SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ Olympic Heptathlete and Kinesiologist Linda Blade： Women's Sports Under Attack By Radical Gender Activists
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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
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Oh hey guys, it's Sheila Gunn-Reed and you're listening to a free audio-only recording of
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my weekly Wednesday night show, Aptly, called The Gunn Show.
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However, you know what, this is the internet so you can watch or listen whenever you feel
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That's the beauty of not being tethered to terrestrial TV or radio.
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You can just basically watch or listen whenever you want at your own convenience.
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Now, tonight my guest is someone whom I have been dying to talk to because I have a daughter
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She co-authored the new book, Unsporting, How Trans Activism and Science Denial Are Destroying
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She co-authored this book with everybody's favorite Jewish grandma, Barbara Kay.
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And now please enjoy this free audio-only version of my show.
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Are we watching the slow demise of women's sports?
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I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
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At this summer's Olympics, a genetic male will likely take home a gold in women's weightlifting.
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It's not bigoted or intolerant to simply state the biological reality that human bodies,
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which have experienced male testosterone-inspired puberty, carry more muscle mass, have greater
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bone density, they have larger hearts inside their chests, and that leads to stronger cardiovascular
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It's the reason female-born athletes who take testosterone were once considered guilty
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Testosterone is a performance-enhancing substance.
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And to deny it by allowing transgender, female-identifying competitors to compete with or against biological
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women is to rob these female athletes of their work, their accomplishments, and future opportunities
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But it's happening right now in mixed martial arts, in cycling, weightlifting, even contact
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Male-born competitors are stealing accolades and endangering the women they are competing
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But if you say these things, you risk being cancelled, fired, or losing funding for your
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You're damned if you do speak up, and, well, damned if you don't.
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That's why my guest tonight is so, so very brave.
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As a career athlete and coach, Olympian and kinesiologist Linda Blade saw exactly what was
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happening to women's sports, and she saw what was coming on the horizon, and she had to speak
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up, regardless of the consequences to her, before it was too late.
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So she co-authored the new book, Unsporting, How Trans Activism and Science Denial Are Destroying
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Linda joins me in an interview we recorded yesterday morning to discuss the future of women's sport,
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if any, and to offer a way forward in which all athletes are able to compete on a level
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So joining me now from BC, Linda's taking the time to, while she's on vacation to talk with
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And Linda, I wanted to have you on the show for, well, for me, for personal reasons.
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But I think what are personal reasons for me are the same reasons that a lot of other
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mothers really appreciate your brand new book that you co-authored with Barbara Kaye.
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It's called Unsporting, How Trans Activism and Science Denial Are Destroying Sports.
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And I'm proud to say that we at Rebel News are the publishers of your book.
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Now, Linda, for people who don't know you, I know who you are, and you've sort of been on
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But for people who don't know who you are, tell us a little bit about your background.
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Yes, I was on Team Canada as a track and field athlete in the event called Heptathlon, which
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Then I went to university, got my PhD in sports sciences, kinesiology, then became a coach.
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And I've coached athletes in about 17 different sports across the board on their fundamental
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movement skills and helping them to become better athletes.
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I've even coached some Olympic gold medalists, Jamie Saleh and David Peltier in the figure
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And so by 2014, I became the elected president of Athletics Alberta, which is the Alberta Track
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And so since that time, I've been entering this whole bewildering world of policy, sport
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I guess that moves us into why did you write this book?
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And I guess, you know, even just voicing an opinion on these subjects can end up with
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Your career's basically over for a lot of people who go against the narrative.
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But you took a step beyond just saying, hey, I've got some issues with this.
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Well, it's precisely because of the canceling that I wrote this book.
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I wrote this book precisely because when I raised the issue that I was concerned about
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male bodies entering women's sports for safety reasons, obviously, and contact sports, and
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And, you know, it's that strange feeling around the table that you're not supposed to be saying
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And when somebody, you know, when I get that feeling, I realize something's terribly wrong,
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And I just committed to speaking out as much as I could before it was too late.
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Because really, if the rules of sport change to the point where somebody could be even in
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prison by saying the wrong thing about males in sport, I need to say this quickly before
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Now, what were some of the responses when you first started raising concerns about, as
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Because you don't come at this at all from really an activist viewpoint whatsoever.
