Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 868 ｜ A Biologist Explains Sex ｜ Guest： Dr. Colin Wright (Part One)

00:00:01.000 What is sex? Is it chromosomes? Gametes? What does this mean? Is it different than gender?

00:00:09.300 Why does any of this even matter? We've got an evolutionary biologist here today with us,

00:00:15.360 Dr. Colin Wright, who is going to explain all of this science to us like we are five. This is

00:00:21.860 part one of a two-part conversation that I will be having with Dr. Wright. He's also an atheist.

00:00:27.600 So in the second part of our conversation, we are going to talk a little bit about

00:00:31.580 atheism versus Christianity, where morality comes from, why the conversation about fairness and

00:00:37.240 privacy and safety for women and sports really matters morally from our differing perspectives.

00:00:44.100 And so I think you're going to love these two conversations. This episode is brought to you

00:00:47.560 by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to goodranchers.com. Use code Allie at checkout. That's

00:00:52.280 goodranchers.com, code Allie.

00:00:57.600 Dr. Wright, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Before we get started on this

00:01:08.500 conversation, if you could just tell those who may not know who you are and what you do.

00:01:14.160 Yeah. So thanks for having me on. So my name is Colin Wright. I'm an evolutionary biologist.

00:01:20.100 I'm also a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. I write and speak mainly on issues of biological sex,

00:01:27.280 which might sound weird until you realize that there's a large swath of society that's currently

00:01:32.840 denying the reality of there being two sexes. They think sex is a social construct. Maybe it's 1.00

00:01:38.920 a spectrum. Maybe there's more than two sexes. And this has a lot of implications in society. And so

00:01:44.640 I'm sort of just trying to bring more sanity to this debate, trying to just explain the basic biology

00:01:52.020 technology out there to make sure that if we're going to be making rules and laws and policy based

00:01:58.860 on biology, that it will at least get the biology right. So that's sort of what I'm doing. I used to

00:02:03.800 be an academic evolutionary biologist and actually sort of got run out of the academy for making these

00:02:09.900 basic claims like there's only two sexes and it's immutable. And so now I've sort of dedicated my 0.77

00:02:15.940 time now to, I guess, pushing back against this large social societal delusion, I would say about

00:02:24.340 biology. Yeah. So you graduated, you received your PhD in evolutionary biology from UC Santa Barbara in

00:02:30.740 2018. Now in 2018, I know that definitely a lot of this madness was out there, although I don't think

00:02:37.180 it was quite as prevalent and prominent as it is today. So when you were in school for evolutionary

00:02:43.580 biology, were y'all already talking about and debating this issue of, well, is what is sex?

00:02:49.560 What is gender? Is sex a spectrum? Or was this kind of new to you over the past few years?

00:02:56.040 It was fairly new, like in my direct field, because I studied sort of evolutionary behavioral

00:03:01.860 ecology. So animal behavior, I studied social insects. And a lot of these, you know, the sex

00:03:07.900 differences, it's just taken as a granted because some of the biggest sex differences you see in nature

00:03:11.740 are those that are related to biological sex. So my field, or at least my close colleagues,

00:03:16.960 we were just so far past this debate of whether sex was real, we were just already, you know,

00:03:21.720 that's a given, we're doing other stuff at the frontier of science. Assuming all that is true

00:03:26.960 and robust, which it is, it was maybe in around 2015, 16, when I first started seeing some of these

00:03:33.140 narratives about sex being a social construct, maybe there's five sexes. And so I kind of just tracked

00:03:39.800 it and noticed it was there, but I treated it kind of like I treated young earth, or sorry,

00:03:44.600 like, like, like flat earthism or something like that, where it's just like, that's crazy. That has

00:03:49.080 no chance of taking over society, because I just, I can't imagine it becoming, you know, this,

00:03:55.920 this viral belief, because it's so departed from reality. And then it wasn't until nature published

00:04:02.840 an article in, I think 2015, that was called the sex spectrum, which said that scientists think that

00:04:07.580 sex is more complicated than two sexes. And then it was really the hoax studies that James Lindsay,

00:04:12.520 Helen Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian did, where they called out a lot of this stuff and really

00:04:16.300 just sort of exposed some of these fields that are promoting these ideas for the frauds that they are.

00:04:21.860 So I just started speaking up about that. And in 2018, is when I first first started speaking up

00:04:26.300 about it and publicly. Yeah. And I wonder why you did because there were obviously a lot of people

00:04:33.000 receiving their PhD in evolutionary biology at the same time as you, a lot of your professors who

00:04:39.020 knew the same things that you knew, right? It's not like you had any kind of special knowledge about

00:04:44.120 sex that those around you didn't have. But I'm sure you saw a lot of people didn't say anything,

00:04:49.320 or maybe they even pretended to entertain this idea that sex is a spectrum. What kind of motivated

00:04:54.240 you to say, nope, I can't just sit back and be silent about this?

00:05:01.260 That's a good question. And I think a lot of it has to do with the reason I got into science in

00:05:05.540 the first place. You know, I wanted to be an evolutionary biologist because I thought it is

00:05:10.280 sort of this rigorous way to address a lot of questions about who we are as a species. You know,

00:05:14.940 it's sort of a philosophically robust field where you can get real answers about, you know, where we

00:05:20.100 came from, where we're potentially going, what is the basis for the behaviors that we see in people,

00:05:25.860 what explains this diversity, what explains our tribalism. You know, all this stuff can be looked

00:05:30.060 through in an evolutionary framework. And I initially got into this field because I thought

00:05:36.640 that being an academic biologist was the place that we could have these robust, lively conversations

00:05:42.600 about truth. And if I were to say something that was incorrect, you know, the response is going to be,

00:05:50.100 another counter argument based on reason and evidence. But when I started talking about this

00:05:55.560 issue, that was definitely not the case. It wasn't, you're wrong. And here's reason X, Y,

00:05:59.860 and Z was you're wrong. And you're a bigot, you're a transphobia, all of this stuff.

