Okay. Transcript, taken from youtube and just the sentence breaks cut out - sorry I don't have time to put it into proper sentence case and there will be a few typos:
>> Trevor: so, i'm going to say from the top, because i've noticed this happens in every conversation, every time you bring up trans rights, or if you have a discussion, and you say "trans people tense up" I understand why.
we live in a world where now there are people who are so trans-phobic that it makes it almost impossible for people who aren't to ask any questions, to have any conversations, to have any discourse that doesn't lump them in with trans-phobia.
i'm really glad you're joining us on the show to talk about this because it feels like one of the biggest issues in the america, and, yet, no one can seem to talk about it. let's start with your journey. you have competed at some of the highest levels in sports.
as your hoodie says, "sport is a human right." that is what you believe in. talk me through—
( applause )
talk me through just a little bit of why you believe fighting for transgender athletes to compete in the categories they'd like to in sport is so important.
>> so, it's a fundamental tenet of, like, the olympic movement, that sport is a human right. so in the olympic charter, in their four fundamental principles of olympism, they say participation sport is a human right, and they mean that at the competitive level. so this issue, people like to say that it's a complicated issue, and I don't actually think it is. I think it's very simple.
it all boils down to do you actually think that trans women and intersex women are real women and are really female or not?
and if you do, it's very simple. just stop policing who counts as a real woman, because this has had history of racism built into it over the years. it's not an accident that the intersex athletes who get singled out are women of color from the global south. because who gets singled out for scrutiny is based on white woman's conceptions of femininity. and that's being weaponized against trans people, too. so it's a fear of protecting the fragile, weak, cis white woman from the rest of us.
( applause )
>> Trevor: there are many elements to what you said, which I appreciate. so let's try to break them down. one thing that confuses me personally is it seems like we have discussions about who should participate in which category and how. you know, on the face of it, it seems simple, as you say. you know, if somebody identifies as a woman, if they're transgender, they can compete against women who were born biologically, and if not, then not.
there are many who would argue, who are not trans-phobes, there are many born biologically women who say you have an unnatural advantage over me, and that makes the sport unfair.
how do you respond to that?
>> yeah, there are lots of ways you can respond to that. so the first is, the very language of "you were born and I’m not biological somehow. I don't think I’m a cyborg, so the idea you're not a biological woman. I am a woman, that's a fact. I am female. so all my identity records, my racing license, my medical records all say "female." and I’m pretty sure I’m made of biological stuff. so I’m a biological female as well.
so this question of do trans women have an advantage over cis women? we don't know. in fact, there's basically no published research on this question. however, there's good reason to think that there isn't.
but I think it's irrelevant.
because we allow all kinds of competitive advantages within women's sport.
so one example I love to talk about is the 2016 rio Olympic women's high jump final. first place was over 6'3". 10th place was 5'5".
so a 10.5-inch height difference between first and tenth at the Olympics in high jump, and we call that fair.
>> Trevor: okay.
>> so the range of body types within the female category is way, way bigger than anything that could be attributed to trans women. so if there's an advantage and I’m not saying that there is for trans women in women's sport, it's not an unfair advantage. but, also, we have been competing, trying to compete at the highest level for decades. we've been allowed to compete for decades. and no one has won an elite world championship. no one has won an Olympic gold medal. this Tokyo Olympics was the first time a trans woman even qualified for the Olympics. so this idea that trans women
are suddenly going to take over women's sport is an irrational fear of trans women, which is the dictionary definition of trans-phobia.
>> Trevor: it's interesting that you say that--
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it's interesting that you say that, because I think if I were to push back, or, you know, even-- not even playing devil's advocate, there are a few things that could be argued.
number one, you could argue that although the trans woman who competed in the Olympics didn't dominate, she did beat a field of women who might have qualified for that position.
secondly, when you talk about the height differences I agree with this completely but there are many who would argue that we exist in a state where a lot of the surgeries are new-- a lot of
the technologies, just the technology is new. transgenderism is not new.
we have seen it throughout time.
we have seen it throughout history.
there are many who would say how can we be sure we are creating some sort of standard?the reason we talk about this, is the reason they regulate performance-enhancing drugs.
for instance, what is fair? what can you drink, what you can not drunk. what can you consume? what can you not consume. some would say, if you are born that way, that's how sport has
determined who goes where. and some would say, no, regardless of who you are, you should be able to compete.
my question then comes in from, honestly, a different place. I look at somebody like Oscar pestorias from south Africa. he was a double amputee. and Oscar pestorias went, "I want to compete in the able-bodied race." and people were like, "do you have an advantage, do you not,"
et cetera, et cetera, because of the prosthetic. could there not be an argument if there is no advantage in that, that then trans women should be able to compete, but in the men's races.
they would still be able to compete in the sport.
>> but they're women, and they're female. so, like I said, this boils down to are trans women really women?
are they really female?
because if you think yes, we belong competing with other women.
it's an extreme indignity to say I think you're a woman except for sport. you can't single out one of the most important aspects of our society. we are obsessed with sport. athletes are some of the most highly praised, highly paid people on the planet.
>> Trevor: definitely, definitely.
