The Trans Athletes Debate, From All Angles： High School Girls Suing, Medical Experts, and More ｜ Ep. 101
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Summary
Chelsea Mitchell, Alana Smith, and Kristen Wagner from the Alliance Defending Freedom join host Meghan Kelly to discuss the trans athletes who filed a recent lawsuit to stop the trans girls from competing in high school sports in Connecticut.
Transcript
00:00:08.560
Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
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your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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to stop the trans girls from running in sports,
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scientific experts on both sides of the debate,
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shut down by frankly bullying and name calling and
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shaming and silencing women in particular who are
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raising concerns and I just I don't think that we
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can we can allow that because these laws affect even
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more than sports women's shelters are impacted by
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them walker rooms dorm rooms as I talked about professors
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are impacted by them health care providers it's just a
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much bigger issue that we need to we need to talk about but
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in the meantime ensuring fair competition is something
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that title line promises and we want to hold the
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government's feet to the fire on it what about the fact
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they never do well I wouldn't say no none um you know
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that's been the the interesting side of this is actually
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the more I would say radical feminists do support us and
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have been some of our best allies um you know the women's
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liberation front save women sports has also come in and
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so those are women that you know personally as a more
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conservative woman I wouldn't agree with them on a lot
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of issues but man are we united on the danger that gender
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identity ideology presents to women because it it is
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significant and in multiple areas well you have people like
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martina navratirola who you know was an icon in the sports
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community and the tennis community for blazing a trail for
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the lgbtq community coming out you know back before it was all
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that fashionable and um you know being a great example and she
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sort of came out and said this is insane are you really going
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to let a trans woman compete against again it's cis women is
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the but you know or you could just say biological women um in
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like professional tennis because they'll get killed the the
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biological women will get killed and there are lots of
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examples of this there was there was um a case a long time
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ago not that long but like where serena and venus took up uh
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somebody offered to compete against them saying um they
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said we'll play anybody who's outside the top 200 in the
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the male tennis world and the guy who was 203rd said okay
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i challenge accepted let's go he killed them it was crushing
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they couldn't they couldn't it was like me playing against serena
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that's how it went um so you know it's it's quite obvious
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that she's right right that if this really elevates a meaningful
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way to professional athletics the women can kiss their titles
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and their money and their endorsements goodbye now that
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hasn't yet happened but that's the risk she got dismissed
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as a transphobe and spent sort of a long time trying to say
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i'm not i'm not please let me make it up to you but still she
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does have a group trying to say can we talk reasonably about
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this can we be sensitive to people who are trans and still protect
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biological girls and and the trans community is still dismissing her group
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as transphobic awful can't talk about it so let me ask you
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as a person of reason what is the solution because i feel for
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these trans girls i really do they already have it
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rough right when you're trans i mean you get you got a lot to deal with
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where should they run you know like how how should they compete
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in a way that would be fair to all involved i think the solution is to
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ensure that when it comes to sports we we don't
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we don't separate sports because of feelings we don't separate sports
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um you know because of ideology or politics we separate them because of
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is that we can have co-ed teams and schools may want to move to having some
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co-ed teams in certain sports where there are not safety issues
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no amount of testosterone suppressants that can change the physical advantages
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and the safety implications you know we've talked about um rugby for
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example they're refusing to have those who identify
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as female and who are male compete at all because they recognize that
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so i mean i think that the safety issues are significant
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and the testosterone suppressants don't do anything really to minimize those
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issues in addition well are there are there safety issues i want to i want to
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get your next point too forgive me but are there safety issues in track and field
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where they're not you know it's not hand-to-hand combat like wrestling on a
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mat or like rugby well that's where i actually was going was uh when you look at
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even track for example the ncaa division two athlete cc tefler her performance
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times actually improved in several track and field events after a year of cross-sex
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hormones so you know the again the idea that it
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takes away or makes it makes a level playing field is just not accurate
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but megan i want to go back to the safety issues too because
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so many of the sports it does matter and if you think we've had
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cases or instances involving volleyball where girls have gotten concussions
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obviously there's wrestling and weight lifting there's swimming
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there's cycling we've had instances my own daughter had instances in fast pitch
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and in soccer where a male is playing a catcher or a goalie
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these are the real instances that are happening across the country
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and i think it's on us to ensure that girls have that equal opportunity but
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they're also safe when they're playing sports or as safe as we can make them
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hmm that's interesting that's that's difficult then it gets really tricky