00:06:03.240 And then coupled with that, this, I was being increasingly required to, you know, I was applying

00:06:08.280 to jobs at this time, tenure track positions, and I was being increasingly required to fill out these

00:06:12.580 DEI statements. So not only was I being forced to sort of say certain things that I didn't agree

00:06:19.780 with, but I was also being forced to not say things that I knew were true. And this was just

00:06:25.580 the opposite of why I got into science in the first place. And to be a science, I want to say

00:06:29.580 true things about biology. That's what it means to be a biologist. And so academia just didn't seem

00:06:35.060 like it was no, it was no longer the right fit for me. If I can't speak freely about biology as a

00:06:40.440 biologist, then what's the point in being a biologist in the academy anymore?

00:06:44.620 And had you considered yourself politically active at all? I'm sure at this point,

00:06:49.840 you didn't really consider it even like a political issue. But were you ever involved

00:06:54.000 in politics or the so-called culture wars up to this point?

00:06:59.580 I wasn't throughout all of grad school. You know, when I went to grad school, I used to have

00:07:03.840 a blog beforehand where I kind of talked about the creationism, evolution, intelligent design

00:07:08.860 debates. But to me, that wasn't really political. I mean, there were some political implications,

00:07:13.040 but it was always an empirical issue for me. And it wasn't like a main reason I voted one way or

00:07:19.620 the other. When I went to grad school, I was mainly just putting my head down trying to get my PhD at

00:07:25.580 the time when focused on my academic work and writing technical papers. So I largely stopped

00:07:30.480 even talking about sort of these, I guess what you could maybe call it a cultural type of debate

00:07:35.740 and just focused on my research. And it wasn't until I realized that, you know, why am I studying

00:07:42.500 these really esoteric topics about the social behavior, personality of wasps and spiders and ants

00:07:48.000 when half the kids in my class that I'm teaching don't even know what a male and a female is.

00:07:53.760 And so I just sort of felt like I needed to look back and repair, you know, the bridge behind me

00:07:59.180 that so many scientists before me had constructed because it was just crumbling. And so it was hard

00:08:05.360 to focus on sort of this, the frontier minutiae when so many big aspects, foundational principles

00:08:11.300 were being eroded behind me.

00:08:12.800 So obviously I'm a Christian and you're an atheist. And so we disagree about how we all came about,

00:08:32.080 but can, is it even possible to teach evolutionary biology without the reality of XX and XY?

00:08:42.800 So, no, I mean, I think it's, you need, if you're going to teach about biology, if you're

00:08:51.360 going to teach about the biology of sex, what makes people males and females, especially if you're

00:08:55.360 talking about mammals, you'd absolutely need to talk about chromosomes because they are what

00:09:01.180 determines an individual's sex. Now, an important distinction here is there's a difference between

00:09:06.860 what determines the sex of an organism versus what defines the sex of an organism. So in

00:09:12.620 developmental biology, when we talk about sex determination and that humans and mammals

00:09:17.140 have chromosomal sex determination, this just means that genes on certain chromosomes are what

00:09:24.340 trigger us to develop into males and females in utero while we're developing. But some other

00:09:29.760 species do this differently, like alligators and a lot of other reptiles, they use temperature

00:09:33.960 at which they're incubated that determines what sort of pathway they develop down and become a male

00:09:40.260 or female. So while we might say that chromosomes in humans determine our sex, you know, the sex of

00:09:47.140 any organism across the entire animal kingdom and plant kingdoms, regardless of how their sex is

00:09:53.780 determined, it's always going to be defined based on the sort of the type of gamete, either sperm or

00:09:59.720 ova, that their reproductive anatomy has been sort of organized around to produce. So that might be a lot to

00:10:07.520 chew on. Yeah. But that's why I asked you to come on. Now, I'm hoping that you can kind of break it all

00:10:14.660 down for us like we're five, in the words of Michael Scott, because I'm not a scientist. Most people,

00:10:21.680 I'm guessing, who are listening to this, watching this, are not scientists. But we understand that this

00:10:27.420 is a biological argument that must be made. It's important to be made, whether you are an atheist or

00:10:34.100 a Christian. Obviously, Christians, we have a high view of the body. We have a high view of sex. We have a high

00:10:39.660 view of biology. And so I really do think that everyone should understand this from a biological

00:10:45.440 perspective. You wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal, an opinion piece. A biologist explains why

00:10:53.120 sex is binary. Everyone remembers when the Supreme Court justice nominee at that point, Ketanji Brown

00:10:58.900 Jackson, she was asked, can you say what a woman is? And she said, well, I'm not a biologist. Okay,

00:11:07.080 so Dr. Wright, you are a biologist. I know you kind of just did this, but break it down for us as if we

00:11:12.920 are like, okay, so you're teaching a bunch of elementary schoolers about what sex is. Start us

00:11:19.480 there. What is it? So sex, sort of taking a step back, is a form of reproduction, where two individuals

00:11:31.020 combine their genetic material in order to produce a new individual that is sort of genetically unique.

00:11:36.840 It's a genetic mixture of both the parents. Now, some organisms do this by connecting what they're

00:11:45.940 called gametes. So we have the two different types of reproductive sex cell that an individual can

00:11:53.940 create. In humans, we have sperm and ova. These are defined by the size of the gamete. So by definition,

00:12:01.400 the larger sex cell is defined as the ovum, or the egg, and the smaller sex cell is defined as the

00:12:08.560 sperm. Some species don't have different sized gametes. They're called isogamous. Okay, that

00:12:15.640 means they're just, there's no such thing as male or female in those species, because there's no such

00:12:20.700 thing as sperm or egg. They're just same sized gametes fused to create an offspring. Humans, mammals,

00:12:27.400 many other plants, we're what are called anisogamous. Okay, and the term isn't that important. All it really

00:12:34.280 means is, we reproduce by fusing two different sized gametes together, sperm and ova. Whether an organism

00:12:43.140 produces sperm or ova, that is what defines what sex they are. Okay, so males, by definition, produce sperm.