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You come at this from an issue of fairness and science based on your own science background.
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Your background is in how the human body works.
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And so you have a very unique perspective on this, but yet you were treated as something
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less than an expert when you raised these, I guess, dissenting opinions.
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Well, because I am president of an association, I realized that it's our governing, my governance
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colleagues who are in governance, sport governance, that if we don't set the right policy, it's
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going to not just ruin sport for women and girls.
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It's going to ruin sport for everybody because imagine if there's a parent or volunteer, an
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official, most of our people at ground level, Sheila, are just volunteers.
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And if we don't protect them and give them the right to distinguish what the rules are,
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distinguish between male and female on the field or on the track, we put them at risk
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and then they feel uncomfortable and our volunteer class could just walk away and we would actually
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have no capacity to conduct sport at ground level, which is going to hurt the boys and
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And so I just felt like this was actually an existential threat to sport.
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And if I get canceled, you know, Sheila, I've had my turn.
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So I immediately saw that I'm of the age, you know, I'm almost six years of age.
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If they cancel me now, I guess that's the price.
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It's not a big price for me to pay, at least in terms of my career.
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And I just felt like I was in a really pretty good position to make this argument without
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a huge deal of threat to my, you know, my life and my career.
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I guess that's really the question I was asking myself.
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And so around those policymaking tables, what was some of the pushback that you were hearing?
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First of all, the activist pushback is these aren't men.
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They're really females inside a male body.
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You know, I mean, it may be true that somebody really honestly, fervently believes that they
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have grown up with a male body with all the advantages and really secretly inside they
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Like, it's not our business what somebody believes about themselves.
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We don't classify sport on the basis of belief.
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Like, otherwise, we would say, okay, if you're this religion, you compete in that category,
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another religion, or if you actually have, you know, a political party, you go over there
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and this other political party, you race over here.
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We do not compete on the basis of our ideologies.
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I mean, the beauty of sport is that, you know, we can put that baggage aside.
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But so that's like the one thing that I was getting at, that it's not, even if you're
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really a female inside, I mean, it's not my business.
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Second thing is, the people around the table were frightened.
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I could tell from the looks on their faces that they were ignoring me and shunning me
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It might cause, you know, our sport to be, you know, somehow demeaned or maligned by activists.
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Maybe we might not be in line with what the government wants us to think.
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So there was a lot of fear, I think, around the table.
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Most of my colleagues were males, like at the top of the sport decision-making process.
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And, you know, I have noticed, I can't help but notice that a lot of times, because they're
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men, they just don't get the threat that it feels to be a woman and feel this, like, what
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happens if a man comes into our, you know, safe space and our single sex space.
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And I mean, I'm not, you know, I've never been an activist.
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I just realized that there was something terribly wrong.
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And they were afraid, afraid when people are afraid, there's something going on.
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Yeah, I suppose they were afraid of being canceled.
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But I mean, it's so much bigger than that, you know, and I think they were afraid that
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If we don't get funding for our sports in Canada, we're really not.
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So I'm saying an existential threat from the purpose, from the point of policy and ground
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And they're thinking as existential threat from the top, from the minister, from, you know,
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where they get their funding, the quiet cancellation that happens when you just don't get the grant.
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And I don't, I can't blame them actually, if you're feeling like that, but I feel like you
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have to balance those threats and protect sport as best we can.
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Now, I want to talk to you a little bit about the science of it all, because a lot of the
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pushback that we hear from the activists on the other side, because truly that's what it
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is activism on the other side, whereas, you know, you take a, we're just trying to protect.
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You take a fairness viewpoint of it, but on the other side, they do try to argue the science
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and they say, well, for example, uh, with the case of like Fallon Fox, um, they will argue that
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even though, uh, Fox has gone through male puberty carries male muscle muscle mass has male bone
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density, the fact that this person is now taking estrogen to suppress, uh, their male hormone
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hormones, that, that somehow equals the playing field.
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Well, um, that goes straight to the, uh, into the, um, responsibility of the international
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Um, because in 2015, the international Olympic committee bought the lie.
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In fact, perpetrated the lie that if a male, a grown adult male athlete takes, you know,
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reduces their testosterone level, that that somehow brings that the level, the playing
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field level to the female level, which is just absolutely not true.