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um yeah when you have to worry about natural physical advantages that make men
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stronger certainly post puberty i just feel like the case is very clear
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but we're gonna ask the docs um and you have to worry about like fast pitch that's a
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good point i don't i feel like can't there be a way i don't know let me ask
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chelsea and a lot of this like what do you girls think is what should we do with
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trans athletes trans girls it's never the trans boy who's the issue it's so it's
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99.99 of the cases the issue is when it's a biological male transitioning to
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female and wanting to play with with the girls what what should happen to them
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where how do we deal with them chelsea um there's a place for everyone in sports
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um it just is where is it most fair and um the most important thing is to protect
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the biological female category um you know we're not saying that these
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transgender athletes can't participate in sports we just want to protect the
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female category so that females have the same opportunities that their male
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counterparts do would it work to create i mean i realize there's not that many
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trans athletes but it would it work to create alas is alana
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like a different category you know there's the boys league there's the girls
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league and then there's the trans league i think that that would be a more fair
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solution than the solution that we have right now which is to allow biological
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males to compete in a biological female category would it work alana if you let
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the trans girls compete against you in the races and the and the other you know
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related track and field events and then put an asterisk behind their time or their
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win so that you trying to get a scholarship into college would say yes i came in
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third i lost to two trans athletes just so they know and they can make a decision
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about what that means about your time personally for me i think that that would
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still like affect my mentality while i'm racing i would still feel like even
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though their times aren't necessarily going against mine that i would still feel
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like it's unfair and i would still like see those athletes in front of me and kind of
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realize how far ahead i mean that they are and i would still feel like i'm in
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like the same solution i mean the same situation as i was before plus it doesn't
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give you that feeling of crossing the finish line first you know and like being the
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winner i mean at least this is what i imagine that feeling is like i never did
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it but it must be wonderful is it wonderful yeah it's really great i don't know it's
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like it's such a difficult situation and i do feel like i mean you girls are now just
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recently out of high school are you alana in high school is are you at a high school
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that is as encouraging of people to consider whether they're trans as we have here in new
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york city like at our schools they're really it's almost like they're begging you to consider
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it as an option available to you well i go to a very diverse school in my school and
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it's very big my school is almost like 4 000 kids so it's very diverse and like a lot of
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different people there so i think that um you definitely are encouraged to like be yourself
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and express yourself how you'd like to the point i'm getting at is do you think we're going to see
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more see the trans community grow i do think so and especially in sports because since the policy
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that we have now is unfair and allows biological males to compete in the female category i think that
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if a change isn't made then definitely more transgender athletes will start to pop up in
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the female category i'll end it with you chelsea rounding back to the administration that now just
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simply says about girls like you basically deal with it because trans rights are human rights and
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you're on the wrong side what do you say i would say that you know women's opportunities
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matter and i think they have been kind of dismissing um this issue by saying trans women are women
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um and they're just ignoring the biological um reality um that trans women have a advantage over
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biological women and it's really frustrating to hear them dismiss our stories um and say that
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you know there's no issue and that we haven't been harmed because we have and um you know i hope that
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our lawsuit can um kind of write what has been wronged well i admire you both of you girls i admire
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your moms too i'm like it's pretty strong and uh as i said a lot of it was your mom's piece in the
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post where i was like this is the first thing i saw that i was like whoa wait what she really brought
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it home um so good luck and you know what win or lose i think this whole process of standing up for
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what you believe in and challenging something you think is unfair is a worthwhile process for you and
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and kristin good for you too because i know the crazy people at the southern poverty law center have
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have deemed adf a hate group they've deemed everybody a hate group ben carson is a hate group
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according to them um but you guys keep fighting and you often win it's disputes that you know sort of
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these lawyers on the other side who always want to be seen as in the sort of correct uh pc position
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would never take so good for you guys i'm glad you're there and i'm glad you're doing such good
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work thanks megan all the best we'll stay following it coming up we're going to bring in our experts
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can puberty blockers and or cross-sex hormones undo the natural physical advantages of one sex over
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another we're going to get into it in a very thoughtful fascinating way i always know i'm
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onto something when steve krakauer our executive producer sends me a little note in the middle of
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the interview this is fascinating and i got one on this next segment so you're going to love it and
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speaking of steve krakauer he's here because he's always he's always lurking he's always listening
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it's literally his job and um it does sound creepy so it was fascinating was it not
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i i know it really was i've never heard a conversation like that before it was timely
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and important and and respectful and it was kind of perfect it's great it's like the conversation
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our show was born to have but this is not why i bring you in i bring you in for a feature we hear
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of the megan kelly show called asked and answered where we try to answer some of our listeners
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questions they can be about the news they can be about life they can be about anything so what do we