00:12:51.220 Females, by definition, are the individuals that produce ova. Because there is no intermediate 1.00

00:12:58.100 gamete between sperm and ova in any species, there are only two sexes that an individual can be.

00:13:05.460 Okay, unless we find this intermediate or third type of gamete that completely, you know, that people

00:13:10.980 can have the reproductive systems organized around to produce. Until then, there's only two sexes. 0.98

00:13:18.520 This is a stable reproductive strategy in the animal and plant kingdoms. It's evolved independently

00:13:25.600 many, many different times. And most importantly, humans, we're mammals. We have our sexes that are

00:13:35.840 split into two different organisms. Some organisms, like your common garden snail, for instance, can be

00:13:41.960 both male and female at the same time. They're what we call hermaphrodites. Humans are not like snails.

00:13:48.020 We have bodies that are either male or female. And this is something that is just genetically set

00:13:55.360 when you're, you know, developing in your embryo. And it's not something that you can change later

00:14:00.420 in life through just changing your secondary sex characteristics, like your breasts or your facial

00:14:05.580 hair, or deepening and making your voice higher. That's really it in a nutshell. That's why there's

00:14:13.220 only two sexes. And when, when someone like me says that sex is binary, what we're saying is that

00:14:18.040 there's only two sexes. Now people will bring up intersex conditions. Yeah. And while I think we need 1.00

00:14:24.640 to sort of leave the door open where some people could have conditions that are very complex, that are

00:14:30.900 a mixture, they have, you know, maybe some testicular tissue with some ovarian tissue, they have very

00:14:36.620 ambiguous genitalia, their cells, they could be mosaics to some degree of XX and XY. It may be the

00:14:44.320 fact that some individuals are sort of ambiguous in relation to sex. This doesn't mean they're a third

00:14:51.280 sex, because there is no third type of gamete that exists that they can read that they can be producing.

00:14:56.280 Um, but it's, but they're definitely not a third sex. So, uh, sex ambiguity is not a third sex.

00:15:03.400 So even with the existence of intersex conditions, this doesn't undermine the fact that sex itself is

00:15:10.260 binary. There's only two. Right. It is some kind of genetic anomaly, which really has nothing to do 0.71

00:15:16.540 with transgenderism. I've always thought that it was very unfair that these people who were born with 0.98

00:15:21.840 some kind of anomaly are included in LGBTQ, because it's not an identity that you're taking on. It's not

00:15:30.460 some kind of so-called orientation. And as you said, it doesn't prove that sex is not a binary. And you can

00:15:37.900 tell me if you think that this is a good metaphor. I've said just because there are some people born with

00:15:43.000 one leg doesn't mean that human beings aren't bipeds. It doesn't mean that we're not supposed to have

00:15:47.920 two legs. It doesn't mean that that's not the rule. Um, it just means that some people are born

00:15:53.100 with, if you want to call them imperfections or anomalies, whatever they are, it doesn't negate

00:15:58.180 the rule of binary sex. Yeah, I think that conveys an important point. Although I think, you know, 0.77

00:16:06.120 in terms of, if we're talking about legs, you know, someone can actually be three-legged,

00:16:10.700 whereas someone can't actually have a, be a third sex. Yeah. Um, an analogy I tend to use 1.00

00:16:16.500 is sort of, uh, that of a coin flip where we have, you know, the two faces of a coin heads

00:16:22.120 or tails, you know, those don't come in degrees. If you flip a coin, it's not, you can't say

00:16:26.720 that. Oh, it was 25% heads on that single flip. Um, so heads and tails don't come in

00:16:32.040 degrees, but there've been people who've done these types of studies. I think with a nickel,

00:16:36.180 one out of 6,000 flips could potentially land on its edge and the edge it's neither heads

00:16:42.800 nor tails. It's just sort of like this, oh, we need to reflip the coin. It's, it's this

00:16:46.980 undefined thing. It's, it's, it's neither, but neither heads nor tails isn't like another

00:16:53.020 face of the coin. Uh, if, if that makes sense, I think that's maybe a little more accurate

00:16:58.020 analogy, but, uh, um, it conveys the point I'm trying to make. And you make a really good point

00:17:15.280 in your wall street journal article. You say we're not seeing a surge of people born intersex. We are

00:17:21.060 seeing a surge of people identifying as the opposite sex, even though they're not intersex,

00:17:27.240 they don't actually have any confusing characteristics at all. That is the surge that

00:17:31.500 we're seeing. We're not seeing some growing trend of intersex people, but gender ideology,

00:17:37.940 you say seeks to portray sex is so incomprehensibly complex and multivariable that our traditional

00:17:44.560 practice of classifying people as simply male or females, grossly outdated and should be abandoned

00:17:49.720 for a revolutionary concept of gender identity are really abandoned for a revolutionary concept

00:17:55.440 of like sex fluidity. Because like, this is the argument that's made. I see you refuting this

00:18:00.120 all the time on Twitter. People will say, look at this species. See, they're more than male and

00:18:04.740 female or this mammal. They're really more than male and female. And they'll try to finagle it in some way

00:18:09.120 that is not actually scientifically accurate. Or they'll go back in history and say,

00:18:13.740 see, there was some kind of acknowledgement that there is a spectrum between male and female that just

00:18:18.760 can't be reduced to XX or XY. I saw George DeKai say that the other day, that science actually

00:18:24.860 proves that transgenderism, not the other day, I think it was like two years ago, but actually proves

00:18:30.640 that sex is some kind of spectrum. And yeah, you're right. They're just trying to make it more 0.97

00:18:36.600 complicated than it really is to basically, it's like a form of Gnosticism. It's like, we can't fully

00:18:42.180 know this like special knowledge that's out there. We need these transgender people to tell us what the 0.86

00:18:46.460 truth is. Yeah, it's, it's a really important point of their reliance on intersex conditions. 0.82

00:18:54.520 So there's this historian of science named Alice Drager, and she wrote in her book,

00:18:58.460 it was called hermaphrodites, the medical invention of sex. She, you know, it's, it's a well, 0.56

00:19:03.980 it's a well-written book, but she had a passage that says something like, you know, the, the existence

00:19:08.420 of the hermaphrodite, this is what she refers to as intersex people, not only calls into question the

00:19:13.700 sex of that individual hermaphrodite, but calls into question the stability of, of whether or not

00:19:20.120 everyone is male or female. And it, you know, it makes us all sort of unclassifiable to some degree.