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The IOC themselves, um, have for years expected solid scientific evidence for any new policy they
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But on this case, immediately, they just went with the, with the culture and with the activists
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and, and without studying anything just said, yeah, you take hormones.
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But in fact, there have been 13 scientific studies, uh, that measure hormone, like the
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performance levels and muscle muscle strength in males before they transition.
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And then after they take the hormone like reduction, uh, uh, hormone replacement therapy, and in
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every single one of those cases, the advantage that they have, the male advantage and strength
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and many other variables has not diminished, has not diminished appreciably.
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There is no evidence that it brings the male body into even level playing field with the
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And we're not, listen, Sheila, female bodies are not just male minus the hormones, right?
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I mean, you cannot, you cannot reduce, even if you take like change the substances in your
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blood, it's not going to make your heart smaller.
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It's not going to diminish the size of your limbs, like your limb length and your height.
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I mean, you're not going to change the entire structure to look like a female.
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The first lie is that hormones level the playing field.
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The second, second lie, Sheila, was that the IOC literally said, the medical commission
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said, well, there's not going to really be that many transitioning.
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Just let a few into women's sports, you know, it's not going to make a big difference.
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And we are seeing now that that's absolutely not true because society is championing this
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some, for some reason, this movement has become popular.
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A lot of males are self-identifying into women's sports.
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And if you just take just even the two high school runners from Connecticut, between the
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two of them for three years competing in the female high school division, they took 15 state
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records and they caused about 85 girls to miss opportunities.
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And if you have like Laurel Hubbard, for example, and now in the Olympics and women's weightlifting
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was the New Zealand male who transitioned at 35 and now in the Olympics.
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If just think about it, no matter what medal he gets, he, she, whatever medal he gets, then
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So it does affect every single person in that field.
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And it means that some woman in the world didn't get to compete because it's not an endless,
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you know, unlimited number in the Olympic category.
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It means some woman in the world somewhere didn't get to compete because Laurel Hubbard
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Now, I guess too, on the flip side of that, the, many of these professional sports bodies
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and amateur sports bodies, they used to recognize testosterone as a performance enhancing drug.
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And yet now we're allowing people who've experienced 35 years of testosterone coursing through their
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It's preposterous and it's, it's actually outrageous.
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And the one governing body in Canada, the Canadian center for ethics and sports, CCES,
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their only mandate, Sheila, the only mandate after the Ben Johnson affair and the cheating
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in the eighties, their only mandate was to make sure that Canadians don't dope.
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They are the prime association group in Canada, promoting male bodies, self-identifying into
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women's sports, male bodies that have had full, like 20 plus years of, if you, if you think
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there are females in a male body, then they have had 20 years of testosterone doping and
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advantages built up that are now suddenly supposed to be like, we're just supposed to say, welcome,
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I guess, if you're going to say that doping is cheating, then they've actually had 20 years
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of cheating that they're, that we're just supposed to pretend like that somehow, even one year,
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in fact, the CCES position is they shouldn't be forced to take hormones or surgery or anything
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at all. In fact, CCES says they can be a male for one season in one sport and female for another
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season in another sport. And then they can change their mind because, you know, gender is fluid. So
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they can go back and forth between like, they could be a male hockey player one season, and then
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they could be like a female sprinter the next season. And like, where does this end? This is
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No, that's the thing, like the these bodies, their one job is to make the playing field fair.
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And this is anything but fair for female sports. I want to ask you, where are the feminists in all
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of this? Because I noticed that you are, whether it's purposefully or otherwise, using a little bit
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of modern feminist language when you say women's only spaces. And you know what, this is where I agree
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with the more radical of the modern feminists. I do believe there should be women's only spaces.
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And they are largely silent on this, or pushing this. And I don't understand. I don't understand
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Well, there's two kinds of feminists that you're going to run into on this issue.