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have today yeah megan this was this was an interesting one you know we talk about the apple reviews a lot
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but we haven't actually asked a question that we got in the apple reviews before but we wanted to
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today because we thought it was a really interesting one this is from kaylin uh in the apple reviews who
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says first of all that you have been a role model for her uh and she appreciates your strength and
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intellect while maintaining your beauty and femininity i feel like a lot of women think to be empowered is
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to be extremely masculine she says she said she read settle for more and about your divorce before you
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met doug her question is this she says she's in a relationship with a very sweet extremely kind-hearted
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man she finds him physically attractive as well as his kindness attractive but intellectually they
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do not sync up she says she's really intellectually stimulated when she's with him in fact she finds
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herself frustrated when she attempts to engage in a political or philosophical discussion and so she
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wants to know is it crazy and careless of me that she wants a partner that can meet with her
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intellectually and she says it's a capricious to give up a safe and sweet man in pursuit of a
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relationship that is intellectually stimulating and challenging oh kaylin thank you for that that is
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a sweet like i'm honored that you would even ask me to weigh in on that here's what i think it comes
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down to your values like when you think of your top values as a woman and what you want in a man and
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this can work the other way around too what are they because they're different for everybody not
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everybody would put intellectual match in the top five some people would put that at number nine
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right and they would put good partner good potential father funny good earner whatever it is
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higher on the list so let's say your guy has got those top five i just mentioned and intellectual
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firepower is farther down the list and and it's not really one of your top top priorities then i think
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you've got your answer you don't need that everybody makes sacrifices nobody notwithstanding
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we see in the movies nobody's got all 10 of the top 10 nobody's got all 20 of the top 20 we make
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compromises right like what's really important to me like this one's a deal breaker this one's not
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um and so you've gotta figure out where that ranks if it's number one he's probably gotta go
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like i don't think we can compromise on number one like if you look at the list of top 10 things you
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want to meet and the person's missing three six and 10 i think you could you could make that
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relationship work you know what i mean but if he's missing if the three he's missing are one two and
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three you gotta move on that's not gonna work long haul and i i just think like one of the things
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that drew me to doug for sure yes he's very good looking um but was the fact that i think he's
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smarter than i am uh and i love that i don't feel intimidated by that i think it's a turn-on
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so and and that kind of turn-on can last until we're old and gray right like if you marry somebody
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for looks forget it they don't hold just look around um unless you're some you know like weird
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person like paulina portzkova or uh who's the other one who's constantly posting the bikini
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photos of herself elizabeth hurley anyway normally the looks go and but i don't know so you got to
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figure that out if if intellectual stimulation is what you really want if that's in your top
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you know three or five and you're not getting it it may be a tough come to jesus moment for you
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i will say that as somebody for whom that was definitely a requirement it's wonderful to have
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it's wonderful to sit across the dinner table from somebody and be able to have enlightened
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interesting conversation from which you learn right you're not always the information giver
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you're the information getter and who whose base of knowledge is totally different from your own
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right like doug's not in news doug is an author his love is literature and history and he's just so
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much better informed than i am on so many other subjects so he learns from me and i learn from him
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and that's what's really exciting right like that's what gets things like fiery i mean that's
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maybe that's just saying we're a couple of geeks and uh that's what turns us on but i think beauty
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fades uh i think funny is forever so that's a great thing to have um but it sounds to me like you
01:07:21.160
already know the answer like you already know what you want and you probably wouldn't have fired
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this in to somebody like me having read my book if you didn't want me to say it's important right
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we tend to seek out the advice from the people we know are going to give us the answers we want
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so probably this whole exercise has already answered your question even before i uttered a word
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and maybe my words have confirmed it for you um but do some soul searching and get really honest
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about what the long term looks like for you and the person you're with now because it's a lot harder
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once you've really committed it's a lot harder to undo once you've walked down the aisle i really
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believe the true moment you get married is when you mail out the invitations that is the true moment
01:08:07.180
you are married very few people feel comfortable undoing it after that happens they should feel
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comfortable you should not go through with it just because you mail the invitations um but it's so much
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easier to undo now and and just another story on this i remember talking to my lady amy my therapist
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when i was um getting divorced from dan and saying you know like well i don't want to say this because
01:08:30.220
it's mean i don't say that one because it's mean and she's the one who helped me realize saying your
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true feelings is not mean just because the other person won't like them right meanness is saying
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something with the intention of being cruel and landing a blow that's that's communicating
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in your case i this isn't working for me because i don't think we're intellectually matched it's not
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to say you're smarter he's dumber it's like we're not matched we're not interested in the same stuff
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we don't fire off in the same way that's not mean that's honest and some things can be fixed and some
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things cannot right if it's like you need to read the newspaper more because we have to be able to talk
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to the about the news okay somebody could do something about that but like we're not built the same
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intellectually and i think you should be more interested in life than you are well i don't
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know that that's fixable anyway um i hope that's helpful in some way i love that you read the book
01:09:22.500
i love that you took the time to share something so personal with me and took the risk of sharing it
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with our listeners too and hopefully this has been marginally helpful uh for you and maybe somebody