00:19:26.720 Now that is just a complete fallacy. The suggestion that just because some individuals

00:19:31.020 have conditions that make them sort of ambiguous with respect to sex, therefore we're all to some

00:19:36.820 degree ambiguous with respect to sex. That is just a complete non sequitur. That is not true at all.

00:19:42.180 You can't extend the blur of a very small percentage of the population. We're talking one out of every

00:19:48.760 6,000, 5,000 people to, to the entire tapestry, the entire canvas and say that, oh, we're all just so

00:19:56.940 ambiguous or at least ambiguous enough where we need to just rely on people's self-report, you know,

00:20:01.420 we can't rely on doctors to, to get it right, you know, when an individual is born.

00:20:06.680 Um, and as I said in the piece, you know, we're not seeing a surge of people with intersex conditions.

00:20:11.940 We're seeing a surge of people who are unambiguously one sex identifying as the opposite sex.

00:20:17.880 So if we could go back to the coin flip analogy, this would be like, this isn't something that landed

00:20:21.500 on the edge. This is a heads identifying as tails, tails identifying as heads, clear cases that are not

00:20:28.700 ambiguous. So I refer to this as the intersex trap. Whenever you're talking, having a debate, let's say about 1.00

00:20:34.660 males and female sports, uh, you want to maybe talk about Leah Thomas, because this is a perfect 1.00

00:20:40.760 example of a person who's unambiguously male playing against people who are unambiguously female,

00:20:46.540 but the activists will bring up someone like Castor Semenya, who's an intersex athlete. Um,

00:20:53.060 because they want you to, cause it's a little more difficult with Castor Semenya. And then they'll

00:20:56.700 say, well, what about this intersex condition? What about this one? And they want you to just sort of

00:21:00.700 be on your heels, trying to decide, you know, making calls on these really difficult intersex

00:21:05.480 conditions to distract you from making the easy calls on people like Leah Thomas, who is,

00:21:10.580 who's not intersex, who's just the heads identifying as tails. Um, so we just, we need to reject that 0.97

00:21:16.540 right in the beginning that transgenderism and being intersex are just, they couldn't be conceptually

00:21:22.940 more different. And we need to treat them as a different concepts. They are because activists gain a lot of,

00:21:28.340 uh, you know, it's the wedge when they keep them fused together, they pretend they're the one in the

00:21:32.520 same, or at least they're intrinsically tied together in some way that they're not.

00:21:36.540 Yeah. It's really, it kind of reminds me of when you see those, like I saw the, when Target had their

00:21:43.140 like pride display and they had a shirt that was supposed to be LGBTQ and one of the people that I

00:21:49.360 guess is a part of this community was a person in a wheelchair. I'm like, when did we start lumping in

00:21:54.940 people who can't walk with LGBTQ? And I mean, even including like the brown and blacks and how skin 0.99

00:22:01.400 color is a part of this. And I, I think that you're right. I think it's like collapsing all of the, um,

00:22:07.700 supposed victim categories, the ones that are actually like the identities that are actually innate, like your

00:22:14.060 skin color or your disability and ones like gender identity, which are actually chosen to just say, you know,

00:22:22.880 these are all people who are just being themselves and are different and we have to accept and celebrate

00:22:27.900 them. Um, I got in a debate the other day. It's very, very interesting person. And I, he kind of

00:22:35.400 conservative, a Christian. So, and he was, you know, he was from Texas and he was telling me about how his

00:22:42.260 parents like support Ted Cruz. So I'm just assuming that he is also kind of conservative too. But then he

00:22:47.620 said, you know, I'm politically independent. I've never voted Republican before, but I do, I'm pro-life.

00:22:54.220 And so I was like, this is, you know, this is really interesting. So I asked him, I said, what

00:22:57.200 issue do you think Democrats get more right than Republicans or conservatives do? And he said,

00:23:04.180 gender. And I was like, what? And he said, yes, I think that Democrats have it right when it comes to

00:23:12.200 the fluidity of gender. We talked about Leah Thomas and he brought up the examples that you're 0.98

00:23:17.060 talking about. Cause I said, okay, like you think a man should be able to compete against women. That's 0.99

00:23:20.580 not fair at all. We went into this whole debate and he lost, but he, he brought up, he said, well,

00:23:27.160 what do you do with someone who just happens to be a really good athlete who like say a man who's

00:23:33.760 competing against other men, but he's way taller, way bigger than them, has more testosterone.

00:23:39.440 Maybe he, maybe he has a greater anaerobic anaerobic capacity. He has greater lung capacity,

00:23:44.620 greater muscle mass, all of these things that we use to say, well, this is why men shouldn't be 0.96

00:23:48.860 able to compete against women. Sometimes those distinctions are also true within the sexes. 0.78

00:23:54.180 And so what are we really supposed to be distinguishing people by when really there is a

00:23:59.160 spectrum along both sexes of hormones and capacity and height and weight and all of those things.

00:24:04.760 I'm sure you've heard that. Like, what do you say to those kinds of people?

