competitive advantage. So like, you know, if you have a sprinter suddenly
00:29:34.520
join, like even the men's team, but then he has a fantastic new running shoe, which has been
00:29:38.880
happening lately, or like a distance runner, brand new running shoe that nobody else has.
00:29:43.760
Well, then, you know, there needs to be a rule about that, because that person brings something
00:29:48.120
extra special, which is a competitive advantage above what everybody else has access to. So
00:29:55.040
if we're saying, there's this new kind of person called a trans person, and they're trying to come
00:30:01.320
into a category, we need to critically ask, is there physically a competitive advantage? And if there is,
00:30:07.560
they need to go stay out of that category and go to the one where they don't bring the competitive
00:30:12.620
advantage. It's just logic. And when anybody joining the men in the open category, they're
00:30:18.460
not going to be bringing to the men a competitive advantage. So it actually is, you can maximize
00:30:24.800
access, and it's full inclusivity, because everybody gets to compete, but you just compete
00:30:35.180
Well, Linda, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. And I want
00:30:40.380
to thank you for your level headed approach to all of this, because there's so much emotion injected
00:30:45.740
into this. And you, you know, you just present the facts and the science of it all. And I really
00:30:53.860
Thank you so much. And good luck with the book. It's been a real blessing to a mom like me with a
00:30:58.940
daughter in contact sports. Well, tell her good luck. And thank you very much for having me and
00:31:04.140
have a great summer, everybody. We can get through this.
00:31:17.280
If you're a mom like me with a daughter in contact sports, Linda and Barbara's new book is an absolute
00:31:23.920
must read. It'll scare you, but it'll give you hope for the future. And again, you can get
00:31:29.940
Linda blade and Barbara Kay's brand new book at unsporting.com. The book again is unsporting
00:31:36.900
how trans activism and science denial are destroying sport. Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
0.68
00:31:43.740
Thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see everybody back here or, you know, wherever I am next week.
00:31:49.620
And remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.