01:09:31.920
else out there lots of love caitlin good luck with it and if you too would like an appointment
01:09:35.820
with dr megan um you can just email in steve uh yes questions uh at devil may care media.com or
01:09:47.060
apparently you could just ask him in the apple reviews yeah i'm still reading the apple reviews
01:09:50.820
i love reading the apple reviews okay up next we are going to get to our experts on this issue and
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these two have done their homework let me tell you who's coming uh we're going to have dr gregory brown
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who's a tenured professor of exercise science at the university of nebraska kearney
01:10:06.440
doctor of philosophy from iowa state majored in health and human performance emphasis in biological
01:10:11.440
bases of physical activity very reasonable guy he's got real hesitations about whether you can undo
01:10:17.260
the advantages of biology also joining us is joanna harper joanna harper is a transgender woman who is a
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medical physicist and actually an advisor to the international olympic committee competitive runner too
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so she's got first-hand experience with some of this and these two joanna and greg have
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an awesome debate which i promise you promise you you will love it is next right after this
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joanna let me start with you as i understand it there's a big difference between biological males
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who compete who want to compete in the girls leagues before puberty and who do puberty blockers
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and cross-sex hormones without ever having gone through puberty versus post-puberty transitioners
01:11:16.460
is that correct it is correct although i would uh strongly prefer that transgender women not be referred
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to as biological males um there is a strong indication that gender identity is at least largely if not
01:11:32.060
entirely biological and hence transgender women are never entirely biologically male so please don't use
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that term yeah i got it i do my uh my plaintiffs in the first half of this show and their lawyer were
01:11:47.220
trying to find a way of distinguishing between the cis girls and the trans girls um and it's really tough
01:11:55.400
i mean the language you can't be entirely sensitive without spending four sentences each time you say it
01:12:01.300
uh so i'm i mean no offense and i've done plenty of segments where you know the language is precise it's a
01:12:07.380
short form just meant to encapsulate for the audience so let's just go back so there's a difference
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between people who transition pre-puberty and post-puberty in terms of their physical advantages
01:12:19.440
over cis girls you agree absolutely okay and and you agree with that too greg i would say we really
01:12:27.000
don't know because there's just not been much research on long-term effects of the puberty blocking
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drugs so we don't know how it affects the growth and development of a male individual who's transitioning
01:12:41.400
to female if they start at age 8 or 10 or 11 or whatnot so your your position is there may not
01:12:48.280
be as big a difference uh for somebody who prior to puberty um somebody again biological male or
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somebody who is identified male at birth that there's not that big a difference potentially even
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if that person starts on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones before they ever hit puberty you think
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it's still problematic for that person to run against girls or compete against girls i i do especially
01:13:11.980
given just the lack of science so we don't know what the effects are of those puberty blocking drugs
01:13:18.020
all right so then let's let's just start with post-puberty and see how that shakes out right
01:13:25.180
joanna is do you think it's true that that most boys most children who are identified male at birth
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have a natural physical advantage over most girls post-puberty without any outside intervention
01:13:38.700
yes okay so do you think it's problematic when somebody who's like 15 and has reached puberty
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decides i'm gonna now run against the cis girls without doing anything without taking any hormones
01:13:54.520
i i would suggest it depends on on what level they're competing at most uh children at that age or
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adolescents at that age are going out for teams largely because their friends are on the team
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uh and you know they're they they may want to win at the time of the competition but they're not
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really that serious about sports and for those people i i don't think it's problematic but there are
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are certainly high functioning athletes and any uh any trans girl who hasn't started hormone therapy
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and who is a successful athlete in in the men or the boys competition uh prior to to transitioning
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and all she does is social transition yes then then i would say that's problematic so how do we address
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that in your and i should and i should say that you you are trans yourself and you are somebody who's
01:14:48.160
studied this and so you've you've lived this in addition and then you're an athlete so you've lived
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that lived this in addition to studying it so what should happen for that child who who you just
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described to make it fair again if we're talking about 15 um adolescents go through puberty at very
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different rates and they also uh become athletes at very different rates but but if we're talking
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about somebody who has gone through puberty and who is a successful athlete then it's probably
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appropriate to require that person to be on hormone therapy before uh competing in uh in
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in girls events and with a 15 year old that would probably mean uh gnrh agonist or so-called puberty
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blockers because most clinics most states won't allow uh transgender children to go on cross-sex
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hormone therapy prior to age 16 okay so it depends what the hormone therapy depends on the age of the
01:15:51.760
child so if it's mid-puberty or pre-puberty then they should have to show that they're on a puberty
01:15:57.540
blocker um in in my opinion yes yes yeah yeah that's fine i mean i know you studied this and
01:16:03.880
you've researched a lot of other studies so your opinion is why we have your expertise on this um
01:16:10.320
okay and so when they turn 16 should we be building into the law you know because the lawyer for the
01:16:19.000
girls was saying we shouldn't be incentivizing trans girls to take cross-sex hormones by by sort of
01:16:27.140
requiring that you know for them to compete she thinks that for a different reason than you think
01:16:31.100
that but what do you think of that right if we say and you stay on the puberty blockers and then at some
01:16:37.160
point you have to go on cross-sex hormones that creates an incentive for them to do it that maybe they
01:16:42.840
maybe they don't want they don't want to do that yet yeah and and that is is absolutely uh a problem
01:16:50.020
and and i understand that you know at 16 this is a huge step to take um but the difference in long-term
01:16:59.220
effects between puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones is is enormous uh and so there are some
01:17:06.600
very serious implications and and they should be considered very strongly and suggesting that uh
01:17:14.100
you know you have to go on these cross-sex hormones at 16 in order to play sports is it is problematic
01:17:21.040
in in in some ways but i think it should be recognized that there really are no ideal solutions to this and
01:17:29.780
and yeah um uh again if you're asking my opinion for for high functioning uh uh athletes in at age 16
01:17:40.360
yes this should be required do you know what happens to somebody i mean there must be a point at which
01:17:46.740
the doctor says you can no longer stay on puberty blockers right because what happens to a to a
01:17:53.180
someone who's identified male at birth who isn't sure who thinks they might be a trans girl um but decides
01:17:59.380
to do puberty blockers like how long can that continue before they're forced to come off of them
01:18:05.400
there are are um older men uh who take this the same drug for prostate cancer and sometimes they stay on
01:18:16.280
them for several years um but it's certainly less than ideal to have an adolescent on these drugs you
01:18:23.300
know for a long-term period of time um it's uncertain exactly you know what sort of side effects that there
01:18:33.320
might be um and so you know from a therapeutic point it's probably more ideal to to transition this child
01:18:44.200
to cross-sex hormone therapy but again you know if the child isn't ready uh if the parents aren't ready