00:24:09.440 Yeah. So, I mean, sports is meant to be fair within certain classes, but within those classes,

00:24:16.820 you know, we're not saying that everyone who has any sort of advantage needs to be squashed in some

00:24:22.940 way. I mean, LeBron James is six foot eight and 250 pounds, complete athlete, uh, in the extreme,

00:24:30.900 you know, he can just jump over the heads of practically everyone. And that's just like,

00:24:34.740 is it unfair for LeBron James to be allowed to compete with people who aren't as genetically

00:24:39.880 gifted? Well, no, it's not unfair. Sports wants to find these people who are these anomalies who

00:24:46.580 are, who are just these, you know, crazy athletes who are just a cut above the rest. Um, but it's

00:24:51.740 within a certain class of being biologically male that we allow this variation to exist. You know,

00:24:56.920 we have, um, we could have boxing for instance, which we just say, you know, the best fighter

00:25:02.880 wins. Okay. Like it doesn't matter how much you weigh. Um, but then we would only be seeing,

00:25:07.640 you know, people who are 250 pounds and six foot eight boxing each other. And that wouldn't be fun.

00:25:13.020 We want to recognize that there's other aspects to being a fighter and skills and training that we

00:25:18.040 want to see. And so we make these things that are, uh, you know, these weight categories. So we can see,

00:25:23.580 you know, featherweights, uh, bantamweight, heavyweight, super heavyweight, all that stuff.

00:25:28.780 Um, because we, we realized that, you know, we, we don't just want to see one variable overtake

00:25:34.860 every other variable. Uh, and this is the same thing with sex. So sex isn't simply just, you know,

00:25:41.860 one single variable. It affects every variable in your entire body. It affects how tall you are,

00:25:47.200 how strong you are, uh, everything that we, that affects the way you perform. Um,

00:25:53.580 an important aspect of whether something is fair or not has to do with whether you would have that

00:26:01.000 advantage, um, otherwise. So for instance, if I were to start taking steroids and I joined

00:26:10.020 a power lifting competition, you know, next week or next month, I'm not a power lifter. So no matter

00:26:17.340 even if I'm, even if I'm juicing, I'm going to lose. Is the fact that I still, that I lose

00:26:22.940 to mean that it isn't unfair for me to take steroids? Well, no, it's still unfair because

00:26:27.400 no one else is taking steroids and I'm doing better than I would have otherwise. So the

00:26:32.620 same thing goes for sports that are segregated by sex. So Leah Thomas, it's unfair for Leah 1.00

00:26:37.880 Thomas to compete with females, uh, because Leah Thomas wouldn't have been as good otherwise 1.00

00:26:43.940 had they not gone through male puberty. Okay. So male puberty is really the variable that is

00:26:50.080 creating this unfair disparity that makes it so males shouldn't be allowed to compete in

00:26:54.020 female sports because no other female has access to this certain going through this process that 1.00

00:27:00.920 changes your body fundamentally in every way imaginable that makes you a better athlete.

00:27:06.540 Um, so this is why some States for instance, have policies where, you know, they'll actually

00:27:10.440 allow males to compete if they hadn't gone through male puberty, which, you know, is a issue of,

00:27:15.280 you know, are we encouraging puberty blockers, that type of thing. Um, but they're at least

00:27:19.180 getting at what gives them the unfair advantage. Like I could ride an e-bike in the Tour de France

00:27:24.480 and I'm probably still going to lose just because, you know, I, uh, people who are still naturally

00:27:29.060 better at, at me than I would be even on an e-bike, but it still wouldn't be fair for me to compete

00:27:34.180 on an e-bike because nobody else gets that boost and I wouldn't have been as good without the e-bike.

00:27:40.380 So I hope that makes some sense.

00:27:49.180 You do hear a lot that, okay, it's not unfair for these men to compete in female competitions 0.61

00:28:00.300 if they don't win. If they, you know, if they come in third place or they come in a hundredth

00:28:05.480 place, well, then it just proves that men are, you know, they're competitive against women,

00:28:11.360 that there's not really that big disparity there, but that's not true. I mean, they still

00:28:15.320 have the innate advantage of the testosterone that has been pulsing through their veins at

00:28:20.080 much higher levels since they went through puberty. And whether they're in a hundredth

00:28:25.020 place, third place, first place, there is a woman that they, uh, you know, basically 0.99

00:28:31.160 metaphorically or, uh, figuratively elbowed out of the way to get to that position. And

00:28:37.080 so some woman was disadvantaged. It might not have been all the women that were moved out 0.99

00:28:42.560 of the way, but some women were moved out of the way because this person has a biological 1.00

00:28:46.520 advantage. I remember learning a little bit about this, about just like testosterone and

00:28:50.940 how much it changes the body. And obviously there are differing levels of testosterone.

00:28:56.160 I think at birth, the differences in even our brains and how our brains develop in utero

00:29:01.620 is, can be based on our sex. Sex has a large part of how we develop and then testosterone levels.

00:29:07.940 And of course, correct me if I'm wrong in any of this, it kind of even out between boys and

00:29:11.800 girls when you're young. But then when you go through puberty, male testosterone just

00:29:17.280 shoots through the roof. And that is really what makes these huge changes in a male's body

00:29:22.680 that just are insurmountable for the female, right? 1.00

00:29:27.700 Yes, that's exactly right. I mean, there are high school boy athletes right now who are 15

00:29:32.840 years old, 16 years old, who can beat the women's world record in sprinting in every single category.

00:29:38.400 Yes.

00:29:38.580 I mean, that's just how big the disparity is. This isn't, you know, crapping on women athletes. 1.00

00:29:44.300 It's just saying that they have very different bodies and they're capable of very different

00:29:47.900 things within their own categories. You know, we wouldn't say that a, you know, bantamweight

00:29:54.100 boxer is any less of a good boxer or something because they're competing in a lesser weight

00:29:58.800 class. It's just, they're just different classes of bodies that we're trying to account for.