>> you can't say I believe you, and I support you, but not for this one really big thing that society really cares about.
>> Trevor: right.
and I’m saying I get confused by why we distill it down into just two things. I’ll tell you why.
as we learn about gender being a spectrum. as we learn that people can identify in a multitude of ways, we accept the fact that we don't have to put people into categories of man or woman.
you know, that's why they say protect trans women.
otherwise, which women are you protecting? it's an argument that doesn't separate or diminish anybody, but gives more specificity to what people are saying. and so when we talk about these things, I sometimes get confused by why we're trying to force the people into two again when we've been taught that there isn't a two.
whereas, a sport like, let's say boxing, for instance. in boxing, people fight across all weight categories. they don't just go men's boxing, women's boxing.
they go men, heavyweight, super heavyweight. middle weight, bantam weight, fly weight, feather weight, guys who weigh nothing punch each other.
I thought it's interesting how in boxing they go we don't just want to see guys fighting. we want to see them fight in different weights. they go you're going to fight in your weight class. it seems crazy how can you break it down, and yet it's worked. I wonder if you ever considered-- and I’m not saying
it's jur job by the way--
>> it kind of literally is.
>> Trevor: oh, then great.
( laughter )
you have ever considered a world where it becomes more specific then? you know, the same thing they did in the Paralympics. they had to find a way where they classified how a single
amputee could run against somebody who is partially blind or a double amputee and how do we grade that? so do you not think we're limiting ourselves by saying men's sports, women's sports, when we now know there are so many more genders.
>> I’m really going to dissatisfy you now.
>> Trevor: you don't know what I’m looking for, so you can't.
>> I do. I know you're looking for something other than what I’m going to say.
and that is a very important question and a very difficult question but it's a separate question. the question we're talking about is given how sport is currently structured, should we include trans women and intersex women in women's sport? and my answer to that is a clear yes. if you want to say should we revisit how we structure all of sport? I would say, yeah, we should do that.
but if your only reason for doing that is because you just can't accept trans women or women, that's a problem I’ve got with you.
>> Trevor: I understand.
I’m not saying--
>> not with you personally.
>> Trevor: I hear what you're saying. I completely hear what you're saying. let me ask you this, then. you know, again, eliminating fringes. because everything on the internet becomes fringe.
everything becomes a fight and an argument. if somebody comes to you in good faith-- and I mean genuinely good faith, and they say to you, "you know, veronica, I was born a woman, raised a woman. I’ve suffered or lived and experienced life as a woman. this is where I am. this is where my body has gotten me to. I have grown as a woman. the body has the testosterone or oestrogen it has to get me to this point. that is why I am here. and I feel like you may or may not have the advantage, but we
don't know yet. so why can't we wait to know these things before you compete against me?"
how would you respond to that?
>> because that's not how human rights work. the way human rights work is the default is inclusion, and the burden of proof is on the people seeking to exclude, not the people seeking to include.
( applause )
so I want to share something shocking with everybody. it wasn't until five years ago that we actually studied the relationship between natural testosterone and performance. and we found that there's no relationship whatsoever between unaltered, natural endogenous testosterone and sport performance.
about .5% of elite male track and field athletes at the world championship level are below the women's average of testosterone. competing with men with 80 to 100 times as much testosterone
at no competitive disadvantage. and that fact has not been picked up by the broader media landscape. so when you say, "I’m a woman and I have this much testosterone," well, first, there's a huge range within women.
>> Trevor: definitely.
>> into the male range. and there is no relationship between her having a competitive advantage over women with lower testosterone. so there are elite cis men with low testosterone, lower than a given woman, who's outcompeting her. so our bodies and biology is not this simple. we thought it was, and it isn't. so we know that when you add testosterone to your natural levels, like doping, you tend to
get bigger, stronger, faster. we also know that when you drop your testosterone levels, like trans women tend to do, you tend to get slower. but what your natural level is has no relationship to your sport performance.
and we've been singling out that factor, testosterone, against the scientific evidence.
>> Trevor: but I’m a little confused-- and forgive me if I’m slow to understand this. you just said the natural level doesn't give you an advantage or disadvantage. but you said if people do have
an addition or subtraction of it, it does give you an advantage or disadvantage.
>> it affects things. so, for example, my body doesn't produce testosterone and it hasn't for a decade, but I switched sports from a road cycling event to a track power event. and I switched training. and I put on 25 pounds of muscle, and I went from being able to squat 170 to 375. so I don't produce any
testosterone, and I squat a lot. and that's just because I changed training. so it's not so simple as, okay, if you drop your testosterone, you will get weaker. because if you change your training, your diet, your rest and recovery, your sport, your performance can change.
>> Trevor: your body will change.
it seems like the conversation
>> Trevor: it seems like we'll end up in a cul-de-sac. the transgenders are coming for you.
>> oh, we are.
( laughter )
( applause )
>> Trevor: be careful what you say.
but it feels like there are many discussion to be had. it feels as you said, the research, the science, everything hasn't caught up. but I appreciate you for coming
on the show and discussing this with us. thank you so much for joining me.
( applause )