01:18:52.640
uh you know there are a number of other factors to consider besides what's medically ideal
01:18:59.840
hmm it's so complicated it's so complicated and it's something that we really haven't dealt with
01:19:06.900
we're just figuring this out on the fly as we go um which is you know led to objections and hurt
01:19:12.920
feelings and stress on both sides i get that um all right so let's talk about because i really think
01:19:20.020
that the the pre-pubescent child is a that's a toughie that is a toughie um so let's talk about
01:19:26.320
the post-pubescent child the child the the child identified male at birth who decides that you know
01:19:32.620
they think that they are trans and they want to live their life as a female and um now they want to
01:19:39.940
compete in girl sports because that's pretty much i think what we're dealing with in the connecticut
01:19:43.840
legal case um why let me ask you greg why after being on hormones because the the lawsuit against
01:19:51.660
them says that they just they they just like quickly decided to transition and and sort of
01:19:57.460
jumped into uh female sports and their their side the eslu says that's not true they'd been living their
01:20:03.480
lives as females for a while prior and it wasn't spur of the moment that they had really been wrestling
01:20:09.480
with it for a long time um why shouldn't we let children like that compete in girl sports well
01:20:16.820
the bottom line is there are large differences in athletic performance between boys and girls you
01:20:25.400
know if we look at it about 11 years old the difference may be three to five percent but then as
01:20:30.800
we get into those later teenage years as puberty has had more effect we see differences of 10 percent
01:20:37.040
where boys are 10 percent faster than girls um they're 20 30 40 50 percent stronger in terms of
01:20:44.140
throwing or weight lifting or those types of things and so if they have not done anything to suppress that
01:20:50.660
then they are males competing in female sports irregardless of what their identity is because they
01:20:58.040
are still biologically males they've done nothing to alter their biology but don't most of these sports
01:21:03.740
organizations don't most of these sports organizations and greg require them to have been on some sort of
01:21:08.600
hormone you know suppression therapy or something it varies a lot from state to state whether it does
01:21:15.600
require that them to engage in some type of hormone suppression or cross-sex hormone use and it varies a lot
01:21:22.380
from state to state and it varies a lot on whether there's actually any enforcement of that whether they do
01:21:28.660
testing on it or whether it is just purely a written statement it could be from a parent it could be from a
01:21:34.720
doctor depending on the state and what the laws are and so it gets really complicated as far as that goes
01:21:40.180
so in some states you can you can just say i am a girl i identify as female and race away and you don't have
01:21:48.720
to prove any time on hormones i think that's actually what happened in the connecticut cases but in some states
01:21:54.600
that's possible yes yes in some states that's possible
01:21:58.660
okay so but what about the in the states where you do have to show some sort of hormone treatment
01:22:03.760
let's say for a year right that uh whether it's a 16 year old or a college athlete that that decides i
01:22:10.800
want to compete as a girl i i am a girl and i'm going to go on all the you know the cross-sex hormones
01:22:17.140
to try to make that as close to reality or an actual reality as as possible well if we look at the
01:22:24.960
research that's been published on this so far we have a paper from 2018 that looked at female or
01:22:33.060
sorry male to female athletes and after 10 months their strength was not reduced they still had the
01:22:42.060
hand grip strength that they had before they started with the transition and so a 16 or 17 year old boy
01:22:49.120
is stronger just the average 16 or 17 year old boy is going to be stronger than 95 of 16 or 17 year old
01:22:56.260
girls and even stronger than most adult women and so they would still have that advantage and strength
01:23:01.360
if we look at this in adults you know 20 year old 30 year old adults a year of cross-sex hormones two
01:23:09.580
years of cross-sex hormones the strength is only reduced by four to maybe nine percent and these are
01:23:16.820
individuals that are going to be anywhere from 30 to 60 percent stronger than women and so they'll
01:23:22.600
still have an advantage even with the suppression of testosterone and the administration of estrogens
01:23:28.420
what do you make of that joanna well first of all i believe that greg misspeaks when he talks
01:23:34.780
about transgender athletes all of these studies were uh these studies from 2018 and there were
01:23:41.240
more than one were on non-athletic transgender people and there is a substantial difference
01:23:48.020
between studying athletes and studying non-athletes certainly if we are talking about cisgender people
01:23:54.640
we would never rely on a study of non-athletes to make any decision about athletes in particular
01:24:03.340
when we talk about strength uh several of these studies found that there is a substantial uh
01:24:11.240
strength deficit that these uh trans women had compared to cisgender men even before starting
01:24:18.540
hormone therapy and and that's important to explain that the transgender women will have
01:24:24.840
the same levels of testosterone but there are sociological reasons why trans women uh would rather
01:24:33.440
starve themselves to look like models than to put on muscle to to be athletes and so this is the
01:24:40.460
population that these studies are looking at and and you know um i did a review of these studies
01:24:46.980
among other people here at loughborough university and and there's some useful data that can be gathered
01:24:52.720
from these studies but it's very very important to understand that that these are studies of
01:24:58.880
non-athletes and have very limited uh things to say about athletes one thing i will mention
01:25:06.940
uh and i absolutely agree with greg that um that that given the reductions involved it is going to be
01:25:15.960
absolutely true that trans women will have strength advantages over cis women even after hormone
01:25:23.640
therapy uh another reviewer of these studies uh hilton and lundberg suggested that uh that trans women
01:25:31.680
had a 17 percent grip strength advantage uh even after hormone therapy uh which sounds impressive
01:25:38.560
until you compare it to the 57 percent grip strength advantage that cis men have over cis women
01:25:44.400
so it's less than a third of the the strength advantage remains
01:25:49.160
what about that greg i mean that's pretty honest she's she's saying yes there there would be some
01:25:55.360
advantages notwithstanding hormone therapy and so on but i think the next piece of that argument so far as
01:26:01.560
i've read is life is full of unfairness not everything can be perfectly equal right like i was saying with
01:26:07.600
our girls earlier you know if you have two parents who are super tall you're going to have longer legs
01:26:12.400
you probably do better on you know the long jump who knows but you can't ever shoot for complete
01:26:18.600
perfection when it comes to equality on the on the playing field well you know that's that is a very
01:26:24.060
true statement but if we look at the difference between say a gold medal and a silver medal which is a lot of
01:26:31.160
times around 0.5 to 0.6 percent difference in performance if we look at the difference between
01:26:38.200
a silver medal and a bronze medal again it's 0.6 percent difference the difference between a gold
01:26:44.040
medal and no medal is typically less than two percent and so if we take a male individual with a 10 to 60
01:26:53.000
percent advantage over a female that i think most of us would say that that's unfair because they are male
01:26:58.920
if we take a male to female transgender individual and reduce their performance a little bit and they
01:27:07.180
still have as joanna said a 17 percent advantage i'd say we still say that's an unfair advantage compared
01:27:14.940
to what we would normally expect as far as competitive performance in sports go ahead joanna so grip
01:27:22.140
strength is only one aspect of uh athletic performance and there was a very interesting
01:27:28.320
study that came out of the u.s air force last year um where they looked at uh both uh they looked at
01:27:37.220
three fitness tests on uh transgender individuals uh one minute sit-ups one minute push-ups uh were two of
01:27:46.260
these tests and and these are very interesting tests because both of these tests rely partially
01:27:53.400
on strength partially on muscular endurance partially on technique partially on cardiovascular endurance
01:28:00.840
and in many ways i think that these tests are a proxy for the team sports where strength is part of the
01:28:07.780
equation but not the entire equation and and this air force study found that after two years of
01:28:13.980
hormone therapy the trans women lost their entire advantage in push-ups in one minute despite the fact
01:28:21.240
that other studies would show that trans women maintain strength advantages so in these more complex
01:28:28.260
uh activities like push-ups per minute and and perhaps many team sports it's entirely possible
01:28:36.740
that the advantage goes away despite the fact that the strength advantage doesn't go away
01:28:43.980
hmm let me ask you this um just and and you may know these studies but just as a quick search
01:28:51.260
suggested that uh in 2019 the journal of clinical clinical endocrinology it studied it was only 11 but it was
01:28:59.720
11 transgender women found that after a year of undergoing testosterone suppression
01:29:04.520
they experienced only a negligible decrease in strength of their thigh muscles only a five percent loss
01:29:11.800