00:30:04.020 Um, so I think that's an important thing to keep in mind. And, you know, it's when you're playing,

00:30:09.740 you know, we see children a lot, as you mentioned, sort of play in co-ed leagues and stuff, but it's

00:30:13.860 not until you get to high school really where segregating by sex is really important. And then

00:30:18.920 especially when you get into the elite sports, because even though like some differences might

00:30:25.440 only be like, let's say that there's a 10% average difference in the population between sort of

00:30:30.500 the strength of males and females is greater than that. But even if we're only 10%, you

00:30:34.820 know, while that might not seem a lot when you're talking about just the most people you

00:30:38.500 see every day, when you're like looking at the top 0.1% athletes, uh, in any category,

00:30:45.400 it's going to be all men up in that category. There's going to be no women who are going to 0.99

00:30:49.760 be up there competing. So you have a league like the NBA for its existence or any other professional,

00:30:55.120 um, sports organization. Like the NBA, isn't the MNBA. It's not the men's basketball association.

00:31:01.940 There's no rule that's keeping females out of the league. It's just that there's no female who's 1.00

00:31:07.060 ever been able to possess the constellation of traits that has made them competitive in the NBA.

00:31:13.720 Um, and so that's just a really important to think about, you know, and if we're doing this at

00:31:17.480 the upper, you know, in the Olympics, yeah, there might not be that many trans women who are competing

00:31:22.180 in female sports. And so they might not always win, but if this trend keeps going along, then for 1.00

00:31:27.680 sure, you're going to have males that are going to be beating every single category because these

00:31:31.860 differences matter at the elite level. Yeah. And really, if all you have to do to be a woman is 0.98

00:31:37.640 to say you're a woman, then you're not even going to, eventually you're not even going to require

00:31:42.500 these people to take estrogen or make any kind of changes to their body whatsoever. If you're going

00:31:48.320 to be consistent in your ideology, actually that guy that I was arguing with the reason 0.96

00:31:52.820 why he lost, because he said something that was so silly. This is an Ivy league educated 0.69

00:31:57.120 guy. He said, he, I said, well, don't you think that there is probably a reason why sports have

00:32:02.900 been separated by sex? Like you don't think that's just random. He said, well, actually,

00:32:07.340 no, they haven't always been separated by sex. If you look at ancient Greece and ancient Greece,

00:32:12.300 they weren't separated by sex. Anyone could play. It's just that the women weren't competitive 1.00

00:32:17.820 against the men. And I said, yeah, why do you think that is? And of course he got all,

00:32:24.960 you know, befuddled and everything. And, um, but it's funny. I mean, a lot of these people,

00:32:30.780 and this is not a dumb person. A lot of these people who are smart in a lot of ways for ideal,

00:32:35.980 ideological reasons or convenience reasons or whatever, they just don't see the inconsistency

00:32:42.920 in their belief system. It's really wild. Yeah. There's an important, so in what you said there,

00:32:50.260 and it's something I've been trying to call people out on, it's like,

00:32:52.880 you don't need to care about female sports. Like this is a question anyone can have for themselves. 1.00

00:32:58.620 Like if your position is that we shouldn't have female sports because if they can't compete, 1.00

00:33:04.380 well, then they can't compete. And then, yeah, that's, that's fine. You know, the, to the best,

00:33:07.860 the best player wins. Like that's a position you can argue if you want to. I very much disagree with

00:33:13.600 that. I think we should have sex segregated sports. I think women and girls should have 0.94

00:33:17.120 the ability to, to win medals and succeed and have to strive to, to be able to compete and win.

00:33:22.280 Um, but that's, that's just my, my values. That's my opinion. Um, what I take issue with is people who

00:33:29.120 are pretending that not, they're not saying that they don't think women should have the right to

00:33:35.720 compete or that they don't, they don't want women's sports to exist. Instead, what they're saying is 0.95

00:33:40.180 they can't even care if they wanted to, because sex is a social construct. And what does it even 0.81

00:33:46.500 mean to be a woman anyway? Like that's what they're saying, but I wish they would just be honest and

00:33:55.420 say that they don't think women should have the right to compete rather than pretend that women 0.75

00:33:59.080 aren't an actual category that can be protected. So, um, yeah, that's, that's the insidiousness of the

00:34:04.660 ideology. It gives them a shield to, to sort of mask what they're actually believe.

00:34:09.760 And I just want to, we've cited this study before. I just want to reiterate what you're saying,

00:34:14.100 the importance of the differences in sex. Duke University, um, released a report in 2017. I'm

00:34:19.500 sure that you've, I'm sure that you've seen it or sorry, it wasn't 2017. It was a few years ago.

00:34:24.980 And they said this, if you know, sport, you know, there is, you know, this beyond a reasonable doubt,

00:34:29.500 there is an average 10 to 12% performance gap between elite males and elite females. The gap

00:34:35.620 is smaller between elite females and non elite males, but it's still insurmountable. And that's

00:34:41.340 ultimately what matters. They found that in 2017, Tori Bowie, she's an Olympic champion

00:34:47.160 in the a hundred meter dash three time Olympic medalist that her lifetime record in a hundred 0.93

00:34:53.160 meter dash was beaten by men and boys over 15,000 times, including high school boys.

00:34:58.900 The same is true for Alison Felix, another Olympic champion. Her 400 meter dash record was beaten

00:35:04.780 over 15,000 times by men and boys in 2017. So that means, you know, uh, even 18 and under the times

00:35:15.580 of the fastest high school boys, according to the study were faster than the times of female Olympic

00:35:21.600 athletes. So the best of the best high school boys, 15, 14, 16 years old are faster than the fastest

00:35:30.960 women, adult Olympic sprinting athletes. Like that is the differentiator and kudos to Duke 1.00

00:35:38.280 university for saying, it says it's not because of better resources. It's not because of a different

00:35:43.160 identity. It is because boys have an androgenized body because the girls have ovaries. Men have 0.90

00:35:51.100 testes because of the testosterone that is produced by each sex. That is why this gap is totally

00:35:58.480 insurmountable, even between elite females in high school boys. And then you probably remember that 0.99

00:36:03.920 story of the U S women's soccer team. They lost to the UC Dallas under 15 boys team. It's wild.