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There's the intersectional feminists who believe in, you know, like third or fourth wave feminism,
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where they want to believe that men and women are equal. And so sports maybe is a platform to show
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that we can just kind of all be equal and share the same space. And then there's the more radical
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feminists, which means it's not extreme feminists. By that, the radical feminist means the root of
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feminism, radical being the root. And those more like wave two, like the World War Two, after World War
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Two, we believed in equal pay for equal work, that women should be allowed in the workspace and in
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public spaces, in government. So, so I guess, you know, I had to study all that, just because I mean,
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I was a coach, and I didn't even, I didn't even understand what was going on. I'm just coaching all
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my life and in the trenches with my head down. And then when this hit me, I thought, well, okay,
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why aren't some women supporting me? And why are others supporting me? And so it just, I think it turns
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out that there's the more modern feminists want to believe this, this, it's a fairy tale, actually,
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that there's no difference between male bodies and female bodies. And then the more traditional
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feminists, which are the radical feminists, believe that, you know, we have to have distinct
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recognition, have sex, single sex spaces, whether it's in prisons, in women's shelters, like, you can't
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put a male rapist into a women's prison, I'm sorry, he's going to end up raping people. That's the way
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he does it, right. And so yet our government through Bill C16 is justifying even that. So I'm just
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saying that there's just, there's a purpose for having single space, sex spaces for females to be
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safe, for life to be fair. And for us to have parity in society and have equal standing and have security
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to thrive as women. And with all the skills that we have, we bring skill sets, men bring skill sets.
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I mean, I love to death, my father, my husband, my son, like, I love the men in my life, I'm not
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against them. But I also realize they're men, and I'm a woman, and there's differences. And let's
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celebrate that. Like, why do we have to pretend like we're just one big blob of a humanity? I mean,
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not a single person in this country, I dare you to find a single person in this country, that came
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about by any other way than the joining of two gametes, a sperm and egg, male and female, and then
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they made another person. Find me the person that came about any other way than that. And I will maybe
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change my mind. But until then, we are biological beings. Now you just touched on Bill C16. And
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there is some pretty serious threats to people like yourself who speak out against this radical,
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I will call it radical gender, gender ideology, because I think that's really what it is.
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Do you feel like that sort of thing is looming over the head of people like you that could serve
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So when, when I look back at what the politicians were saying, Sheila, during the Bill C16 debate,
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they made it very clear that there was a difference between biological sex and gender identity. And
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let's face it, our charter, National Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian Charter of Rights and
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Freedoms, does emphasize that we can't be discriminated on the basis of our sex, which is biology. And then
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these newer bills were about gender expression and gender identity. And so I not a single politician at that
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time that I was looking at in Parliament, was talking about the fact that gender should completely replace
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biological sex, they were saying these two things were being held in balance. So when you say like somebody
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needs to like the law says you can discriminate on the basis of gender identity or gender
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expression, expression, fine. But not bullying somebody does not mean that you include the wrong
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sex body in a space that's going to be harmful to the other sex. These two things have to be held
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in balance. And this is what laws are, they're trying to find the balance. So when they passed that law,
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I honestly didn't think that there was a single politician who thought, oh, that'd be a great idea,
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put a rapist in a female prison. No, no. But I think what's happening is the middle management and
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the and the wokesters and everybody in the middle is interpreting it that way. Yeah. So like, for
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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
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and wants to run a race, it's still run with the guys. We don't we have already resolved that issue.
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We have no bullying policy in sport. We will not bully. We will respect the gender expression,
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gender identity, but but we will also stick to the sex based rules. This is easy to implement. It's not
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like we are somehow breaking the law. We are holding the law in balance. You know, and it's it's funny,
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because even these days to watch your child play sports, you have to go through an anti bullying course.
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So it's it's not like we're we're completely against anti bullying. Most of us are forced to
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participate in these anti bullying programs. Even if you've never bullied anybody in your life,
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you still have to do it. So I mean, it's not like sport doesn't take bullying seriously. But this is
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not the same. This is really not the same. Right. I wanted to ask you, I guess, if we don't rein this
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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
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it in, what are the consequences for women's sport going forward? Like, what's the timeline? How
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how long do we have left before there's no such thing as women's sports? I say we have about five
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to 10 years, and then women's sports will not exist because and let's face it, I'm going to say that
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it's going to hurt women and trans identifying women. So trans males who identify as women. Because
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I think about it this way, Sheila, once the whole final, let's fit the entire podium in every
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competition is there's enough males now who self identified into women's sports, that the real
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female athletes who are born female, don't have a chance, they will walk away quietly.
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Because I know this, a lot of females would rather not complain, they just walk away disappear.
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So they will self exclude from the sport category. What's going to be left at that point is a bunch of
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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
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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
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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.
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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.