of muscle mass then in 2020 sports medicine study found that strength lean body mass muscle size and bone density
01:29:19.080
are only trivially affected by testosterone suppression suggesting that you know a lot of these other advantages
01:29:29.100
don't go away just with you know by by suppressing testosterone
01:29:34.220
so the the 2019 study was a swedish study um and and as you say it is only 11 people um the the 2020 is probably
01:29:46.540
the review of hilton and lundberg that you're talking about uh and again these are all non-athletes uh and um so
01:29:56.940
we would never take data from studies of non-athletes of cisgender people to say anything about cisgender athletes
01:30:08.460
um i do acknowledge that that given the numbers there is definitely going to be a residual strength advantage
01:30:17.020
for uh trans women but but as the air force study showed that may not carry through to more complex
01:30:26.300
uh sports where strength is only part of the equation well if i may a couple of things there the
01:30:32.880
study you're talking about from sweden that's anna wick's paper
01:30:36.680
uh where they were using a very sophisticated technique to measure muscle strength
01:30:42.840
uh it's an isokinetic dynamometer which is very precise for measuring strength and so
01:30:47.660
that is a technique that is frequently used in athletes and in athletics to determine if there are muscle imbalances and things like that
01:30:55.000
um and so that's a that's a very good technique also in the paper with the air force individuals the authors acknowledge
01:31:02.760
that perhaps the transgender individuals reduced their training to meet their perception of what they should be
01:31:12.200
as a female and to minimize their male illness and so that could also partially account for why they reduced
01:31:19.580
their push-up sit-up performance oh that's fascinating that gosh it's like it's like covid where to turn
01:31:27.380
the actual scientific answers to figure this out i mean i think look anecdotally just talking to the two girls
01:31:33.580
you know sweet young girls who who had lost to the two trans female athletes in virtually every single race
01:31:40.280
and the only race where they didn't lose it was a false start by the trans um girls i think they would say
01:31:47.920
anecdotally it's impossible right like they they they couldn't do it and if you just look at the natural
01:31:53.220
advantages that cis boys have over cis girls to suggest it just goes away because of a year of home
01:31:59.120
hormone therapy hasn't been their experience at all right so like this is what you're up against joanna
01:32:04.720
right like there's like an anecdotal belief and it may be scientifically backed uh even you say to some
01:32:10.640
extent it it probably is that it isn't fair that you're that sort of cis girls are being kind of
01:32:18.300
screwed over in an effort to be overly accommodating to trans girls and we must we should instead be
01:32:24.660
looking for a different solution that is more fair to both groups what do you make of that well again in
01:32:32.200
connecticut they weren't required to to uh uh to undergo hormone therapy i have non-published data as
01:32:40.420
of yet from three uh sprinters that suggest the entire speed advantage for for sprinters does go away
01:32:48.820
um so um uh you know i i would say under different rules it would be far fairer the ncaa rules for
01:32:59.060
instance and and i would also suggest that um that uh four of the five girls involved with this lawsuit
01:33:07.540
two of the trans two of the cisgender girls and both transgender girls have already graduated high
01:33:14.140
school both cisgender girls were awarded athletic scholarships one to william and mary which is a
01:33:20.400
terrific school and neither of the transgender girls were awarded athletic scholarships so we know if
01:33:26.760
they tried for them um i i don't know for sure but i i do know that they were not tendered any offers
01:33:34.960
and and so um certainly we don't know the reasons though because we don't we don't know the grades you
01:33:41.600
know what i mean like that i see your point i take your point but i we need more information to figure
01:33:46.360
out why that happened like what were the relative grades of the two trans girls and the grades of the
01:33:50.580
cis girls and and did what did the trans girls do to try to you know be recruited and get attention and
01:33:56.980
did they want to go to you know certain colleges or not you know you never know um that those those
01:34:03.000
still need to be answered but i i do think it's interesting so so this is you're confirming then
01:34:08.360
because you're familiar with the case that the trans girls in the connecticut cases hadn't done
01:34:12.400
hormone therapy they just it was a social transition um no i do not have the medical records of the trans
01:34:21.500
girls and and i have uh some suppositions and i have some inside information but that's not the same
01:34:28.500
as as their medical records and so let me put it to you this way no copy got it point taken but
01:34:35.220
you are saying that if it's just a social transition at that age in the in the high school because that's
01:34:40.980
obviously where puberty happens late middle school high school um if it's just a social transition
01:34:46.320
there's no question that there's an unfair advantage by the the trans girls over the cis girls
01:34:50.420
again with accomplished athletes you know if we're talking about people who are
01:34:55.400
more testosterone won't make non-athletes into athletes but it will make athletes better
01:35:01.640
and so in this case where both of these trans girls were athletes yes i would suggest that uh it was
01:35:10.440
unfair competition so let's talk about the um the more uh my the more advanced level of sports right
01:35:18.620
like you accurately point out the ncaa the ioc they're allowing trans again it's usually trans
01:35:25.900
girls or trans women competing against cis women that creates the problem because the truth is trans
01:35:31.900
boys trans men haven't typically been able to compete against uh cis men effectively
01:35:39.980
so what what do you do you think let me start with with you on this um greg do you think it's fair
01:35:46.780
at the college and the ioc level to i think it's one year right one year of hormone therapy that they
01:35:53.360
have to be on to show that they've suppressed the testosterone to the level of you know a cis woman
01:35:59.420
right so do you think that's fair well i would say at this point no it's not because the research that
01:36:07.480
we have in and as joanna has stated these are not athletes but the information that we have both on
01:36:14.780
cisgender men compared to cisgender women and in these transgender individuals if we look at grip
01:36:21.360
strength these transgender individuals yes they're in the 20th percentile of strength compared to other
01:36:27.380
men meaning 80 percent of men are stronger than them but they are stronger than 95 percent of comparably
01:36:34.340
aged women right so that's the real question it's not really how they fare against cis men it's how
01:36:39.920
they fare against cis women you know women who are born female and identify as female their whole lives
01:36:45.360
how do they fare against them yeah yeah and so you know if we take that data and try and compare
01:36:51.420
apples to apples as much as possible it could be extrapolated that a trained male is going to
01:36:58.920
outperform a trained female even with testosterone suppression and again acknowledging that this is
01:37:05.220
taking from non-athletes and extrapolating with athletes but if we are going to use that as our only
01:37:10.260
standard of judgment we need to re-evaluate all of our rules that ban performance-intensive
01:37:16.060
substances because most of those have not been tested in competitive athletes hmm what about that
01:37:23.200
joanna we try so much to prevent you know doping in sports or at least on paper we say we do um
01:37:30.220
and because there is an understanding that levels of testosterone and so on could provide an athlete
01:37:35.760
with an unfair advantage that we need to cautiously guard against and yet you know it's it's the standards
01:37:42.500
seem to slide a bit when it comes to this issue so um virtually all international sports federations
01:37:51.180
require trans women to maintain uh female levels of testosterone for at least one year prior to
01:37:59.400
hormone therapy and um so so in terms of current testosterone levels there are no advantages for
01:38:09.740
trans women over cis women uh when it comes to international sports there are absolutely legacy effects
01:38:18.520
um but i would suggest that perhaps the best way to look at this is is by population studies and the
01:38:26.940
ncaa is a great example um 10 years ago they allowed trans women to compete uh against cis women based off one
01:38:37.060
year of hormone therapy and and that's no requirement for a specific testosterone level and so it's a
01:38:42.920
weaker rule than the international rule but but every year there are more than 200 000 women competing
01:38:49.680
in ncaa sports given the size of the the trans population approximately one percent we should be
01:38:57.360
seeing over a thousand maybe two thousand trans women competing every year in ncaa sports if they were
01:39:05.060
equally represented and yet the number of trans women competing in ncaa sports is is extremely small
01:39:12.360
we don't know precisely but it's probably fewer than 50 uh so 10 years two generations of collegiate
01:39:20.720
athletes have come and gone with this rule in place trans women are in no way taking over trans women are
01:39:28.660
hugely underrepresented in ncaa sports 10 years later greg you know i i don't know the numbers but i dare
01:39:39.400
say that if we go to the 2019 division two 400 meter national outdoor hurdles championship for women
01:39:46.340
there are probably eight women that would feel that they lost to a transgender athlete and that was very