00:36:13.060 Yeah, it's, it is insurmountable. And we just seem to be having, or at least some people seem to have

00:36:18.700 this amnesia that testosterone is a performance enhancing drug. And that's why you're not allowed

00:36:23.260 to take exogenous testosterone. When you play sports, it's considered doping. It's illegal to do

00:36:27.260 why? Because it gives you a performance, a major performance advantage. And essentially every male

00:36:33.520 is just carrying around this factory of, of performance enhancing drugs that is not available

00:36:38.840 to every female in the population. So this, this really isn't controversial. We all know this is true. 0.99

00:36:44.280 We have, that's why all the PED policies have been set in place, uh, for many, many decades,

00:36:49.640 as far as I can remember. So, um, it's just, we need to get back to common sense on this stuff.

00:36:55.020 Everyone knows this stuff. Uh, this is real.

00:36:57.560 All right, guys, like I said, that was part one of a two part conversation. Make sure you tune in to

00:37:14.700 the second part with Dr. Wright, where we get into atheism versus Christianity. Why any of this

00:37:20.960 matters if God and a transcendent morality doesn't exist? How is anything ever really

00:37:27.540 just or fair or right or wrong or true or false outside of a giver and a determiner of all of these

00:37:33.940 things? Dr. Wright is going to give us his perspective. I'll give mine on the next episode

00:37:39.060 together. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll be back soon.

00:37:46.080 Good morning, related gals and related bros. This is Ron Simmons. And as many of you know,

00:37:52.120 I am Allie's dad. Allie is on maternity leave and we have decided that I will periodically bring you

00:38:01.540 some news updates that keeps you current on things that are going on. Of course, Allie's podcast will

00:38:07.860 go on four times a week and she's got some great interviews that she's done. Uh, you're going to

00:38:13.200 really, really enjoy them. And, but I'm going to come on just every so often and kind of bring you a

00:38:18.100 little bit of a news update. Uh, as you know, I've, if you've listened to me with Allie a couple of

00:38:23.440 times, I've got an investment background. So sometimes we'll talk about the economy and what

00:38:27.780 have you, but also served in the Texas legislature, uh, for three terms. And so we, obviously I'm

00:38:34.340 interested in politics and we'll talk about that. And then finally, I'm an author. I released a book

00:38:39.440 a few months ago called life lessons from the little red wagon. And we might touch on a few of those

00:38:45.440 as we go forth. Uh, but today what I want to do is I want to talk a little bit about our favorite

00:38:52.240 doctor, Dr. Fauci. Well, if you pay attention to Dr. Fauci, or if you got tired of paying attention

00:39:01.060 to him, like I did, uh, may not have thought about him lately, but if you paid attention to him,

00:39:06.580 Newsweek, the magazine Newsweek just reported the latest squirm by our favorite doctor, the infamous

00:39:13.660 Dr. Anthony Fauci. In an interview with CNN over the weekend, he agreed that mask, wearing a mask

00:39:22.700 has very little effect on the overall spread of COVID, but he claims that they work individually.

00:39:31.040 Now, if they don't help the overall spread, but they work individually, how do those things go

00:39:37.000 together? Seems like an oxymoron to me, but when he's pushed on a study by the University of Oxford

00:39:42.740 Oxford proving that there's no evidence that they work, he squirmed admitting they really don't have

00:39:49.760 an overall effect on the spread of the pandemic. When you're talking about the effect on the epidemic

00:39:56.900 or the pandemic as a whole, the data are less strong. But when you talk about as an individual

00:40:02.780 basis of someone protecting themselves or protecting themselves from spreading it to others, there's no

00:40:09.560 doubt that there are many studies that show that there is an advantage. When you took at the broad

00:40:14.240 population level, like the Cochran study, the data are less firm with regard to the effect on the overall

00:40:21.460 pandemic. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about an individual's effect on their own

00:40:28.020 safety. That's a bit different than the broad population level.

00:40:31.440 Dr. Fauci, would you please just go into retirement with the what really amounts to be the millions of dollars

00:40:40.700 that we have paid you and will pay you during your retirement? Just please, please go away.

00:40:47.580 Now, on to politics. So here we are the day after Labor Day or the week after Labor Day, and the official

00:40:55.820 political campaign season kicks off for the 2024 presidential election. President Biden, who will

00:41:04.860 be the Democrat nominee unless he decides not to run or can't run, who knows what the answer is to that.

00:41:11.960 He still claims he's going to, so we'll take him at his word on that, which a little bit of a joke in

00:41:17.300 there, but we'll do it. Well, if you ever go to a website that follows politics, 538 is a good one to

00:41:24.940 follow. It's run by a guy named Nate Silver, and they do a pretty good job of being down the middle.

00:41:30.780 They're a little left-leaning, but it's a very interesting website and have a lot of data in

00:41:36.480 there. And there'll be a link on the Alley show page today, which will show that to you. But in

00:41:43.920 looking at that website, after the first hundred days in office, Biden had a 54% approval rating.

00:41:51.480 Now, since August of 2021, or May of 2021, that has continued to go down. And really, since August

00:42:01.800 of 21 and the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, where he left many of our friends there that helped us

00:42:08.120 during that war to go under the Taliban and their very strict and draconian methods, we left them back

00:42:19.060 there. His approval rating has been hovering around 40%, which is very poor. In fact, there's only two

00:42:28.940 other presidents that have been close to that range after this long being in office, after 955 days,

00:42:39.020 for example, it's only Jimmy Carter, who was only at 29% after the same length of time that Biden's been in

00:42:47.260 office. And then President Trump was about similar to where Biden is. So it's very interesting as to how this

00:42:55.740 worked out. In fact, Wall Street Journal has something called, there was an article over the weekend on

00:43:02.880 Bidenomics. And for inflation, which all of us have felt, if just go to the gas pump or look at your

00:43:10.260 grocery prices, that only 39% of the people in America believe that President Biden's done a good

00:43:19.560 job on fighting inflation. 63% have opposed that. And that's not good news. If you're trying to run for

00:43:28.460 reelection, I can tell you that. But even a bigger challenge that he has, and this was done by 0.97

00:43:33.740 website Morning Consult, shows that in key, what we would call swing states, like a Wisconsin, a Michigan,

00:43:43.460 Pennsylvania, Nevada, those are states that tend to be 50-50 Republican, Democrat.

00:43:50.920 President Biden is really hurting. In fact, his approval rating, which is what we call the

00:43:57.060 difference between the approval and the disapproval rating, how that's changed over time, is in

00:44:04.140 Wisconsin down 13%, Michigan down 14%, Pennsylvania down 15%, Nevada down 14%. Even in his own home state

00:44:14.960 of Delaware, his approval rating over the last, since he's been in office, is down 3%. So that's

00:44:23.560 really incredible. It's just overall, though, for independence even. Now, this is even more

00:44:32.280 interesting because Democrats, you know, are going to support him. But independence, where you have to

00:44:36.460 have, if you're either, if you're the Republican nominee or the Democrat nominee, you probably control

00:44:41.580 40% or so of the vote that's going to vote that way no matter what. But the 20%, the independence,

00:44:48.480 it's kind of, you don't know where they're going to go. This is the number that most of us focus on.

00:44:54.080 And for example, in states like Colorado, 53% of the independents approved Biden in 2021. Now in 2023,

00:45:04.920 60% disapprove of him. In Arizona, 65% of the independents disapprove of the job he's doing.

00:45:12.880 And in Michigan, 65% of the independents disapprove of the job he's doing. So it doesn't look good for

00:45:21.040 President Biden. But of course, the challenge is, is that former President Trump has challenges

00:45:29.700 as well. When it comes to a general election, he and President Biden run neck and neck. And you can get

00:45:38.580 this information off the 538 website as well. Now let's take a couple more minutes and talk about

00:45:44.260 the Republican primary, which is the one that will be the most contested. As of yesterday, the

00:45:51.720 former President Donald Trump has got 51%. Governor Ron DeSantis is at 15%. And Nikki Haley is at 6%.

00:46:03.500 And I have found a website that I think you'll really like on US Presidential Election News. It's just

00:46:12.400 very good and looks to be mainly information, not opinion. And it's USPresidentialElectionNews.com.

00:46:20.340 And you remember that the presidential election is not a national election. And even the primaries

00:46:31.260 aren't national primaries, they're individual state primaries. So it really matters winning states.

00:46:37.440 And in primaries, both Republican and Democrat, they're delegates. So really, when you're voting,

00:46:43.620 you're voting for the delegates of your state that go to your state's Republican or Democrat convention.

00:46:50.820 And then they cast their vote for whomever it is that the majority has told them to vote for

00:46:58.940 in their particular state. The first primary or caucus, as they call it in Iowa, is January the 15th

00:47:10.120 of 2024. The next one is January 23rd. So it's coming up really right around the corner.

00:47:15.280 And you'll want to be paying attention. South Carolina is February the 24th for Republicans,

00:47:21.380 February the 3rd for Democrats, and Nevada is February the 6th. But the big

00:47:26.360 prize is on Super Tuesday, which is March the 5th. And that will be there's 10 or 15 states that will be

00:47:34.920 going to the primary election polls that day and voting. And that's where it'll mainly be determined.

00:47:44.660 I think unless the race gets a lot tighter, President Trump could wrap it up by that day.

00:47:51.460 But there's a lot that can happen between now and then. So anyway, I'm going to talk to you more

00:47:55.540 about politics as we go on. But I'm going to run out of time here. And before I run out of time,

00:48:02.100 I want to bring up a couple of other things. Every time I go on here, I want to talk a little bit

00:48:06.840 about taking the next uncomfortable step. And the next uncomfortable step is something I talk about

00:48:12.520 in my book, Life Lessons from the Little Red Wagon. And today's next uncomfortable step,

00:48:17.960 and hopefully it's not uncomfortable, but it can be, is make sure to remember to date your spouse.

00:48:25.440 Sometimes when we get married and have kids and get in our careers, we just get so busy and we forget

00:48:32.080 to date our spouse. So think about that and make sure that you're dating your spouse. It doesn't mean

00:48:39.240 you have to take, go out to a big fancy dinner, even have to go anywhere. Just remember to treat your

00:48:45.500 spouse like you treated them when they were your boyfriend or girlfriend. And I think that'll help

00:48:51.860 all of our marriages. And I can be better at that, certainly myself. Last thing I want to say is our

00:48:57.180 good friends that are also Blaze podcast, the Robertsons that have the podcast Unashamed. There's a movie

00:49:04.920 coming out at the end of September called The Blind. And it's the life story of Phil Robertson.

00:49:12.820 And it's going to be out September 29th. But you can go online right now and buy your tickets at

00:49:19.800 theblindmovie.com. It's very important that we all go do that so that we can get more distribution

00:49:26.380 out into the cinemas because it's an independent film. And I know that it's going to be something

00:49:32.080 that you'll enjoy because there'll be lots of humor in there, lots of heartwarming stories,

00:49:37.800 and an incredible story of redemption. Thank you for your time today. Make sure that you continue

00:49:44.740 to listen to Allie's podcast and that you also follow her on all her social media channels.

00:49:52.400 Have a great day and a great rest of the week.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - September 06, 2023

Ep 868 ｜ A Biologist Explains Sex ｜ Guest： Dr. Colin Wright (Part One)

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