01:39:54.960
meaningful to those eight women cisgender women and so again we come back to the idea is it fair
01:40:01.840
fair for all or only fair if it displaces a certain number of the population you know you think about
01:40:09.440
the natural event i'm thinking about somebody and i know joanna you were a competitive runner you think
01:40:15.120
about somebody like hussein bolt right i'm trying to pick somebody who you just you can get the image
01:40:19.880
in your head like super strong amazing world-class athlete and if hussein bolt said i'm trans
01:40:26.780
and i want to compete with the women and started taking um you know hormones cross-gender hormones
01:40:35.300
for a year and got his testosterone down to the appropriate level he would crush right like you
01:40:41.980
you don't dispute that way you'd kill everybody right so like that's the most extreme case that
01:40:46.600
i do you do that yes absolutely well because again i have data from transgender sprinters maybe not
01:40:54.480
quite as good as ussein bolt that they do lose 10 percent of their speed and so um if we took ussein
01:41:02.460
bolt and made him 10 slower he would not be the women's world record holder in the 100 meter dash
01:41:11.780
his time his world record is very slightly less than 10 percent uh faster than the women's world record
01:41:20.780
and so yes i absolutely say uh you know let's do this as a thought experiment and and if ussein
01:41:28.120
bolt were to do this he would not would not and i absolutely stand by this 100 percent would not
01:41:34.900
beat the women's world record in the 100 meter dash all right wait let me ask you a follow-up then
01:41:39.860
this is kind of a fun experiment because it gives you a visual right as opposed to just like this
01:41:44.040
untouchable image um let's say the rock right dwayne johnson decides to do weight lifting but
01:41:51.940
instead of being a great actor he decides to be a weight lifter and he's made amazing strides and
01:41:56.980
he's won all sorts of titles and then he does the same thing and wants to go over as a trans
01:42:01.200
female weight lifter against all the women the cis women who have been doing all along after a year
01:42:07.420
of hormone therapy he gets his testosterone levels down so this is a different skill right this is
01:42:12.800
strength and lifting and so on you're saying he wouldn't crush the female weight lifters well uh
01:42:19.680
let's let's call this person roxy um and uh so roxy um would be a lot bigger and so we have weight
01:42:30.800
categories in in uh sports like strength and so it probably wouldn't be right because roxy would be
01:42:38.760
way too big uh and so we would need to create a super extra heavy large super weight category and
01:42:47.600
there probably wouldn't be any cis women who would be big enough for that category isn't this happening
01:42:53.740
wait is joanne is this happening right now isn't didn't we just see this on an international in the
01:42:58.000
in the olympic competition um not yet but we probably will in tokyo um there is a weight lifter uh a new
01:43:08.500
zealand uh trans woman named laurel hubbard uh the the new zealand uh olympic team has not yet been
01:43:16.040
named but she will probably be named uh to the team um she was sixth in the world championship in 2019
01:43:25.060
her most recent uh high level international competition uh because of the olympic rules
01:43:30.840
that limits countries to to one per per country she has a a chance of of perhaps finishing higher than
01:43:38.520
sixth in in the olympics she has an outside shot of the medal so she's not gonna win but she's
01:43:45.400
competing right now as a as a trans woman as a woman in new zealand well okay and but she's
01:43:51.680
but she hasn't she doesn't win every time she loses to cis women yeah absolutely as i said she
01:43:58.320
was sixth in the 2019 world championships um that's that's a very good placing sixth in the world
01:44:05.760
how many athletes get to be sixth in the world uh and and and just to be clear she held a new zealand
01:44:13.540
record for 15 years but she was never sixth in the world among men and and so yeah i absolutely
01:44:20.260
acknowledge that she does better in women's weight lifting than she ever did in men's weight lifting
01:44:26.340
but she's not gonna win in the olympics um she's unlikely to medal she's got no such shot at it
01:44:34.460
but but she's she's not gonna win she's gonna do well uh you know again how many people make the olympics
01:44:41.360
and and so um does she have a strength advantage because of her former life yes is it an overwhelming
01:44:48.400
advantage no what do you make of that greg well i think one thing we need to consider here is that
01:44:54.600
laurel hubbard is 43 years old and to be sixth in the world in weight lifting at age 43 is unheard of
01:45:02.000
that's pretty good yeah yeah that's incredible if we go back and look at the olympics in 2016 2012
01:45:08.680
the oldest weight lifters were 34 36 years old and that's both men and women and so i think this
01:45:16.900
demonstrates again these legacy effects of being a man that laurel hubbard is experiencing and
01:45:26.200
benefiting from when competing against cisgender women what's the story because i i heard you greg on
01:45:31.420
another podcast and you mentioned the case of cc telfer what's that case so that is the um 2019
01:45:38.580
division two 400 meter hurdle that i was talking about and so cc telfer competed for two years at
01:45:45.260
franklin pierce university as a male as craig telfer and was 200 300 as far as national ranking
01:45:54.220
still pretty good still way faster than i could ever be and a very good athlete but then craig telfer
01:46:02.280
identified as female took the year off for the transitioning the hormone therapy came back as cc telfer
01:46:08.680
and then won the 400 meter hurdles at the national championship and so you know that's kind of
01:46:16.580
unheard of for an athlete to go from 200 300 to first place and and because cc then is running as a
01:46:26.200
female you know again this is just based on the times and what we know i don't know what cc's
01:46:32.520
transition was as far as all the details was in compliance with nc2a policy
01:46:38.680
yeah i see i see your point can i shift gears and ask you joanna so um are you comfortable talking
01:46:45.140
about um your your transition and being a competitive runner and how that affected you like what what your
01:46:51.480
experience was there yeah sure um so i started hormone therapy in uh 2004 um you know i i knew that
01:47:01.680
when i reduced my testosterone i'd be slower but i you know i thought it'd be sort of a gradual thing
01:47:07.100
and and that maybe over a 10 kilometer race i'd lose a minute or two um how old were you at this
01:47:13.720
point i was 46 um and and just by the way you've now outed my current age but um apologies
01:47:24.280
math friendly but anyway um i was 46 at the time and um uh so i i i thought i'd get you know a little
01:47:35.560
slower and but it would take a while but within weeks i was noticeably slower within nine months i
01:47:42.480
was running uh 12 slower and that's the difference between serious male athletes and serious uh female
01:47:48.840
sorry serious male distance runners and serious uh female distance runners so i had lost that complete
01:47:55.540
um male advantage uh within nine months and we've been talking a lot about strength but the the most
01:48:03.320
recent review from from those of us at loughborough uh showed that in study after study trans women go
01:48:11.100
from male levels of hemoglobin to female levels of hemoglobin within three to four months of starting
01:48:18.740
hormone therapy so that's a complete change there's no legacy effect uh and hemoglobin values are one of
01:48:27.560
the most important values in endurance sports not just distance running but but all endurance sports
01:48:33.360
and that's why i noticed this difference so quickly was was that my hemoglobin levels changed
01:48:40.220
very very quickly uh as do all trans women and there's there's no legacy effect there but but as an
01:48:48.240
individual as a scientist i i was uh a medical physicist at the time working in health care in the u.s
01:48:54.420
you know i was intrigued and so this led me down this path to become a researcher into trans athletes
01:49:01.720
because of my own personal experience so you lived 46 years identifying as male
01:49:10.220
i mean or at least having been designated male at birth and and appearing as a male forgive me for
01:49:15.600
not having the right language on that yes um i i certainly i i knew that i was a girl uh this
01:49:23.160
probably the same age that you knew you were a girl megan but i i hid it for years and years and
01:49:28.280
years and was extraordinarily unhappy uh because of it but um you know i i wanted a lot of things that
01:49:36.480
that trans people couldn't have when when i was young uh you know trans uh people could not be
01:49:42.900
openly trans and and you know go go to university and and become a medical physicist you know that
01:49:48.980
that was something that that you know i i couldn't dream of uh so you know i i hid who i was for most of
01:49:55.260
my life and and was you know sad about it but um uh you know finally i i i did uh decide that that i
01:50:04.580
need to make changes i mean good for you because that must have taken a lot of guts at 46 to come
01:50:10.320
out and say like it's it's not as you thought it was and i got a story to tell you especially at a
01:50:16.180
time when even even 10 years ago there was a much bigger stigma on on people who are trans than there
01:50:22.920
is today and that's a good thing you know i don't want anybody to mistake debates like this for
01:50:26.840
some wanting us to go back there right it's just everyone's trying to wrestle with
01:50:32.120
what does this mean right now that we're being more open which is good and accepting of people
01:50:37.140
who are trans what does it mean for the way we've been living and uh let me ask you another question
01:50:43.240
joanna because somebody um there is a an openly gay um progressive uh woman named katie herzog who
01:50:50.660
was on our show not long ago who had a great line about the trans activists saying get better people
01:50:56.740
right like she's not anti-trans she just doesn't want to be harassed by these anti-trans activists
01:51:02.640
who are so loud and so bullying people just shut down what are your thoughts on like how how sort of
01:51:09.320
i don't know antagonistic some of the trans spokespeople who i really believe do not actually
01:51:15.680
speak for the for the trans community writ large are in their approach you know i i would certainly say
01:51:22.220
it's extremely unfortunate that we have um you know we have people who are on both sides of of this
01:51:31.280
chasm where where um you know they're they're as you say there are trans activists there are some uh
01:51:38.820
there are some people who are um masquerading as caring about women's sports when they are are in fact
01:51:45.560
anti-lgbt people uh and and these two groups are standing on the opposite sides of a ravine and are
01:51:54.020
screaming at each other often on twitter and and it's not productive at all and and i would blame both
01:52:00.580
sides equally for um you know for this lack of productive uh discussion you know greg and i here we
01:52:09.740
clearly disagree but but we are engaging in civil discourse uh and and i would think that this is the
01:52:17.560
way that it it should be done with with people talking rationally and reasonably but unfortunately
01:52:24.340
in this argument it's not and as i say i blame people on both sides yes oh amen to what you just said
01:52:33.040
i mean that's one of our mission statements here at the show is to try to have open honest
01:52:39.500
and i say provocative conversations my little seven-year-old says evocative he doesn't he's
01:52:45.520
totally he's misunderstood but that's one of the whole purposes of our show's existence is to try
01:52:50.860
to have these conversations without yelling at each other and demonizing one another and so on
01:52:54.360
i mean what do you think greg do you think that she's right that there's a there's a faction opposing
01:53:01.440
trans athletes in sports in the way we've been discussing because it's it's sort of cover for
01:53:08.400
transphobia you know i don't know if i could speak on that the individuals that i know to my
01:53:15.860
best knowledge are not transphobic they think everybody should be loved respected cared for
01:53:22.040
they just have a difference of opinion and as joanna and i are showing this is the way it should
01:53:26.760
happen we can have a difference of opinion we can be respectful and we can even look at the same
01:53:31.600
science and come up with a different interpretation of that science but we can do it calmly and rationally
01:53:37.140
i think that is important that we are able to have these good conversations and you know look at
01:53:42.520
what are the facts and separate the facts from the hyperbole i guess so let me let me end it with this
01:53:51.140
is there is there any solution to this conflict um that other than the status quo right because
01:54:02.760
the states are split they're all over the board some states are banning trans athletes from running
01:54:07.540
in the um you know the as the gender that they identify with some states are mandating that it be
01:54:14.820
allowed i mean it's all over the place and eventually i think the supreme court will rule but
01:54:18.480
you know let's take the martin and never to roll a group's suggestion of you know like let's sit down
01:54:24.540
and talk as grownups is there a way of creating another league for trans people it seems to me as
01:54:31.080
a lay person commentator that there wouldn't be enough um is there a way of letting them run
01:54:38.480
with the gender with which they identify but still keeping it more fair for the you know cisgendered girls
01:54:46.580
um i'll start with you on that greg you know that is perhaps a possibility that maybe there's
01:54:52.700
in individual sports separate scoring of some way so transgenders are able to run with the gender they
01:55:00.480
identify with but their score is separate from the boys and separate from the girls and there's the
01:55:06.960
third category but that probably wouldn't work when we look at team sports basketball football even
01:55:14.420
wrestling you know that then gets to be a real challenge and i honestly don't know what the answer
01:55:20.480
to that would be i guess we need to hope that calm heads can prevail in school boards and in politics
01:55:27.520
and then come up with a reasonable solution as they consider the information that's brought to them
01:55:33.060
what about you joanna what would you say to somebody um like our our guest today chelsea um
01:55:40.700
chelsea mitchell who said she she'd been winning everything she she she had 20 conference
01:55:46.500
championship she had a perfect record over four years and it wasn't until two trans girls
01:55:52.880
started racing against her that she started to lose and she lost repeatedly and she said she knew
01:56:00.580
she knew she was the fastest girl in the race one of the fastest in the state but suddenly losses came
01:56:06.640
where they had never been to two girls who were trans um i i certainly think it's unfortunate that as i said
01:56:14.680
you know if i were queen of connecticut those would not be the rules that that would be in play
01:56:19.720
um but chelsea is is the girl i mentioned earlier who's now at william and mary and she is losing
01:56:26.040
regularly uh and so you know i i think it's unfortunate that chelsea didn't win more state championships i i i
01:56:33.680
think she deserved it um uh and i'm sorry that it happened and as i say if i were queen of connecticut
01:56:41.840
it wouldn't have happened um but uh you know she is moving on with her life she's she's at university
01:56:49.760
she's uh competing in in uh collegiate athletics uh but there's other chelsea's coming up behind her
01:56:56.720
that's what she would say that she's they're saying they're filing a lawsuit not just for themselves but
01:57:00.680
because there's going to be more and more of this as you know the the the case in connecticut was
01:57:07.060
was certainly somewhat of an outlier uh you know california has the same rules as connecticut and
01:57:14.460
uh 10 times the population and we haven't seen any cases in in california uh and so um you know
01:57:24.440
it did happen in connecticut and it could potentially happen otherwise but but um for a
01:57:32.260
number of reasons i i think that this is going to be a very small percentage of the time that that we
01:57:38.620
will see this there was um there was a trans girl in a neighboring state who again competed in track and
01:57:45.940
field she identified as trans but was not on hormone therapy and she decided to continue competing with
01:57:52.740
the boys because she thought that that was fair and so um you know that this idea that that we're
01:58:02.200
going to see this all the time it is just not going to happen and do you think is just i'd love to get
01:58:10.100
you to weigh in on the notion of us a third category you know like as greg said greg and i actually agree
01:58:19.460
on something here um but but perhaps in individual sports we could do that but it's not going to work
01:58:26.020
in team sports you know you have if you have three categories you've got 49 and a half percent of the
01:58:33.060
people in one category 49 and a half percent of the people in the other category and one percent of the
01:58:39.140
people in this third category and so there's there's just not the numbers for team sports maybe in
01:58:45.300
individual sports i'm so glad you guys came on and gave us this discussion thank you so much i'm i'm
01:58:53.720
very grateful to you both well megan thank you for the invitation i appreciate this opportunity this
01:58:58.800
has been wonderful it's nice to talk to you and nice to talk to joanna and and i feel the same way
01:59:03.140
greg i i enjoyed talking with you and thank you very much for inviting me here megan absolutely i hope
01:59:08.660
we get to do it again all the best to you all right so don't forget to go to apple reviews and
01:59:16.440
tell me what you thought of that debate loved it personally okay i'm i'm tainting the jury but you
01:59:20.940
guys will figure it out go there and let me know uh do not miss our next show on friday because we
01:59:25.900
have comedian ryan long i did not know ryan long until i started to see some of his more recent videos
01:59:32.260
and i was like okay whoever this is i'm in love with him i really need to know him more and can we
01:59:36.980
please book him because every time i see one of his bits i laugh out loud you're gonna know who
01:59:41.580
this is if you don't already um he did the one where it's like the guy who's supposed to be woke
01:59:47.120
versus the guy who's supposed to be racist and how their their language is identical they agree on
01:59:52.940
virtually everything totally clever um and then he did that one we played a clip of it of the modern
01:59:58.500
therapist basically telling all these young people that they're not to blame for anything it's really
02:00:03.280
the world that needs to change and that you know their their lack of drive and uh willingness
02:00:08.400
to work hard is not to be blamed on them it's really somebody else's fault there's a million
02:00:13.800
he's got like a 4.5 million views on how to break a man he's got 4.2 million views on the woke versus
02:00:23.180
racist thing on how the the woke and the racist agree with on everything and on and on it goes so
02:00:28.620
super popular you're gonna love him you're gonna laugh let's have a good time it's gonna be friday
02:00:32.960
see you then thanks for listening to the megan kelly show no bs no agenda and no fear
02:00:40.520
the megan kelly show is a devil may care media production in collaboration with red seat ventures